KOOT AND THE BOB-CAT 275 



"wahboos — little white chap," which is the Indian name for 

 rabbit. 



And there is no midwinter lull for "wahboos." While the 

 "little white chap" runs, the long-haired, owlish-eyed lynx of the 

 northern forest runs too. So do all the lynx's feline cousins, the 

 big yellowish cougar of the mountains slouching along with his 

 head down and his tail lashing and a footstep as light and sinuous 

 and silent as the motion of a snake ; the short-haired lucifee gorg- 

 ing himself full of "little white chaps" and stretching out to sleep on 

 a limb in a dapple of sunshine and shadow so much like the lucifee's 

 skin not even a wolf would detect the sleeper ; the bunchy bob-cat 

 bounding and skimming over the snow for all the world like a bounc- 

 ing football done up in gray fur — all members of the cat tribe 

 running wherever the "little white chaps" run. 



So when the lull fell on the hunt and the mink trapping was 

 well over and marten had not yet begun, Koot gathered up his 

 traps, and getting a supply of provisions at the fur post, crossed 

 the white wastes of prairie to lonely swamp ground where dwarf 

 alder and willow and cottonwood and poplar and pine grew in a 

 tangle. A few old logs dovetailed into a square made the wall of a 

 cabin. Over these he stretched the canvas of his tepee for a roof 

 at a sharp enough angle to let the heavy snowfall slide off" from 

 its own weight. Moss chinked up the logs. Snow banked out 

 the wind. Pine boughs made the floor, two logs with pine boughs, 

 a bed. An odd-shaped stump served as chair or table; and on 

 the logs of the inner walls hung wedge-shaped slabs of cedar to 

 stretch the skins. A caribou curtain or bear-skin across the en- 

 trance completed Koot's winter quarters for the rabbit hunt. 



Koot's genealogy was as vague as that of all old trappers hang- 

 ing round fur posts. Part of him — that part which served best 

 when he was on the hunting-field — was Ojibway. The other 

 part, which made him improvise logs into chair and table and bed, 

 was white man ; and that served him best when he came to bargain 

 with the chief factor over the pelts. At the fur post he attended 



