28o THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



It did not surprise the trapper after he had heard the lifting 

 wail from the swamp woods the night before that the bacon in the 

 trap lay untouched. The still hunter that had crawled through the 

 underbrush lured by the dead rabbits over Koot's shoulder wanted 

 rabbit, not bacon. But at the nearest rabbit snare, where a poor 

 dead prisoner had been torn from the twine, were queer padded 

 prints in the snow, not of the rabbit's making. Koot stood looking 

 at the telltale mark. The dog's ears were all aprick. So was Koot's 

 sense of feel, but he couldn't make this thing out. There was no 

 trail of approach or retreat. The padded print of the thief was in 

 the snow as if the animal had dropped from the sky and gone back 

 to the sky. 



Koot measured off ten strides from the rifled snare and made a 

 complete circuit round it. The rabbit runway cut athwart the 

 snow circle, but no mark like that shuffling padded print. 



"It isn't a wolverine, and it isn't a fisher, and it isn't a coyote," 

 Koot told himself. 



The dog emitted stupid little sharp barks, looking everywhere 

 and nowhere as if he felt what he could neither see nor hear. Koot 

 measured off ten strides more from this circuit and again walked 

 completely round the snare. Not even the rabbit runways cut this 

 circle. The white man grows indignant when baffled, the Indian 

 superstitious. The part that was white man in Koot sent him back 

 to the scene in quick jerky steps to scatter poisoned rabbit meat 

 over the snow and set a trap in which he readily sacrificed a full- 

 grown bunny. The part that was Indian set a world of old memories 

 echoing, memories that were as much Koot's nature as the swarth 

 of his skin, memories that Koot's mother and his mother's ancestors 

 held of the fabulous man-eating wolf called the loup-garou, and the 

 great white beaver, father of all beavers and all Indians, that glided 

 through the swamp mists at night like a ghost, and the monster grizzly 

 that stalked with uncouth gambols through the dark devouring be- 

 nighted hunters. 



This time when the mongrel uttered his little sharp barkings 



