284 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



Anyone who knows the tortures of snow-blindness will under- 

 stand why Koot did not sleep that night. It was a long night to 

 the trapper, such a very long night that the sun had been up for 

 two hours before its heat burned through the layers of his capote 

 into his eyes and roused him from sheer pain. Then he sprang up, 

 put up an ungauntleted hand and knew from the heat of the sun that 

 it was broad day. But when he took the bandage off his eyes, 

 all he saw was a black curtain one moment, rockets and wheels and 

 dancing patches of purple fire the next. 



Koot was no fool to become panicky and feeble from sudden peril. 

 He knew that he was snow-blind on a pathless prairie at least two 

 days away from the fort. To wait until the snow-blindness had 

 healed would risk the few provisions that he had and perhaps expose 

 him to a blizzard. The one rule of the trapper's life is to go ahead, 

 let the going cost what it may ; and drawing his capote over his 

 face, Koot went on. 



The heat of the sun told him the directions ; and when the sun 

 went down, the crooning west wind, bringing thaw and snow-crust, 

 was his compass. And when the wind fell, the tufts of shrub- 

 growth sticking through the snow pointed to the warm south. Now 

 he tied himself to his dog; and when he camped beside trees into 

 which he had gone full crash before he knew they were there, he 

 laid his gun beside the dog and sleigh. Going out the full length 

 of his cord, he whittled the chips for his fire and found his way back 

 by the cord. 



On the second day of his blindness, no sun came up ; nor could 

 he guide himself by the feel of the air, for there was no wind. It was 

 one of the dull, dead, gray days that precede storms. How would 

 he get his directions to set out ? Memory of last night's travel 

 might only lead him on the endless circling of the lost. Koot dug 

 his snow-shoe to the base of a tree, found moss, felt it growing on 

 only one side of the tree, knew that side must be the shady cold 

 side, and so took his bearings from what he thought was the 

 north. 



