60 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



even handle the trap with deer-hide. Pekan travel in 

 pairs. Besides, the dead deer will be likely to attract 

 more than one forager; so the man sets a circle of 

 traps round the carcass. 



The next morning he comes back with high hope. 

 Very little of the deer remains. All the flesh-eaters 

 of the forest, big and little, have been there. Why, 

 then, is there no capture? One trap has been pulled 

 up, sprung, and partly broken. Another carried a little 

 distance off and dumped into a hollow. A third had 

 caught a pekan; but the prisoner had been worried and 

 torn to atoms. Another was tampered with from be 

 hind and exposed for very deviltry. Some have dis 

 appeared altogether. 



Among forest creatures few are mean enough to 

 kill when they have full stomachs, or to eat a trapped 

 brother with untrapped meat a nose-length away. 



The French trapper rumbles out some maledictions 

 on le sacre carcajou. Taking a piece of steel like a 

 cheese-tester s instrument, he pokes grains of strych 

 nine into the remaining meat. He might have saved 

 himself the trouble. The next day he finds the poi 

 soned meat mauled and spoiled so that no animal will 

 touch it. There is nothing of the deer but picked bones. 

 So the trapper tries a deadfall for the thief. Again he 

 might have spared himself the trouble. His next visit 

 shows the deadfall torn from behind and robbed with 

 out danger to the thief. 



Several signs tell the trapper that the marauder is 

 the carcajou or wolverine. All the stealing was done 

 at night; and the wolverine is nocturnal. All the traps 

 had been approached from behind. The wolverine will 

 not cross man s track. The poison in the meat had 



