THE TAKING OF THE BEAVER 103 



Like other wild creatures, this foster-child of the 

 forest gradually takes on the appearance and habits of 

 woodland life. Nature protects the ermine by turn 

 ing his russet coat of the grass season to spotless white 

 for midwinter except the jet tail-tip left to lure hun 

 gry enemies and thus, perhaps, to prevent the little 

 stoat degenerating into a sloth. And the forest looks 

 after her foster-child by transforming the smartest suit 

 that ever stepped out of the clothier s bandbox to the 

 dull tints of winter woods. 



This is the seasoning of the man for the work. 

 But the trapper s training does not stop here. 



When the birds have gone south the silence of a 

 winter forest on a windless day becomes tense enough 

 to be snapped by either a man s breathing or the break 

 ing of a small twig ; and the trapper acquires a habit of 

 moving through the brush with noiseless stealth. He 

 must learn to see better than the caribou can hear or 

 the wolf smell which means that in keenness and ac 

 curacy his sight outdistances the average field-glass. 

 Besides, the trapper has learned how to look, how to 

 see, and seeing discern; which the average man can 

 not do even through a field-glass. Then animals have 

 a trick of deceiving the enemy into mistaking them for 

 inanimate things by suddenly standing stock-still in 

 closest peril, unflinching as stone; and to match him 

 self against them the trapper must also get the knack 

 of instantaneously becoming a statue, though he feel 

 the clutch of bruin s five-inch claws. 



And these things are only the a b c of the trapper s 

 woodcraft. 



One of the best hunters in America confessed that 

 the longer he trapped the more he thought every animal 



