THE MAKING OF THE MOCCASINS 121 



to run from a hunter who is not yet a Mercury; and 

 she will furnish him with a banquet fit for kings. 



Neither moose call nor birch horn, of which won 

 ders are told, will avail now. The mating season is 

 well past. Even if an old moose responded to the call, 

 the chances are his flesh would be unfit for food. It 

 would be a wasted kill, contrary to the principles of 

 the true trapper. 



Every animal has a sign language as plain as print. 

 The trapper has hardly entered the forest before he 

 begins to read this language. Broad hoof-marks are 

 on the muskeg quaking bog, covered with moss over 

 which the moose can skim as if on snow-shoes, where 

 a horse would sink to the saddle. Park-like glades at 

 the heads of streams, where the moose have spent the 

 summer browsing on twigs and wallowing in water 

 holes to get rid of sand flies, show trampled brush and 

 stripped twigs and rubbed bark. 



Coming suddenly on a grove of quaking aspens, a 

 saucy jay has fluttered up with a noisy call an alarm 

 note; and something is bounding off to hiding in a 

 thicket on the far side of the grove. The wis-lcat-jan, 

 or whisky jack, as the white men call it, who always 

 hangs about the moose herds, has seen the trapper and 

 sounded the alarm. 



In August, when the great, palmated horns, which 

 budded out on the male in July, are yet in the velvet, 

 the trapper finds scraps of furry hair sticking to young 

 saplings. The vain moose has been polishing his ant 

 lers, preparatory to mating. Later, there is a great 

 whacking of horns among the branches. The moose, 

 spoiling for a fight, in moose language is challenging 



