CHAPTER XI 



THE INDIAN TRAPPER 



IT is dawn when the Indian trapper leaves his lodge. 



In midwinter of the Far North, dawn conies late. 

 Stars, which shine with a hard, clear, crystal radiance 

 only seen in northern skies, pale in the gray morning 

 gloom ; and the sun comes over the horizon dim through 

 mists of frost-smoke. In an hour the frost-mist, lying 

 thick to the touch like clouds of steam, will have 

 cleared ; and there will be nothing from sky-line to sky 

 line but blinding sunlight and snowglare. 



The Indian trapper must be far afield before mid 

 day. Then the sun casts no man-shadow to scare 

 game from his snares. Black is the flag of betrayal 

 in northern midwinter. It is by the big liquid eye, 

 glistening on the snow like a black marble, that the 

 trapper detects the white hare ; and a jet tail-tip streak 

 ing over the white wastes in dots and dashes tells him 

 the little ermine, whose coat must line some emperor s 

 coronation robe, is alternately scudding over the drifts 

 and diving below the snow with the forward wriggling 

 of a snake under cover. But the moving man-shadow 

 is bigger and plainer on the snow than the hare s eye 

 or the ermine s jet tip; so the Indian trapper sets out 

 in the gray darkness of morning and must reach his 

 hunting-grounds before high noon. 

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