14:8 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



cut the foothills like trenches, the hunters began to 

 find the signs they had been seeking. For Ba tiste, 

 the many different signs had but one meaning. Where 

 some summer rain pool had dried almost to a soft mud 

 hole, the other trappers saw little cleft foot-marks that 

 meant deer, and prints like a baby s fingers that 

 spelled out the visit of some member of the weasel 

 family, and broad splay-hoof impressions that had 

 spread under the weight as some giant moose had 

 gone shambling over the quaking mud bottom. But 

 Ba tiste looked only at a long shuffling foot-mark the 

 length of a man s fore-arm with padded ball-like pres 

 sures as of monster toes. The French hunter would 

 at once examine which way that great foot had pointed. 

 Were there other impressions dimmer on the dry mud? 

 Did the crushed spear-grass tell any tales of what had 

 passed that mud hole? If it did, Ba tiste would be 

 seen wandering apparently aimlessly out on the prairie, 

 carrying his uncased rifle carefully that the sunlight 

 should not glint from the barrel, zigzagging up a foot 

 hill where perhaps wild plums or shrub berries hung 

 rotting with frost ripeness. Ba tiste did not stand full 

 height at the top of the hill. He dropped face down, 

 took off his hat, or scarlet &quot; safety &quot; handkerchief, and 

 peered warily over the crest of the hill. If he went 

 on over into the next valley, the other men would say 

 they &quot; guessed he smelt bear.&quot; If he came back, they 

 knew he had been on a cold scent that had faded indis- 

 tinguishably as the grasses thinned. 



Southern slopes of prairie and foothill are often 

 matted tangles of a raspberry patch. Here Ba tiste 

 read many things stories of many bears, of families, 

 of cubs, of old cross fellows wandering alone. Great 



