BATISTE, THE BEAR HUNTER 153 



On the ripple of the flowing river are the red bars 

 of the camp fire. Among the willows, perhaps, the 

 bole of some birch stands out white and spectral. 

 Though there is no wind, the poplars shiver with a 

 fall of wan, faded leaves like snow-flakes on the grave 

 of summer. Red bills and whisky-jacks and lonely 

 phoebe-birds came fluttering and pecking at the 

 crumbs. Out from the gray thicket bounds a cotton 

 tail to jerk up on his hind legs with surprise at the 

 camp fire. A blink of his long ear, and he has bounded 

 back to tell the news to his rabbit family. Overhead, 

 with shrill clangour, single file and in long wavering 

 V lines, wing geese migrating southward for the sea 

 son. The children s hour, has a great poet called a 

 certain time of day? Then this is the hour of the 

 wilderness hunter, the hour when &quot; the Mountains of 

 the Setting Sun &quot; are flooded in fiery lights from zone 

 to zenith with the snowy heights overtopping the far 

 rolling prairie like clouds of opal at poise in mid- 

 heaven, the hour when the camp fire lies on the russet 

 autumn-tinged earth like a red jewel, and the far line 

 of the prairie fire billows against the darkening east 

 in a tide of vermilion flame. 



Unless it is raining, the voyageurs do not erect 

 their tent; for they will sleep in the open, feet to the 

 fire, or under the canoes, close to the great earth, into 

 whose very fibre their beings seem to be rooted. And 

 now is the time when the hunters spin their yarns and 

 exchange notes of all they have seen in the long silent 

 day. There was the prairie chicken with a late brood 

 of half-grown clumsy clucking chicks amply able to 

 take care of themselves, but still clinging to the old 

 mother s care. When the hunter came suddenly on 



