174 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



his next year s canoe. Or the mark might be on a 

 cottonwood some man wanted this tree for a dugout. 

 Perhaps a stake stood with a mark at the entrance to 

 a beaver-marsh some hunter had found this ground 

 first and warned all other trappers off by the code of 

 wilderness honour. Notched tree-trunks told of some 

 runner gone across country, blazing a trail by which 

 he could return. Had a piece of fungus been torn from 

 a hemlock log? There were Indians near, and the 

 squaw had taken the thing to whiten leather. If a sud 

 den puff of black smoke spread out in a cone above some 

 distant tree, it was an ominous sign to the trapper. 

 The Indians had set fire to the inside of a punky trunk 

 and the shooting flames were a rallying call. 



In the most perilous regions the trapper travelled 

 only after nightfall with muffled paddles that is, 

 muffled where the handle might strike the gunwale. 

 Camp-fires warned him which side of the river to avoid ; 

 and often a trapper slipping past under the shadow 

 of one bank saw hobgoblin figures dancing round 

 the flames of the other bank Indians celebrating their 

 scalp dance. In these places the white hunter ate cold 

 meals to avoid lighting a fire ; or if he lighted a fire, 

 after cooking his meal he withdrew at once and slept 

 at a distance from the light that might betray him. 



The greatest risk of travelling after dark during the 

 spring floods arose from what the voyageurs called em- 

 barras trees torn from the banks sticking in the soft 

 bottom like derelicts with branches to entangle the 

 trapper s craft; but the embarras often befriended the 

 solitary white man. Usually he slept on shore rolled 

 in a buffalo-robe; but if Indian signs were fresh, he 

 moored his canoe in mid-current and slept under hiding 



