THE GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 193 



bird or rabbit. Here, again, a clear blank on the snow 

 where the crafty little forager has dived below the light 

 surface and wriggled forward like a snake to dart up 

 with a plunge of fangs into the heart-blood of the un 

 wary snow-bunting. From the length of the leaps, the 

 trapper judges the age of the ermine; fourteen inches 

 from nose to tail-tip means a full-grown ermine with 

 hair too coarse to be damaged by a snare. The man 

 suspends the noose of a looped twine across the run 

 way from a twig bent down so that the weight of the 

 ermine on the string sends the twig springing back 

 with a jerk that lifts the ermine off the ground, stran 

 gling it instantly. Perhaps on one side of the twine 

 he has left bait smeared grease, or a bit of meat. 



If the tracks are like the prints of a baby s fingers, 

 close and small, the trapper hopes to capture a pelt fit 

 for a throne cloak, the skin for which the Louis of 

 France used to pay, in modern money, from a hundred 

 dollars to a hundred and fifty dollars. The full-grown 

 ermines will be worth only some few &quot; beaver &quot; at the 

 fort. Perfect fur would be marred by the twine snare, 

 so the trapper devises as cunning a death for the ermine 

 as the ermine devises when it darts up through the snow 

 with its spear-teeth clutched in the throat of a poor 

 rabbit. Smearing his hunting-knife with grease, he 

 lays it across the track. The little ermine comes trot 

 ting in dots and dashes and gallops and dives to the 

 knife. It smells the grease, and all the curiosity which 

 has been teaching it to forage for food since it was 

 born urges it to put out its tongue and taste. That 

 greasy smell of meat it knows; but that frost-silvered 

 bit of steel is something new. The knife is frosted like 

 ice. Ice the ermine has licked, so he licks the knife. 

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