KOOT AND THE BOB-CAT 211 



cabin so that the last snare set will bring him back 

 with many a zigzag to the first snare made. If rab 

 bits were plentiful as they always were in the fur 

 country of the North except during one year in seven 

 when an epidemic spared the land from a rabbit pest 

 Koot s circuit of snares would run for miles through 

 the swamp. Traps for large game would be set out so 

 that the circuit would require only a day; but where 

 rabbits are numerous, the foragers that prey wolf 

 and wolverine and lynx and bob-cat will be numer 

 ous, too; and the trapper will not set out more snares 

 than he can visit twice a day. Noon the Indian s 

 hour of the short shadow is the best time for the 

 first visit, nightfall, the time of no shadow at all, for 

 the second. If the trapper has no wooden door to his 

 cabin, and in it instead of caching in a tree keeps 

 fish or bacon that may attract marauding wolverine, 

 he will very probably leave his dogs on guard while he 

 makes the round of the snares. 



Finding tracks about the shack when he came back 

 for his noonday meal, Koot shouted sundry instruc 

 tions into the mongrel s ear, emphasized them with a 

 moccasin kick, picked up the sack in which he carried 

 bait, twine, and traps, and set out in the evening to 

 make the round of his snares, unaccompanied by the 

 dog. Eabbit after rabbit he found, gray and white, 

 hanging stiff and stark, dead from their own weight, 

 strangled in the twine snares. Snares were set anew, 

 the game strung over his shoulder, and Koot was 

 walking through the gray gloaming for the cabin when 

 that strange sense of feel told him that he was being 

 followed. What was it? Could it be the dog? He 

 whistled he called it by name. 



