CHAPTER XIX 



WHAT THE TRAPPER STANDS FOR 



WAGING ceaseless war against beaver and moose, 

 types of nature s most harmless creatures, against wolf 

 and wolverine, types of nature s most destructive 

 agents, against traders who were rivals and Indians 

 who were hostiles, the trapper would almost seem to be 

 himself a type of nature s arch-destroyer. 



Beautiful as a dream is the silent world of forest 

 and prairie and mountain where the trapper moves 

 with noiseless stealth of the most skilful of all the 

 creatures that prey. In that world, the crack of the 

 trapper s rifle, the snap of the cruel steel jaws in his 

 trap, seem the only harsh discords in the harmony of 

 an existence that riots with a very fulness of life. But 

 such a world is only a drean. The reality is cruel as 

 death. Of all the creatures that prey, man is the most 

 merciful. 



Ordinarily, knowledge of animal life is drawn from 

 three sources. There are park specimens, stuffed to 

 the utmost of their eating capacity and penned off 

 from the possibility of harming anything weaker than 

 themselves. There are the private pots fed equally 

 well, pampered and chained safely from harming or 

 being harmed. There are the wild creatures roaming 



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