278 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



death that will defend it from all enemies. The 

 ermine is one of the smallest of all hunters, but it can 

 throw an enemy off the scent by diving under snow. 

 The rabbit is one of the most helpless of all hunted 

 things, but it can take cover from foes of the air under 

 thorny brush, and run fast enough to outwind the 

 breath of a pursuer, and double back quick enough to 

 send a harrying eagle flopping head over heels on the 

 ground, and simulate the stillness of inanimate objects 

 surrounding it so truly that the passer-by can scarcely 

 distinguish the balls of fawn fur from the russet bark 

 of a log. And the rabbit s big eyes and ears are not 

 given it for nothing. 



Poet and trapper alike see the same world, and for 

 the same reason. Both seek only to know the truth, 

 to see the world as it is; and the world that they see 

 is red in tooth and claw. But neither grows morbid 

 from his vision; for that same vision shows each that 

 the ravening destruction is only a weeding out of the 

 unfit. There is too much sunlight in the trapper s 

 world, too much fresh air in his lungs, too much red 

 blood in his veins for the morbid miasmas that bring 

 bilious fumes across the mental vision of the housed 

 city man. 



And what place in the scale of destruction does the 

 trapper occupy? Modern sentiment has almost painted 

 him as a red-dyed monster, excusable, perhaps, because 

 necessity compels the hunter to slay, but after all only 

 the most highly developed of the creatures that prey. 

 Is this true? Arch-destroyer he may be; but it should 

 be remembered that he is the destroyer of destroyers. 



Animals kill young and old, male and female. 



The true trapper does not kill the young; for that 



