52 VISIT MY LATE COMPANIONS. 



It took us two days, and I thought that F would have 



given out more than once, as the snow was soft and he was 

 forced to walk occasionally, but we arrived at last, and found 



M and C living in a much less pretending house than 



ours, it being made on the principle which I have described. 



They had put up bunks for beds, using fir boughs for mat- 

 tresses ; and as the bunks were one above the other, you could 

 not sit up in comfort, nor had you light enough for writing or 

 reading, which we often did in bed when it was very cold. 



They had had fair sport, and Laronde being a much better 

 trapper than Badger had done better in that way, but had been 

 very much troubled by a wolverine, an animal which is the 

 trapper's worst enemy, as it goes along his line of traps and 

 takes out anything which may have been caught, and tears up 

 all that it cannot eat, apparently out of pure mischief. One of 

 these animals had destroyed a number of good skins for them, 

 and it did not seem possible to catch him, though they had 

 tried poison and many kinds of traps. 



I heard of some being killed with spring guns, and it was in 

 this way that they eventually got him. Indians and trappers 

 nearly always torture a wolverine when caught, very often 

 roasting him alive over the fire. 



We remained only one night with my friends, as Christmas 

 was near and I had a good deal to do before then. Unfortu- 

 nately there was a snowstorm on the night of our arrival, which 

 made the travelling very bad, burying our tracks so deeply 

 that they were of no use to us on the return journey, and we 

 were obliged to walk most of the way. 



Ki-chi-mo-ko-man, too, was not nearly so good a man in 

 camp as A-ta-ka-koup, as he shirked his work, and being more 



