154 THE DRAMA OF THE FORESTS 



axe. When he rose, he found the wolf between himself and his 

 weapon. His wife, however, had seized a piece of firewood 

 and, being unobserved by the wolf, had used it as a club and 

 dealt the beast so powerful a blow upon the small of the back 

 that it had been seriously weakened and had given the Indian 

 an opportunity to recover his axe, with wliich at last he had 

 managed to kill the wolf. 



It was Mr. King's belief, however, that such unusual be- 

 haviour of a wolf was caused by distemper, for the brute 

 seemed to display no more fear of man than would a mad dog. 

 And he added that the behaviour of the wolf in question was no 

 more typical of wolves in general than was the behaviour of a 

 mad dog typical of dogs. 



COMING OF THE FUR-RUNNERS 



That night, when we returned home, Oo-koo-hoo said to his 

 grandsons: "Ne-geek and Ah-ging-goos, my grandchildren, 

 the fur-runner is coming soon. To-morrow do you both take 

 the dogs and break a two-days' trail on Otter River in order to 

 hasten his coming." 



Next morning the boys set out to break the trail. When 

 they camped on Otter River on the afternoon of the second day 

 they cached in the river ice some fish for the trader's dogs. 

 They chopped a hole and, after placing the fish in, filled it up 

 with water, which they allowed to freeze, with the tail of 

 a single fish protruding, in order to show the fur-runner what 

 was cached below. To mark the spot, they planted a pole 

 with its butt in the hole, and rigged up a tripod of sticks to 

 support it. At the top of the pole they tied a little bag of tea 

 and a choice piece of meat for the trader. At the bend of the 

 river below, where he would surely pass, they erected another 

 pole with a bunch of fir twigs attached, for the purpose of at- 

 tracting his attention to their tracks. 



