THE TRAIL OF JIM GESEEK 



HAD old Jim Geseek been endowed with the power 

 of looking truly and far into the future he might 

 have " smiled grimly," as all well regulated Indians 

 are made to do in story books or laughed long and 

 merrily as is their habit in real life, when he stood on 

 the top of Pine Mountain some 55 years ago and looked 

 out over his far-flung trapping trail. There was little 

 to hinder his vision. To the south there were hills, 

 indeed, hills in plenty and high ones, too, but lower 

 than his perch on Pine Mountain and they did not pre- 

 vent him from seeing Lake Superior, eleven good miles 

 aw r ay, or even fifty miles further to the Apostle Islands 

 on a very clear day. 



But his view was not confined to the lake and prob- 

 ably very little of his interest lay there. Far better he 

 liked to look toward the jagged, saw-tooth hills and 

 cliffs of Canada stretching far away to the north. It 

 was under the protection of those hills and cliffs that 

 his eager traps, cunningly concealed, were lying low 

 to catch the unwary martin, fisher, mink, or, who 

 knows, perhaps a precious silver fox. The rolling, 

 lake-flecked country spread for miles and miles before 

 his gaze to east and west concerned him little, if at all. 



The way he comes from Grand Marais, and the goal 

 he sought, Clearwater and the Great Beyond; there 

 alone his interest lay, and there he looked. His eyes 

 were sharp and he saw many things, but not the fu- 

 ture. Could he have looked beyond the purple veil of 

 that far horizon, into the brimming years to come, it 

 might have saddened his trapper's heart; but the view 



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