216 WITH GUN AND GUIDE 



ness or tenderness. "Whether it is moose, deer, caribou, 

 rabbit, woodchuck, goose, duck or the tail of beaver, it 

 matters little so that it be meat. 



To see Kibbee clean up a frying-pan half full of 

 moose steak would be an object lesson to a city man, 

 who with childish appetite nibbles at a bit of steak and 

 must have it covered with sauce or ketchup or mush- 

 rooms to make it palatable and appetizing. 



But there must also be some fruit or vegetable food 

 to help keep away the scurvy during the long winter 

 night. Hence a few pounds of dried apples or of 

 prunes should be on the trapper's sled thus to aid 

 digestion. 



When he starts out in the late fall the curtain of 

 silence cuts him off from the fellowship of the Barker- 

 ville trail for many moons, once he lifts the curtain of 

 that ghostly woodland. It is paddle and portage for 

 days and weeks as he visits lake after lake, pond after 

 pond, and river after river. Then the frost crisps 

 into silence the foaming water and the lapping lake. 

 The grind of running ice warns him it is time to change 

 birch bark for moccasin and snow-shoe. The canoe is 

 cached, and the trail strikes into the forests of Douglas 

 fir and of white and yellow birch. 



When he returns, leaves may be budding on the 

 birches and on the willow bushes. 



Once, and only once, the awful loneliness of the 

 deep forests overcame Kibbee's nerve, and he threw 



