104 THE DRAMA OF THE FORESTS 



winter they again met with success; but as it was in a district 

 devoid of trees, they simply covered the meat with brush; and 

 while Meguir and his wife set off to haul the first lot of meat to 

 camp, the three grandchildren set to work to haul in the last. 

 On continuing their work the next day the children brought 

 in word that a wolverine, or carcajou, had visited the log 

 cache; so Meguir set off at once to investigate the story. 



When he arrived, he found the cache torn asunder, and the 

 meat gone. Wolverine tracks were plentiful and mottled the 

 snow in many directions, but on circling, Meguir found a trail 

 that led away, and on following it up, he came upon a quarter 

 of deer. He circled again, trailed another track, found more 

 meat, and after a few hours' work he had recovered most of the 

 venison; but on smelling it, he found that the wolverine, in its 

 usual loathsome way, had defiled the meat. Then, on going to 

 his stage, Meguir found that it, too, had been visited by the 

 wolverine, as the stage had been torn down and the meat 

 defiled. Indignantlat the outrage, the old Dog-rib determined to 

 hunt the carcajou and destroy it. But before doing so, he made 

 sure that all his deer meat was hauled to camp and safely stored 

 upon the stages beside his lodge. That night, however, his old 

 wife woke up with a start and hearing the dogs growling, looked 

 out, and discovered a strange animal scrambling down from one 

 of the stages. At once she screamed to her old man to get his 

 gun as fast as The Master of Life would let him, as the wolverine 

 was robbing them again. 



Half-awake, and that half all excitement, the old man rushed 

 out into the snow with his muzzle-loading flintlock and let 

 drive. Instantly one of his dogs fell over. Roaring with 

 rage, the old Indian re-loaded with all speed, and catching 

 another glimpse of the wolverine in the faint light of the Aurora 

 Borealis, let drive again; but as ill-luck would have it, the gun 

 went off just as another of his dogs made a gallant charge, and 

 once more a dog fell dead and the wolverine got away ! 



