178 THE TRAPPER 



the luxury of shelter of a house-roof, and to 

 obtain food for my far-spent dogs. Do not 

 ask me where I slept in this single-room cabin. 

 I did not turn the good people from their couch, 

 and I was comfortable nevertheless, and thought 

 it considerable good fortune to be indoors. 



In the meantime I had arranged that I would 

 accompany Gullfoot on his next round on his 

 trap-line. 



He would go to-morrow, he told me on his 

 return from his morning weather survey through 

 the door, for he thought the wind would rise 

 later in the day, and if so his traps on the lakes 

 in exposed positions would require resetting. He 

 had been out six days ago, to-morrow would be 

 the seventh day, and the weather in the interval 

 had been particularly good and promised some 

 pelts. 



So I had a day to wait at the cabin. 



Gullfoot employed part of his time on the 

 construction of a new sled — a sled with runners 

 on either side of about a foot depth below the 

 sled-board bottom ; not the flat-bottom, runner- 

 less sled of the type common to the Indians a 

 few degrees further south, where larger wood for 

 broad boards is obtainable. The runners he 

 made were peculiar, for they had no frame, no 

 iron " keel " ; just layer after layer of wet 

 moss laid on and frozen stiff until the runners 

 were fully formed and shaped, when they were 

 then axe-pared, and planed to smoothness, and 

 iced over by applications of coatings of water. 

 They were, on completion, veritable planks of 

 rigid ice, with stout adhesion, and latitude for 



