120 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
the mountain with his traps, picked up the cat 
tracks in the snow, and close to their ranging 
trails he set his fish-baited steel jaws. Then he 
went down the mountain again, his pale blue eyes 
seeing far through the winter woods and taking 
in details that would quite escape your attention 
or mine, or reading records on the snow—the 
book he knew best. 
Now, Lucy and her brother and sisters loved 
fish above all other food, just as a domestic cat 
does. Their noses might not be keen on a scent, 
as a dog’s nose is, but they could certainly smell 
fish a long way off. Waking from her doze that 
afternoon, Lucy sniffed the frosty air and emitted 
a sharp, excited meow. The other three cats 
awoke, too, and they also sniffed and grew ex- 
cited. Out of the den all four of them went, and 
headed straight for the odor. Of course, if it 
had been Big Reddy, the fox who lived down near 
the plains below, who had smelled some unex- 
pected delicacy in the neighborhood, he wouldn’t 
have made directly for it at all. He would have 
trotted in a big circle all around the smell, looking 
for the joker. He would have come, at some 
