Trails that Cross in the Snow 107 
moving swiftly all together for the edges of the vast 
barrens where the caribou herds were feeding. Another 
glance — but here we must have the cunning eyes of 
Old Tomah the hunter — would have told that two of 
the trails were those of enormous wolves which led the 
pack; two others were plainly cubs that had not yet 
lost the cub trick of frolicking in the soft snow; while 
three others were just wolves, big and powerful brutes 
that moved as if on steel springs, and that still held to 
the old pack because the time had not yet come for 
them to scatter finally ‘to their separate ways and head 
new packs of their own in the great solitudes. 
Out from the woods on the other side of the barren 
came two snow-shoe trails, which advanced with short 
steps and rested lightly on the snow, as if the makers of 
the trails were little people whose weight on the snow- 
shoes made hardly more impression than the broad pads 
of Moktaques the rabbit. They followed stealthily the 
winding records of a score of caribou that had wan¬ 
dered like an eddying wind all over the barren, stopping 
here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the 
caribou moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at 
the end of the trail two Indian children, a girl and a 
boy, stole along with noiseless steps, scanning the wide 
wastes for a cloud of mist — the frozen breath that 
hovers over a herd of caribou — or peering keenly into 
the edges of the woods for vague white shapes moving 
