ars; you can see the glow of the electric lights of
the city twenty miles away. It has a hundred-thousand dollar college, a
high school, the provincial asylum, a fire department, two clubs, a
board of trade, and it's going to have a street-car line within two
years. Think of that--all where the coyotes howled a few years ago!

"People are coming in so fast that they can't keep a census. Five years
from now there'll be a city of twenty thousand where the old shack
stood. And the little girl in that shack, Henri--she's a young lady now,
and her people are--well, rich. I don't care about that. The chief thing
is that she is going to marry me in the spring. Because of her I stopped
killing things when she was only sixteen. The last thing I killed was a
prairie wolf, and it had young. Eileen kept the little puppy. She's got
it now--tamed. That's why above all other wild things I love the wolves.
And I hope these two leave your trap-line safe."

Henri was staring at him. Weyman gave him the picture. It was of a
sweet-faced girl, with deep pure eyes, and there came a twitch at the
corners of Henri's mouth as he looked at it.

"My Iowaka died t'ree year ago," he said. "She too loved the wild
thing. But them wolf--damn! They drive me out if I can not kill them!"
He put fresh fuel into the stove, and prepared for bed.

One day the big idea came to Henri.

Weyman was with him when they struck fresh signs of lynx. There was a
great windfall ten or fifteen feet high, and in one place the logs had
formed a sort of cavern, with almost solid walls on three sides. The
snow was beaten down by tracks, and the fur of rabbit was scattered
about. Henri was jubilant.

"We got heem--sure!" he said.

He built the bait-house, set a trap and looked about him shrewdly. Then
he explained his scheme to Weyman. If the lynx was caught, and the two
wolves came to destroy it, the fight would take place in that shelter
under the windfall, and the marauders would have to pass through the
opening. So Henri set five smaller traps, concealing them skilfully
under leaves and moss and snow, and all were far enough away from the
bait-house so that the trapped lynx could not spring them in his
struggles.

"When they fight, wolf jump this way an' that--an' sure get in," said
Henri. "He miss one, two, t'ree--but he sure get in trap somewhere."

That same morning a light snow fell, making the work more complete, for
it covered up all footprints and buried