eath a light fly. They slept late and it was
long after sunrise the following morning when they started out with
their traps. Fox tracks were numerous along the shore, some of them
leading back onto the ridge, and others heading across the lake in the
direction of the open tundra. Connie was beginning to wonder why
'Merican Joe did not set his traps, when the Indian paused and carefully
scrutinized a long narrow point that jutted out into the lake. The
irregularity of the surface of the snow showed that the point was rocky,
and here and there along its edge a small clump of stunted willows
rattled their dry branches in the breeze. The Indian seemed satisfied
and, walking to the ridge, cut a stick some five or six feet long which
he slipped through the ring of a trap, securing the ring to the middle
of the stick. A few feet beyond one of the willow clumps, nearly at the
end of the point, the Indian stooped, and with his ax cut a trench in
the snow the length of the stick, and about eight or ten inches in
depth. In this trench he placed the stick, and packed the snow over it.
He now made a smaller trench the length of the trap chain, at the end of
which he pressed the snow down with the back of his mitten until he had
made a depression into which he could place the trap with its jaws set
flat, so that the pan would lie some two inches below the level of the
snow. From his bag he drew some needles which he carefully arranged so
that they radiated from the pan to the jaws in such manner as would
prevent snow from packing down and interfering with the springing of the
trap. Then he broke out two pieces of snow-crust and, holding them over
the depression which held the trap, rubbed them together until the trap
was completely covered and the snow mounded slightly higher than the
surrounding level. He then rubbed other pieces of crust over the
trenches which held the clog, and the trap-chain. When that was finished
he took from the bag a brush-broom, which he had made of light twigs as
he walked along, and dusted the mounded snow lightly until the whole
presented an unbroken surface, which would defy the sharpest-eyed fox to
discover it had been tampered with. All this the Indian had done without
moving from his tracks, and now from the bag he drew many pieces of bear
meat which he tossed on to the snow close about the trap. Slowly, he
backed away, being careful to set each snowshoe in its own track, and as
he moved backward, he