l, scolding shriek that sends
cold shivers down the trapper's spine. He wishes he could get his hands
on its wretched little neck; and turning himself to a statue, he stands
stone-still till the troublesome bird settles down. Then he goes on.

Here is the moose trail!

He dare not follow direct. That would lead past her hiding-place and she
would bolt. He resorts to artifice; but, for that matter, so has the
moose resorted to artifice. The trapper, too, circles forward, cutting
the moose's magic guard with transverse zigzags. But he no longer walks.
He crouches, or creeps, or glides noiselessly from shelter to shelter,
very much the way a cat advances on an unwary mouse. He sinks to his
knees and feels forward for snow-pads every pace. Then he is on
all-fours, still circling. His detour has narrowed and narrowed till he
knows she must be in that aspen thicket. The brush is sparser. She has
chosen her resting-ground wisely. The man falls forward on his face,
closing in, closing in, wiggling and watching till--he makes a horrible
discovery. That jay is perched on the topmost bough of the grove; and
the man has caught a glimpse of something buff-coloured behind the
aspens. It may be a moose, or only a log. The untried hunter would fire.
Not so the trapper. Hap-hazard aim means fighting a wounded moose, or
letting the creature drag its agony off to inaccessible haunts. The man
worms his way round the thicket, sighting the game with the noiseless
circling of a hawk before the drop. An ear blinks. But at that instant
the jay perks his head to one side with a curious look at this strange
object on the ground. In another second it will be off with a call and
the moose up.

His rifle is aimed!

A blinding swish of aspen leaves and snow and smoke! The jay is off with
a noisy whistle. And the trapper has leather for moccasins, and heavy
filling for his snow-shoes, and meat for his larder.

* * * * *

But he must still get the fine filling for heel and toe; and this comes
from caribou or deer. The deer, he will still hunt as he has still
hunted the moose, with this difference: that the deer runs in circles,
jumping back in his own tracks leaving the hunter to follow a cold
scent, while it, by a sheer bound--five--eight--twenty feet off at a new
angle, makes for the hiding of dense woods. No one but a barbarian would
attempt to run down a caribou; for it can only be done by the shameless
trick o