wing a herring scent
across the trail of wise intentions; and of all the animal world, none
knows it better than the brown arctic wolf. He carries himself with less
of a hang-dog air than his brother wolves, with the same pricking
forward of sharp, erect ears, the same crouching trot, the same
sneaking, watchful green eyes; but his tail, which is bushy enough to
brush out every trace of his tracks, has not the skulking droop of the
gray wolf's; and in size he is a giant among wolves.

* * * * *

The trapper shoulders his musket again, and keeping to the open, where
he can travel fast on the long snow-shoes, sets out for the next trap.
The man-shadow grows longer. It is late in the afternoon. Then all the
shadows merge into the purple gloom of early evening; but the Indian
travels on; for the circuit of traps leads back to his lodge.

The wolf thief may not be far off; so the man takes his musket from the
case. He may chance a shot at the enemy. Where there are woods, wolves
run under cover, keeping behind a fringe of brush to windward. The wind
carries scent of danger from the open, and the brush forms an ambuscade.
Man tracks, where man's dog might scent the trail of a wolf, the wolf
clears at a long bound. He leaps over open spaces, if he can; and if he
can't, crouches low till he has passed the exposure.

The trapper swings forward in long, straight strides, wasting not an
inch of ground, deviating neither to right nor left by as much space as
a white man takes to turn on his heels. Suddenly the trapper's dog
utters a low whine and stops with ears pricked forward towards the
brush. At the same moment the Indian, who has been keeping his eyes on
the woods, sees a form rise out of the earth among the shadows. He is
not surprised; for he knows the way the wolf travels, and the fox trap
could not have been robbed more than an hour ago. The man thinks he has
come on the thieves going to the next trap. That is what the wolf means
him to think. And the man, too, dissembles; for as he looks the form
fades into the gloom, and he decides to run on parallel to the
brushwood, with his gun ready. Just ahead is a break in the shrubbery.
At the clearing he can see how many wolves there are, and as he is
heading home there is little danger.

But at the clearing nothing crosses. The dog dashes off to the woods
with wild barking, and the trapper scans the long, white stretch leading
back between the