m and draws back to
strike, this miserable cur, that could not have worried the trapper's
dog, makes a quick snap at the bend of his knees.

Then the trapper's feet give below him. The wolf has bitten the knee
sinews to the bone. The pack leap up, and the man goes down.

* * * * *

And when the spring thaw came, to carry away the heavy snow that fell
over the northland that night, the Indians travelling to their summer
hunting-grounds found the skeleton of a man. Around it were the bones of
three dead wolves; and farther up the hill were the bleaching remains of
a fourth.[35]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: A death almost similar to that on the shores of Hudson Bay
occurred in the forests of the Boundary, west of Lake Superior, a few
years ago. In this case eight wolves were found round the body of the
dead trapper, and eight holes were empty in his cartridge-belt--which
tells its own story.]

CHAPTER XII

BA'TISTE, THE BEAR HUNTER

The city man, who goes bear-hunting with a body-guard of armed guides in
a field where the hunted have been on the run from the hunter for a
century, gets a very tame idea of the natural bear in its natural state.
Bears that have had the fear of man inculcated with longe-range
repeaters lose confidence in the prowess of an aggressive onset against
invisible foes. The city man comes back from the wilds with a legend of
how harmless bears have become. In fact, he doesn't believe a wild
animal ever attacks unless it is attacked. He doubts whether the bear
would go on its life-long career of rapine and death, if hunger did not
compel it, or if repeated assault and battery from other animals did not
teach the poor bear the art of self-defence.

Grisly old trappers coming down to the frontier towns of the Western
States once a year for provisions, or hanging round the forts of the
Hudson's Bay Company in Canada for the summer, tell a different tale.
Their hunting is done in a field where human presence is still so rare
that it is unknown and the bear treats mankind precisely as he treats
all other living beings from the moose and the musk-ox to mice and
ants--as fair game for his own insatiable maw.

Old hunters may be great spinners of yarns--"liars" the city man calls
them--but Montagnais, who squats on his heels round the fur company
forts on Peace River, carries ocular evidence in the artificial ridge of
a deformed nose that the bear which he slew