er, keener of scent and fear than the
mink, would take alarm. But for the same reason that the river is the
safest refuge for the otter, it is the surest hunting for the man--water
does not keep the scent of a trail. So the man runs his arm along the
bank. The river is the surest hunting for the man, but not the safest.
If an old male were in the bank burrow now, or happened to be emerging
from grass-lined subterranean air chambers above the bank gallery, it
might be serious enough for the exploring trapper. One bite of nekik the
otter has crippled many an Indian. Knowing from the remnants of
half-eaten fish and from the holes in the bank that he has found an
otter runway, the man goes home as well satisfied as if he had done a
good day's work.

And so that winter when he had camped below the swamp for the mink-hunt,
the trapper was not surprised one morning to find a half-eaten fish on
the river bank. Sakwasew the mink takes good care to leave no remnants
of his greedy meal. What he cannot eat he caches. Even if he has
strangled a dozen water-rats in one hunt, they will be dragged in a heap
and covered. The half-eaten fish left exposed is not mink's work. Otter
has been here and otter will come back; for as the frost hardens, only
those pools below the falls keep free from ice. No use setting traps
with fish-heads as long as fresh fish are to be had for the taking.
Besides, the man has done nothing to conceal his tracks; and each
morning the half-eaten fish lie farther off the line of the man-trail.

By-and-bye the man notices that no more half-eaten fish are on his side
of the river. Little tracks of webbed feet furrowing a deep rut in the
soft snow of the frozen river tell that nekik has taken alarm and is
fishing from the other side. And when Christmas comes with a dwindling
of the mink-hunt, the man, too, crosses to the other side. Here he finds
that the otter tracks have worn a path that is almost a toboggan slide
down the crusted snow bank to the iced edge of the pool. By this time
nekik's pelt is prime, almost black, and as glossy as floss. By this
time, too, the fish are scarce and the epicure has become ravenous as a
pauper. One night when the trapper was reconnoitring the fish hole, he
had approached the snow bank so noiselessly that he came on a whole
colony of otters without their knowledge of his presence. Down the snow
bank they tumbled, head-first, tail-first, slithering through the snow
with their litt