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Here in the North it is the varying hare, the rabbit, that feeds the children of the trap-lines and the marten and fox they trap, and every seventh year there comes a mysterious disease. One year there are rabbits in millions, the next there are none.
With the breaking of another day he immediately began preparations for the season's trapping. In two days' hunting he killed three caribou, his winter meat. Then he cut wood, and made his strychnine poison baits, and marked out his trap-lines. The first of November brought the chill whisperings of an early winter through the Northland. Farther south autumn was dying, or dead.
"Renault and the other runners will have had more than four hours. They will have visited a dozen cabins on the trap-lines. Pierre reached old Kaskisoon and his Swamp Crees in two hours. They love Josephine next to their Manitou. The Indians will be there to a man!" Philip did not reply. But his heart beat like a drum at the sureness and triumph that thrilled in the half-breed's voice.
But they have long since abandoned the trap-lines, and in the whole village there could not be found enough traps to supply one tenth of their number with the actual necessities of life. I have sent runners to the young men upon the barren grounds, with orders to continue the caribou kill and bring the meat to you here. I have given my Indians their instructions.
"An Indian, and Renault the quarter-blood," grunted Adare. "Wonder what they want here in November. They should be on their trap-lines." "Perhaps, Mon Pere, they have come to see their friends," suggested Josephine. "You know, it has been a long time since some of them have seen us. I would be disappointed if our people didn't show they were glad because of your home-coming!"
Jacques Lacombie had so arranged his trap-lines that on his longest circle he should be absent only one night from the lodge where old Wa-ha-ta-na-ta kept an ever-vigilant eye upon the comings and goings of Jeanne.
Everything that had passed seemed to give evidence of this. The outlaw in the chasm, for instance, could easily have waylaid Rod; a dozen times the almost defenseless camp could have been attacked, and there were innumerable places where ambushes might have been laid for them along the trap-lines.
The oddest performance of an individual bear I ever saw took place over on the banks of the Poudre River. Rambling through the forest I came, late one evening, upon the camp of two trappers. They were making a business of trapping and had extensive trap-lines set throughout the region, mostly for beavers, minks, bobcats and coyotes, but some for bears too.
Little Jim had almost reached its nest with its lovely burden when Falkner captured it. "You little cuss!" he breathed reverently. "Now I know you come from her! I know it!" In the weeks that followed the storm Falkner again followed his trap-lines, and scattered poison-baits for the white foxes on the Barren. Early in January the second great storm of that year came from out of the North.
With that first snow began the harvest days of the people of the wilderness. Far and wide they were busy along their trap-lines, their lonely shacks hidden in the shelter of thick swamps, in deep chasms and dense forests. For six months the short days and the long nights had been days and nights of fur-gathering. During those months the post was silent. It lived and breathed, but that was all.
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