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Moreover, Cinnamon explained, they seldom moved far away from the streams, and they made a great deal of noise wherever they went, so that it was easy to hear them. Besides which, you could smell them a long way off. It did not matter if you had never smelled it before: any bear would know the man-smell by the first whiff he got of it. All this was somewhat consoling.
Now and then one of these higher movements of air would sweep gently downward and flow through the valley for a few moments in a great noiseless breath that barely stirred the tops of the balsams and spruce. One of these mountain-breaths came as Thor faced the east. And with it, faint and terrible, came the man-smell!
They were swimming along close to shore just where the Laughing Brook leaves the Smiling Pool, when Jerry wrinkled up his funny little nose and stopped swimming. Sniff, sniff, sniff, went Jerry Muskrat. Then little cold shivers ran down his backbone and way out to the tip of his tail. "What is it?" asked Little Joe Otter. "It's the man-smell," whispered Jerry.
He hated the man-smell; he hated the strange, white-faced thing he had seen clinging to the side of the gorge; and his hatred included everything associated with them. It was a hatred born of instinct and roused sharply from its long slumber by experience.
It was the man-smell which had made the wolf so cautious. With savage but curious eyes he watched the man, with no thought of attacking alone so redoubtable a foe. Presently the latter began to whistle, and at the incomprehensible sound the wolf shrank back, fear mingled with his curiosity.
She glanced about keenly, peering under the trees because one could never judge, merely by the direction of the trail, where one of those dangerous creatures was going. She stood almost erect on her haunches and sniffed the air for the slightest taint of danger. Then she sniffed at the tracks. The man-smell was strong upon them, and comparatively, but not dangerously, fresh.
The last few inches to the wall of the tepee were crawled with painful slowness and precaution. The day's events had prepared him for the unknown to manifest itself in most stupendous and unthinkable ways. At last his nose touched the canvas. He waited. Nothing happened. Then he smelled the strange fabric, saturated with the man-smell. He closed on the canvas with his teeth and gave a gentle tug.
Near the centre lay a fragment of tempting size; but she cunningly guessed that close beside that morsel would be the hiding-place of the trap. Slowly she closed in upon it, her nose close to the snow, sniffing with cautious discrimination. Suddenly she stopped short. Through the snow she had detected the man-smell, and the smell of steel, mingling with the savour of the dried fish.
So the hunter in his turn made a wide circle back, and presently there was none of the dreaded man-smell among the scents which the Merry Little Breezes brought to Lightfoot. Lightfoot had lost track of the hunter. It was a dreadful game the hunter with the terrible gun and Lightfoot the Deer were playing in the Green Forest.
The wind was bringing it to him now, and in spite of the fact that he wanted to lie down and nurse his wound he ambled on a little faster, for he had learned one thing that he would never forget: the man-smell and his hurt had come together. He reached the bottoms, and buried himself in the thick timber; and then, crossing this timber, he came to a creek.
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