Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 157: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

on a stout frame work. Under the sticks he spread a depth of six inches of white birch and maple green body wood. _ The heat cooked the meat. As the fat dripped, and the coals ashed over, French Louey laid on strips of green wood as large as his finger, which burned without smoke. After four hours the meat stopped dripping. It was cooked. “Dar!” the trapper grimaced. ‘I got my jerk! JI ask no odds of dat ol’ son of a gun! Hang-Nose don’t starve me to death —not this winter! I fool heem, dataway.” The trapper strode over the big hoof- prints with high disdain — ignoring them. When he heard the old boy romping through the timber, hitting the trees with his huge horns, the trapper sniffed indifferently. When he saw a strange cow moose come into the range, a strong brute with a bell of her own, the old trapper put his hand up beside his face to look away again. ‘So dat’s eet, eh? To-night Ill listen, eh?” That night he listened, but only for a while. He stared into the fire of the bark wigwam, full of thoughts of his own. He heard the old bull’s call; he heard the cow’s answer—the first and only one to reply to old Hang-Nose that fall, as the trapper felt sure. For weeks the old fellow had been raising his voice to the sky, had lowered his mouth to the ground—and now his call was answered; now his longings were re- ciprocated. “ So!” French Louey said. ‘“‘ By Gar— hi-i!” Politely he rolled up in his blanket, pulled the rabbit fur about his ears, and ' went to sleep. A week later he saw the two a quarter of a mile away across a lake whose shores were fringed with ice. He was in a yster of balsam where he was swinging a snare. For minutes he watched the agnificent brutes as they grazed along am bad!” he grumbled. “ Now at young bull jerk—I am not h! Mebby by and by!” 1€ "evergreens were bur- 2 spread with the soft ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. wild life led hither and yon upon the whi, page. The great moose and his maid laid their tracks with those of the others “7 Pekan ran bounding, otter leaped and slid, lynx walked with dignity, and foxes paced about, step by step. Nervous snow Shoe rabbits bounded and jerked back and forth, and on their multitude great snowy owls, the weasel tribes, the foxes and big cats fed, as on the up-starting, noisily fly. Ing grouse as well. ‘ French Louey caught them with his bul- lets, shooting five, whose misfortune he jeered while he cursed the weights of their beautiful black and heavy hides. He caught mink, and marten, sneering at their fierce, unintelligent ways; he called otter particu- larly silly and insignificant, though they were the hardest of all to catch, except wolves. Toward the tracks of wolves he crossed he carried himself with vociferous mockery of respect—and shot two while they were sleeping on the sunny side of tiny balsams where they had pawed beds through the snow to green, deep moss. ‘Wolves! Wolves!” he chuckled, shak- ing his bag of gold at the limp, dangling gray hides. “‘ Dar-r! Fool wolves!” The snow was only a few inches deep, but he carried snowshoes wherever he went. Any day the dark leaden clouds might fluff down in deep waste of heavy snowfall. He made the most of the frisking life that spread its record in the trackings whose footprints he read with such instinctive un- derstanding. A wraith of the green timber, he fiitted hither and yon, tending to his terribly ef- ficient steel traps; choking lynx who did not know what was strangling them; pick ing up tracks of furs that he knew—here a certain black-tailed fox—there an otter with a snaky slide, and always when he came to it, turning to follow it for a tew rods, however tired he might be, along the trail of old Hang-Nose or of the big cow who now ranged his range. French Louey wondered about that bull moose. He would drop on his hands and knees, making sure that the old fellow was eating a caribou moss and not taking goat- berry leaves. He would reach with a long stick to examine the twigs of slender birches comicbooks.c