At nightfall, ten miles from the tent, the hunters come to a shelter made of boughs. When Otelne set the traps, he built this shelter to keep off the cold wind, for he knew he would have to sleep here on bitter cold nights. He builds a roaring fire in front of the shelter. For supper, they eat the mink, giving the scraps and bones to Wagush; then they wrap them selves in thick, warm rabbitskin blankets, and lie down with their heads toward the shelter, their feet toward the fire, and the dog beside them. Two hours later Wagush wakes them with a growl. Two wolves are prowling around under the spruce trees. Wolves fear fire, so Otelne throws more wood on the blaze, and the wolves slink away. At dawn the Indians start on their round again.
They kill a bear! This is great luck, for now they have meat enough to last for weeks. Even with the help of Akusk and Wagush, Otelne has hard work to drag their bear on the sled six miles back to the tent. All three are so weary that they rest all the next day. Sulian, the mother, skins the animals, takes care of the skins, and smokes the meat. That is her part of the work. You may be sure that the children are glad to see their father and brother come back, for there is not another family within twenty miles. There is not a single white man within a hundred miles.
After hunting a few weeks, Otelne finds that game is getting scarce. He must move to a place where no hunters have been at work. He and his wife hide the canoe in the evergreens, put the tent and all their things on two sleds, tuck the baby down in the blankets, and trudge all day through the forest. When night comes, they put up the tent on the snow, cut evergreen boughs to make a thick carpet, and build a fire in the sheet-iron stove. They have a moving day like this about every two or three weeks all through the winter, so that the family may get many furs to trade for the white man's tools and supplies. When the trapping season ends, Otelne is two hundred miles from the post, and it takes weeks of canoeing to go back there for summer trading. He carries with him on
the journey a bundle of smoked meat to eat where game or fish cannot be found.
Each summer some Indian families that went out for furs the winter before do not come back. Sometimes Indians get lost and freeze to death in terrible blizzards. If the hunting is bad, they starve. The father may be drowned, or may break his leg and freeze to death away out in the forest. Then the mother cannot get enough game to keep the starving children alive. The fur gatherers and their families must be strong and brave, for they have a hard, cold life in the far North. But it is easier than it used to be before the Indians were able to trade with the white men for guns, knives, axes, traps, and fishhooks.
11. The Indian games.—When all goes well with the fur gatherer, the boys and girls in the little tent play many games. They are fond of checkers. To make a checker-board, they split a piece of wood out of a log, smooth one side of it with an ax, mark it into squares with a knife, and blacken some of the squares with charcoal. For men, they saw off short pieces of a stick as thick as your thumb. Jackstraws is another favorite game. For straws there are tiny canoe-paddles, knives, guns, snowshoes, snow shovels, and canoes, all whittled out of wood, making a 'queer looking pile. Then they have one camp-fire game in which they shake up eight disks of bone in a bowl. This game is so difficult that a white man once spent three days learning it. The rules for counting the score would fill three pages of a book like this one. White men who hunt with the In dians like them and say they are good companions.
The white men from the trading posts bring the furs down to our great cities, where they are made into muffs, coats, scarfs, and gloves. While the Indian is back in the forest following his traps, we can see people wearing the furs in almost any part of the United States.