And what greets him here? Only a foot gnawed off in
the silence of the day and the night, and some beauty gone staggering
away to lie and suffer with starvation in the cold."
The youth was staring at the averted face beside him, mouth open and
utter amazement on his features.
Maren went on.
"And lastly, M'sieu, far at the end of the trail,--at the outer, rim of
the circle traced by his traps,--he comes eagerly, to peep and peer for
what might have happened at the head of the little dip leading down to
the stream where the firs bend heavily under their weight of snow.
"Here he had laid his cunningest instrument, a thing of giant jaws, of
sharp ragged points, each inlocking with the other, the whole unholy
thing hung to a chain at whose other end there lay a ball of iron,
weighing, M'sieu, some eighty pounds. That was for the .great shy bear,
rocking along ire his quest of berries or some tree that should ring
hollow under his scratching claws, bespeaking the hive of the wild
bees. The oiled and fur-wrapped Indian stoops down and looks along the
dip. Ah! There he sees that which brings a glint to his small eyes. No
bear, M'sieu, nor yet the trap he had left, but a thrashed and broken
space where the snow went flying in clouds and the bushes were torn
from their roots, where the very tree-trunks bore marks of the conflict
and a wide and terrible trail led wildly off to the deeper forest.
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