high against the withering cold of the coming long snows.
Night after night through the October moon the geese honked south, racing the nipping winds which, following hard on the end of the Indian summer, swept the last leaves from poplar and birch. Then suddenly, between one sunset and dawn, narrows and dead-water closed tight, an icy film crept out from the lake shores, and the subarctic winter shut in upon the lone cabin in the valley of demons.
By December the snow stood three feet deep in the forest levels, and for twenty miles the traps of Hertel lay set on the ridges and along the streams. Never had he reaped such a harvest of fur. Black and silver fox, marten, otter, and mink, all had found his traps; and the pelts of two gray wolves hung on his cabin walls.
The early dusk of one December day overtook Hertel at the far end of his lines down the valley, where at a lean-to, thrown together in the fall, he passed the night once or twice a week. Already that buccaneer of the forests, the wolverine, had discovered some of his traps and robbed him of valuable fur. So with the most hated enemy of the trapper loose in the valley, only constant patrolling of his lines could save him the loss of many a prized fox and marten.
Hertel cut his wood for the night, shovelled away the new snow with a shoe, and built a hot fire at the open end of the lean-to. He threw two whitefish to the husky which drew his small sled, boiled his tea and
