A period of clear, cold weather followed the blizzard. There was little wind, but more than once the stillness of the night was shattered by a sharp crack, almost like the report of a musket, when, in the intense cold, some near-by tree split from freezing. In hunting and visiting the traps the boys felt the cold far less than at a higher temperature with wind. Fingers and faces became frost-bitten quickly though, and Walter had to be careful of his frosted cheek.
Following the trap lines necessitated long tramps, sometimes of twelve or fifteen miles, through the hills. Accompanying his comrades, Walter learned something of the lay of the land. He found that the cabin was located on what Louis called “the first mountain,” a rough and partly wooded plateau that rises rather abruptly from the prairie of the Red River valley; which is really not a valley but a plain. This hilly plateau is about eight miles across its widest part, and reaches its greatest height a mile south of where the Pembina River cuts a deep valley through it. On the west of the plateau is the “second mountain,” an irregular ridge. Though the second mountain rises nowhere more than five hundred feet above the first, it is wild and rugged. Walter was forced to admit that in some places, especially where the streams that crossed it had eroded steep-walled ravines, three or four hundred feet deep, it was almost mountain-like on a small scale. To a mountain-bred boy this was mere hill country, but he felt more at home in it than he had felt anywhere since coming to the strange new world. Climbing was a real joy to him, and he loved to choose the steepest rather than the easiest routes.
As game grew scarce in the vicinity of the cabin, the boys pushed their trap lines farther and farther into the hills, until whoever made the rounds was forced to be away at least two, and sometimes three, nights. They built two overnight shelters, one a lean-to against an abrupt cliff, the other a roof of poles over a snug hollow in the rocks. In one of these lodges Louis or Neil, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Walter, would spend the night; with a blazing fire at the entrance to keep away wolves and wildcats.
For several weeks a thievish wolverine annoyed the trappers. The clever, bloodthirsty beast followed the trails, broke into deadfalls, and skilfully extracted the catch from traps and snares. What it could not devour it carried away and hid, after mangling the creature until the pelt was ruined. Louis swore vengeance on the thief, and tried in every way to trap it. At last, by going out at night to follow the wolverine’s fresh track against the wind, he came upon the greedy beast in the act of breaking into a deadfall from the rear. A quick and lucky shot, and Louis triumphantly carried home the robber. Walter had never seen a wolverine, and Neil knew it from its tracks and skin only. With its long body, short, strong legs, and big feet armed with sharp, curved claws, it looked a most formidable creature for its size.
February was a stormy month, until near the close, when there came another period of clear, calm cold. In this fine weather Louis laid a new trap line extending seven miles or more north to Tête de Boeuf, Buffalo Head, one of the highest points in the range. After accompanying his friend over the new trail, Walter climbed Buffalo Head for the first time one bright, windless noonday. He found the view from the top impressive, but the name puzzled him.
“Why do you call this hill Tête de Boeuf?” he asked his companion. “I can’t see that it is shaped like a bull’s head, looked at from below or from up here.”
“No,” Louis replied. “I think the name does not come from the shape of the hill, but from a curious custom of the Indians. Do you see those red things over there?”
He pointed to an irregular line of objects in an exposed, wind-blown spot at the very rim of an escarpment.
“Those queer looking stones? They look as if someone had laid them there in a row, and then daubed them with red paint. Did the Indians put them there? What for?”
“You think they are stones? Go and look at them,” returned Louis with a smile.