At the first trap Sandy found a white weasel. The bait, the head of a hare, was intact. The luckless weasel had not even had the satisfaction of a meal.
Sandy placed the little creature in his pocket, not without disappointment. The Bungalow Boys’ traps, the steel ones, that is, were set for food, such as hares and rabbits. They did not care to capture weasels and ermine particularly, although red foxes, which have a habit of scaring away the more valuable varieties, were welcome to their traps.
Tom and Jack, as we know, had already encountered the track of a wolverine. It was now Sandy’s turn to come across the funny, bear-like imprints of one of these destructive creatures.
“Whist!” he exclaimed, as he saw it, “no more animals in the traps the noo! A wolverine has a bigger appetite than a cormorant. They’re the real game hogs, all right.”
As he had expected, the next trap showed plentiful evidences of the wolverine’s visit. All that was left of the marten that had been caught in it was some bits of skin and about an inch of the tail. Bloodstains on the snow around the trap showed where the wolverine had enjoyed a meal at the expense of the young trappers.
“Pretty expensive feeder,” mused Sandy to himself. “So far this glutton’s meals have cost about thirty dollars in the value of skins destroyed. Nothing cheap about him.”
The boy trudged along over the snow, the creaking of his shoes as he advanced being the only sound that broke the oppressive stillness of the frozen wilderness. In spite of himself the boy felt the vast silence and loneliness like a weight laid upon his mind. So far as he knew, he was the only human being within miles. It made him feel very tiny, almost ant-like, to think of the minute speck his body must make as he toiled onward amidst the white desolation spread all about him.
At noon he paused, and seating himself under a tall “Rampick” that upreared its gaunt form blackly against the snow, he ate the lunch he had brought with him. Then he resumed his journey, intending to turn back again and make for camp after about an hour’s more travel. He figured that this would bring him back to the camp by nightfall.
As he followed up the traps he noticed that beside the ravages of the wolverine other tracks began to appear in the snow, telling of the presence of animals only less welcome.
Tracks that the boy recognized as the footprints of wolves were plentiful about the traps devastated by the wolverine, or perhaps by the wolves themselves.