hunt and trap, having their meagre belongings and provisions on sleds
which they dragged across the snow. They depended for food mostly on
what they could trap or shoot--moose, caribou, beaver, and small
animals. But they had bad luck. They set many traps but caught nothing,
and they saw no game to shoot. So that in a month they were hard
pressed. One cold day they went two miles to visit a beaver trap, where
they had seen signs. They hoped to find an animal caught and to feast on
beaver tail, which is good eating."

Here I had to stop and explain much about beaver tails, and the rest of
beavers, to the Frenchman, who was interested like a boy in this new,
almost unheard-of beast. At length:

"Rafael and his brother-in-law were disappointed. A beaver had been
close and eaten the bark off a birch stick which the men had left, but
nothing was in the trap. They turned and began a weary walk through the
desolate country back to their little tent. Small comfort waited for
them there, as their provisions were low, only flour and bacon left.
And they dared not expend much of that. They were down-hearted, and to
add to it a snow-storm came on and they lost their way. Almost a
hopeless situation--an uninhabited country, winter, snow, hunger. And
they were lost. '_Egaré. Perdu_,' Rafael said. But the Huron was far
from giving up. He peered through the falling snow, not thick yet, and
spied a mountain across a valley. He knew that mountain. He had worked
near it for two years, logging--the '_chantier_,' they call it. He knew
there was a good camp on a river near the mountain, and he knew there
would be a stove in the camp and, as Rafael said, 'Mebbe we haf a luck
and somebody done gone and lef' somet'ing to eat,' Rafael prefers to
talk English to me. He told me all this in broken English.