The deepening snow about the cabin was marked in all the thickets by
the multitudinous tracks of the snowshoe rabbits or white hares.
Occasionally the hunters saw them, but paid little heed. Why should they
look at rabbits when deer were plentiful?
“You catch rabbit?” asked Quonab one day when Rolf was feeling fit
again.
“I can shoot one with my bow,” was the answer, “but why should I, when
we have plenty of deer?”
“My people always hunted rabbits. Sometimes no deer were to be found;
then the rabbits were food. Sometimes in the enemy's country it was not
safe to hunt, except rabbits, with blunt arrows, and they were food.
Sometimes only squaws and children in camp--nothing to eat; no guns;
then the rabbits were food.”
“Well, see me get one,” and Rolf took his bow and arrow. He found many
white bunnies, but always in the thickest woods. Again and again he
tried, but the tantalizing twigs and branches muffled the bow and
turned the arrow. It was hours before he returned with a fluffy snowshoe
rabbit.
“That is not our way.” Quonab led to the thicket and selecting a place
of many tracks he cut a lot of brush and made a hedge across with half a
dozen openings. At each of these openings he made a snare of strong cord
tied to a long pole, hung on a crotch, and so arranged that a tug at the
snare would free the pole which in turn would hoist the snare and the
creature in it high in the air.
Next morning they went around and found that four of the snares had
each a snow-white rabbit hanging by the neck. As he was handling these,
Quonab felt a lump I on the hind leg of one. He carefully cut it open
and turned out a curious-looking object about the size of an acorn,
flattened, made of flesh and covered with hair, and nearly the shape of
a large bean. He gazed at it, and, turning to Rolf, said with intense
meaning:
“Ugh! we have found the good hunting. This is the Peeto-wab-oos-once,
the little medicine rabbit. Now we have strong medicine in the lodge.
You shall see.”
He went out to the two remaining snares and passed the medicine rabbit
through each. An hour later, when they returned, they found a rabbit
taken in the first snare.
“It is ever so,” said the Indian. “We can always catch rabbits now. My
father had the Peeto-wab-i-ush once, the little medicine deer, and so
he never failed in hunting but twice. Then he found that his papoose,
Quonab, had stolen his great medicine. He was a very wise papoose. He
killed a chipmunk each of those days.”
“Hark! what is that?” A faint sound of rustling branches, and some short
animal noises in the woods had caught Rolf's ear, and Skookum's, too,
for he was off like one whose life is bound up in a great purpose.
“Yap, yap, yap,” came the angry sound from Skookum. Who can say that
animals have no language? His merry “yip, yip, yip,” for partridge up a
tree, or his long, hilarious, “Yow, yow, yow,” when despite all orders
he chased some deer, were totally distinct from the angry “Yap, yap,”
he gave for the bear up the tree, or the “Grrryapgrryap,” with which he
voiced his hatred of the porcupine.
But now it was the “Yap, yap,” as when he had treed the bears.
“Something up a tree,” was the Indian's interpretation, as they followed
the sound. Something up a tree! A whole menagerie it seemed to Rolf when
they got there. Hanging by the neck in the remaining snare, and limp
now, was a young lynx, a kit of the year. In the adjoining tree, with
Skookum circling and yapping 'round the base, was a savage old lynx.
In the crotch above her was another young one, and still higher was a
third, all looking their unutterable disgust at the noisy dog below;
the mother, indeed, expressing it in occasional hisses, but none of them
daring to come down and face him. The lynx is very good fur and very
easy prey. The Indian brought the old one down with a shot; then, as
fast as he could reload, the others were added to the bag, and, with the
one from the snare, they returned laden to the cabin.
The Indian's eyes shone with a peculiar light. “Ugh! Ugh! My father told
me; it is great medicine. You see, now, it does not fail.”