"Plenty," was the answer. "He trade it two store, Carroll. H'all H'ingin' comin' trade; Cree, h'Assinaboine, Gros Ventres, Sircee, Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan; got plenty whisky, trade plenty h'robe. Sometime he faightin', _les chauvages_, when he bin dronk. Sometimes he keel it two tree H'ingin' faightin: sometime in winter, cole he keel it, froze 'im so he was die. You know it Calf Shirt, Blood Chief; well, seh, he keel it 'im white mans. Calf Shirt he dronk, want keel it white mans, one h'woman run quick tole um. When Calf Shirt cornin' pour faight, white mans shoot it 'im, maybe six, seven, ten time. Soon he daid." "Well, well!" exclaimed Hugh, "It's like old times yet up north after all." CHAPTER X COWS IN A SNOW-DRIFT The next morning the snow had ceased falling and the sun shone bright and clear. Hugh declared that it was just the day for putting out his coyote baits, which he intended to string along the mountains north of the house, to try to poison some of the coyotes that were watching the calves. These baits were blocks of wood in which one and a half inch augur holes had been bored to a depth of three inches. Into these holes melted tallow had been poured until the holes were full. The coyotes were expected to eat little balls of tallow containing strychnine scattered on the ground, and to remain near the blocks, licking at the tallow in the augur holes, until the poison which they had taken should act, so that they would die near the blocks. Thus the wolfer would get the skins of the animals that he killed. Hugh put the blocks containing the baits in two sacks and lashed them on a pack horse, and soon with Jack and John he was riding through the snow north along the mountain-side. Soon after starting, Hugh tied a piece of elk-hide to one end of his rope, and taking a turn of the other around the horn of his saddle, dragged it behind him over the snow. This, he told Jack, was to lead the wolves to follow the trail, so that they might come to the baits. "Of course," he said, "they'd follow it up anyhow, but the smell of this hide'll keep 'em thinking about eating." After they had gone a few hundred yards, Hugh dismounted on top of a little ridge, and here threw down one of his pieces of wood, and about it scattered several balls of poisoned tallow and a handful of chips of dried meat, which he took from a sack. This he repeated at intervals of half a mile as they went along. When they reached the spot where the cows were, they found most of them feeding on a warm, sheltered hillside, which was almost free from snow. There were now many more calves than when they had seen them last. Hugh sat for a long time looking at the animals, while John Monroe rode to the top of a near-by hill, from which after a moment he called aloud, made some motions with his hands and pointed.