The weather having become settled again, the animals that found pasturage in the valley were once more on the move; and while Oscar was walking toward the brook he crossed the trails of several deer. They were all fresh, and when he found one that was considerably larger than the rest he was strongly tempted to follow it, but he lacked the courage. He had grown very timid since his encounter with the grizzly, and the fear of spraining an ankle, or breaking a leg by falling over the brink of some deep gorge, made him shudder. “If I stay in the valley, as I was told to do, I shall be in no danger of meeting with such an accident,” thought he, as he forced his way through the willows toward the brook. “The deer will gain confidence if they are not disturbed during the next three or four weeks, and when Thompson returns there will still be time enough left to——Hello, here!” Just at that moment Oscar came out of the willows and stopped on the bank of the brook in plain view of the spot on which he had set one of his steel traps. He confidently expected to find something in it, but not only was he disappointed in this, but when he came to look a little closer he saw that the trap was missing. “Aha,” thought the young hunter. “That rascally wolverine has been caught napping at last. He put his foot into the trap and dragged it away with him; but of course he left a broad trail, and I shall have no difficulty in following it.” Oscar walked up the bank until he arrived opposite the spot on which the trap had been set, and there he stopped and stood motionless, looking the very picture of astonishment. There was a trail there, but it was not such a trail as the wolverine makes. He had seen that often enough to be able to recognize it the moment he laid his eyes upon it. The trap had been set in the bed of the stream—the water ran so rapidly that it did not freeze—but the chain that secured it led to the bank, where it was firmly fastened to a convenient root. Knowing that the wolverine is a very strong animal, Oscar expected to find this chain broken; but instead of that he saw that it had been unfastened, and by human hands too, for right there on the edge of the bank were the prints of moccasined feet, showing where the thief had stood when he undid the chain. He saw further that a trail made by those same feet led directly up the bank, and this suggested something to him. Glancing quickly about among the willows to make sure that the thief was nowhere in sight, Oscar hurried down the stream as far as his trapping ground extended, following the trail all the way. He found that it led to every one of his traps and deadfalls, and that every one of the former was missing. Some of the deadfalls were left undisturbed, for the reason, probably, that there was nothing in them; but all those that contained any game had been plundered.