Then it cleared to brilliant days of frost. Bill
finished his stable. At night he tied the horses therein. By day they
were turned loose to rustle their fodder from under the crisp snow. It
was necessary to husband the stock of hay, for spring might be late.
After that they went hunting. The third day Bill shot two moose in an
open glade ten miles afield. It took them two more days to haul in the
frozen meat on a sled.
"Looks like one side of a butcher shop," Bill remarked, viewing the
dressed meat where it hung on a pole scaffolding beyond reach of the
wolves.
"It certainly does," Hazel replied. "We'll never eat all that."
"Probably not," he smiled. "But there's nothing like having plenty.
The moose might emigrate, you know. I think I'll add a deer to that
lot for variety--if I can find one."
He managed this in the next few days, and also laid in a stock of
frozen trout by the simple expedient of locating a large pool, and
netting the speckled denizens thereof through a hole in the ice.
So their larder was amply supplied. And, as the cold rigidly tightened
its grip, and succeeding snows deepened the white blanket till
snowshoes became imperative, Bill began to string out a line of traps.
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