From father to son for generations the same district has been handed down, each territory rich enough in fur to support one family.

One--not two, for two would starve, and if a strange trapper poaches the fight is to the death, even in the normal year when game is plentiful and fur prime.
"But every seventh year there may be famine.

Here in the North it is the varying hare, the rabbit, that feeds the children of the trap-lines and the marten and fox they trap, and every seventh year there comes a mysterious disease.

One year there are rabbits in millions, the next there are none.

The lynx and the wolf and the fox starve, there are no fur bearers in the traps, the trapper faces the blizzard and the cold to find empty deadfalls day after day, and however skillfully he may hunt there is no game for his gun.