THE RARE FURS--HOW THE TRAPPER TAKES SAKWASEW THE MINK, NEKIK THE
OTTER, WUCHAK THE FISHER, AND WAPISTAN THE MARTEN
I
_Sakwasew the Mink_
There are other little chaps with more valuable fur than musquash, whose
skin seldom attains higher honour than inside linings, and wahboos,
whose snowy coat is put to the indignity of imitating ermine with a
dotting of black cat for the ermine's jet tip. There are mink and otter
and fisher and fox and ermine and sable, all little fellows with pelts
worth their weight in coin of the realm.
On one of those idle days when the trapper seems to be doing nothing but
lying on his back in the sun, he has witnessed a curious, but common,
battle in pantomime between bird and beast. A prairie-hawk circles and
drops, lifts and wheels again with monotonous silent persistence above
the swamp. What quarry does he seek, this lawless forager of the upper
airs still hunting a hidden nook of the low prairie? If he were out
purely for exercise, like the little badger when it goes rubbing the
back of its head from post to post, there would be a buzzing of wings
and shrill lonely callings to an unseen mate.
But the circling hawk is as silent as the very personification of death.
Apparently he can't make up his mind for the death-drop on some rat or
frog down there in the swamp. The trapper notices that the hawk keeps
circling directly above the place where the waters of the swamp tumble
from the ravine in a small cataract to join a lower river. He knows,
too, from the rich orange of the plumage that the hawk is young. An
older fellow would not be advertising his intentions in this fashion.
Besides, an older hawk would have russet-gray feathering. Is the
rascally young hawk meditating a clutch of talons round some of the
unsuspecting trout that usually frequent the quiet pools below a
waterfall. Or does he aim at bigger game? A young hawk is bold with the
courage that has not yet learned the wisdom of caution. That is why
there are so many more of the brilliant young red hawks in our museums
than old grizzled gray veterans whose craft circumvents the specimen
hunter's cunning. Now the trapper comes to have as keen a sense of
_feel_ for all the creatures of the wilds as the creatures of the wilds
have for man; so he shifts his position that he may find what is
attracting the hawk.
Down on the pebbled beach below the waterfalls lies an auburn bundle of
fur, about the size of a very long, slim, short-legged cat, still as a
stone--some member of the weasel family gorged torpid with fish,
stretched out full length to sleep in the sun. To sleep, ah, yes, and as
the Danish prince said, "perchance to dream"; for all the little fellows
of river and prairie take good care never to sleep where they are
exposed to their countless enemies. This sleep of the weasel arouses
the man's suspicion. The trapper draws out his field-glass. The sleeper
is a mink, and its sleep is a sham with beady, red eyes blinking a deal
too lively for real death. Why does it lie on its back rigid and
straight as if it were dead with all four tiny paws clutched out stiff?
The trapper scans the surface of the swamp to see if some foolish
musk-rat is swimming dangerously near the sleeping mink.
Presently the hawk circles lower--lower!--Drop, straight as a stone! Its
talons are almost in the mink's body, when of a sudden the sleeper
awakens--awakens--with a leap of the four stiff little feet and a
darting spear-thrust of snapping teeth deep in the neck of the hawk! At
first the hawk rises tearing furiously at the clinging mink with its
claws. The wings sag. Down bird and beast fall. Over they roll on the
sandy beach, hawk and mink, over and over with a thrashing of the hawk's
wings to beat the treacherous little vampire off. Now the blood-sucker
is on top clutching--clutching! Now the bird flounders up craning his
neck from the death-grip. Then the hawk falls on his back. His wings are
prone. They cease to flutter.
Running to the bank the trapper is surprised to see the little
blood-sucker making off with the prey instead of deserting it as all
creatures akin to the weasel family usually do. That means a family of
mink somewhere near, to be given their first lesson in bird-hunting, in
mink-hawking by the body of this poor, dead, foolish gyrfalcon.
By a red mark here, by a feather there, crushed grass as of something
dragged, a little webbed footprint on the wet clay, a tiny marking of
double dots where the feet have crossed a dry stone, the trapper slowly
takes up the trail of the mink. Mink are not prime till the late fall.
Then the reddish fur assumes the shades of the russet grasses where they
run until the white of winter covers the land. Then--as if nature were
to exact avengement for all the red slaughter the mink has wrought
during the rest of the year--his coat becomes dark brown, almost black,
the very shade that renders him most conspicuous above snow to all the
enemies of the mink world. But while the trapper has no intention of
destroying what would be worthless now but will be valuable in the
winter, it is not every day that even a trapper has a chance to trail a
mink back to its nest and see the young family.
But suddenly the trail stops. Here is a sandy patch with some tumbled
stones under a tangle of grasses and a rivulet not a foot away.
Ah--there it is--a nest or lair, a tiny hole almost hidden by the
rushes! But the nest seems empty. Fast as the trapper has come, the mink
came faster and hid her family. To one side, the hawk had been dropped
among the rushes. The man pokes a stick in the lair but finds nothing.
Putting in his hand, he is dragging out bones, feathers, skeleton
musk-rats, putrid frogs, promiscuous remnants of other quarries brought
to the burrow by the mink, when a little cattish _s-p-i-t!_ almost
touches his hand. His palm closes over something warm, squirming,
smaller than a kitten with very downy fur, on a soft mouse-like skin,
eyes that are still blind and a tiny mouth that neither meows nor
squeaks, just _spits!--spits!--spits!_--in impotent viperish fury. All
the other minklets, the mother had succeeded in hiding under the
grasses, but somehow this one had been left. Will he take it home and
try the experiment of rearing a young mink with a family of kittens?
The trapper calls to mind other experiments. There was the little beaver
that chewed up his canoe and gnawed a hole of escape through the door.
There were the three little bob-cats left in the woods behind his cabin
last year when he refrained from setting out traps and tied up his dog
to see if he could not catch the whole family, mother and kittens, for
an Eastern museum. Furtively at first, the mother had come to feed her
kittens. Then the man had put out rugs to keep the kittens warm and lain
in wait for the mother; but no sooner did she see her offspring
comfortably cared for, than she deserted them entirely, evidently acting
on the proverb that the most gracious enemy is the most dangerous, or
else deciding that the kits were so well off that she was not needed.
Adopting the three little wild-cats, the trapper had reared them past
blind-eyes, past colic and dumps and all the youthful ills to which live
kittens are heirs, when trouble began. The longing for the wilds came.
Even catnip green and senna tea boiled can't cure that. So keenly did
the gipsy longing come to one little bob that he perished escaping to
the woods by way of the chimney flue. The second little bob succeeded in
escaping through a parchment stop-gap that served the trapper as a
window. And the third bobby dealt such an ill-tempered gash to the dog's
nose that the combat ended in instant death for the cat.
Thinking over these experiments, the trapper wisely puts the mink back
in the nest with words which it would have been well for that litle ball
of down to have understood. He told it he would come back for it next
winter and to be sure to have its best black coat on. For the little
first-year minks wear dark coats, almost as fine as Russian sable.
Yes--he reflects, poking it back to the hole and retreating quickly so
that the mother will return--better leave it till the winter; for wasn't
it Koot who put a mink among his kittens, only to have the little viper
set on them with tooth and claw as soon as its eyes opened? Also mink
are bad neighbours to a poultry-yard. Forty chickens in a single night
will the little mink destroy, not for food but--to quote man's
words--for the zest of the sport. The mink, you must remember, like
other pot-hunters, can boast of a big bag.
The trapper did come back next fall. It was when he was ranging all the
swamp-lands for beaver-dams. Swamp lands often mean beaver-dams; and
trappers always note what stops the current of a sluggish stream.
Frequently it is a beaver colony built across a valley in the mountains,
or stopping up the outlet of a slough. The trapper was sleeping under
his canoe on the banks of the river where the swamp tumbled out from the
ravine. Before retiring to what was a boat by day and a bed by night, he
had set out a fish net and some loose lines--which the flow of the
current would keep in motion--below the waterfall. Carelessly, next day,
he threw the fish-heads among the stones. The second morning he found
such a multitude of little tracks dotting the rime of the hoar frost
that he erected a tent back from the waterfalls, and decided to stay
trapping there till the winter. The fish-heads were no longer thrown
away. They were left among the stones in small steel-traps weighted with
other stones, or attached to a loose stick that would impede flight.
And if the poor gyrfalcon could have seen the mink held by the jaws of a
steel-trap, hissing, snarling, breaking its teeth on the iron, spitting
out all the rage of its wicked nature, the bird would have been avenged.
And as winter deepened, the quality of minks taken from the traps became
darker, silkier, crisper, almost brown black in some of the young, but
for light fur on the under lip. The Indians say that sakwasew the mink
would sell his family for a fish, and as long as fish lay among the
stones, the trapper gathered his harvest of fur: reddish mink that would
be made into little neck ruffs and collar pieces, reddish brown mink
that would be sewed into costly coats and cloaks, rare brownish black
mink that would be put into the beautiful flat scarf collars almost as
costly as a full coat. And so the mink-hunt went on merrily for the man
till the midwinter lull came at Christmas. For that year the mink-hunt
was over.
II
_Nekik the Otter_
Sakwasew was not the only fisher at the pool below the falls. On one of
those idle days when the trapper sat lazily by the river side, a round
head slightly sunburned from black to russet had hobbled up to the
surface of the water, peered sharply at the man sitting so still,
paddled little flipper-like feet about, then ducked down again.
Motionless as the mossed log under him sits the man; and in a moment up
comes the little black head again, round as a golf ball, about the size
of a very large cat, followed by three other little bobbing heads--a
mother otter teaching her babies to dive and swim and duck from the
river surface to the burrows below the water along the river bank.
Perhaps the trapper has found a dead fish along this very bank with only
the choice portions of the body eaten--a sure sign that nekik the otter,
the little epicure of the water world, has been fishing at this river.
With a scarcely perceptible motion, the man turns his head to watch the
swimmers. Instantly, down they plunge, mother and babies, to come to the
surface again higher up-stream, evidently working up-current like the
beaver in spring for a glorious frolic in the cold clear waters of the
upper sources. At one place on the sandy beach they all wade ashore. The
man utters a slight "Hiss!" Away they scamper, the foolish youngsters,
landward instead of to the safe water as the hesitating mother would
have them do, all the little feet scrambling over the sand with the
funny short steps of a Chinese lady in tight boots. Maternal care proves
stronger than fear. The frightened mother follows the young otter and
will no doubt read them a sound lecture on land dangers when she has
rounded them back to the safe water higher up-stream.
Of all wild creatures, none is so crafty in concealing its lairs as the
otter. Where did this family come from? They had not been swimming
up-stream; for the man had been watching on the river bank long before
they appeared on the surface. Stripping, the trapper dives in
mid-stream, then half wades, half swims along the steepest bank, running
his arm against the clay cliff to find a burrow. On land he could not do
this at the lair of the otter; for the smell of the man-touch would be
left on his trail, and the otter, keener of scent and fear than the
mink, would take alarm. But for the same reason that the river is the
safest refuge for the otter, it is the surest hunting for the man--water
does not keep the scent of a trail. So the man runs his arm along the
bank. The river is the surest hunting for the man, but not the safest.
If an old male were in the bank burrow now, or happened to be emerging
from grass-lined subterranean air chambers above the bank gallery, it
might be serious enough for the exploring trapper. One bite of nekik the
otter has crippled many an Indian. Knowing from the remnants of
half-eaten fish and from the holes in the bank that he has found an
otter runway, the man goes home as well satisfied as if he had done a
good day's work.
And so that winter when he had camped below the swamp for the mink-hunt,
the trapper was not surprised one morning to find a half-eaten fish on
the river bank. Sakwasew the mink takes good care to leave no remnants
of his greedy meal. What he cannot eat he caches. Even if he has
strangled a dozen water-rats in one hunt, they will be dragged in a heap
and covered. The half-eaten fish left exposed is not mink's work. Otter
has been here and otter will come back; for as the frost hardens, only
those pools below the falls keep free from ice. No use setting traps
with fish-heads as long as fresh fish are to be had for the taking.
Besides, the man has done nothing to conceal his tracks; and each
morning the half-eaten fish lie farther off the line of the man-trail.
By-and-bye the man notices that no more half-eaten fish are on his side
of the river. Little tracks of webbed feet furrowing a deep rut in the
soft snow of the frozen river tell that nekik has taken alarm and is
fishing from the other side. And when Christmas comes with a dwindling
of the mink-hunt, the man, too, crosses to the other side. Here he finds
that the otter tracks have worn a path that is almost a toboggan slide
down the crusted snow bank to the iced edge of the pool. By this time
nekik's pelt is prime, almost black, and as glossy as floss. By this
time, too, the fish are scarce and the epicure has become ravenous as a
pauper. One night when the trapper was reconnoitring the fish hole, he
had approached the snow bank so noiselessly that he came on a whole
colony of otters without their knowledge of his presence. Down the snow
bank they tumbled, head-first, tail-first, slithering through the snow
with their little paws braced, rolling down on their backs like lads
upset from a toboggan, otter after otter, till the man learned that the
little beasts were not fishing at all, but coasting the snow bank like
youngsters on a night frolic. No sooner did one reach the bottom than up
he scampered to repeat the fun; and sometimes two or three went down in
a rolling bunch mixed up at the foot of a slide as badly as a couple of
toboggans that were unpremeditatedly changing their occupants. Bears
wrestle. The kittens of all the cat tribe play hide and seek. Little
badger finds it fun to run round rubbing the back of his head on things;
and here was nekik the otter at the favourite amusement of his
kind--coasting down a snow bank.
If the trapper were an Indian, he would lie in wait at the landing-place
and spear the otter as they came from the water. But the white man's
craft is deeper. He does not wish to frighten the otter till the last
had been taken. Coming to the slide by day, he baits a steel-trap with
fish and buries it in the snow just where the otter will be coming down
the hill or up from the pool. Perhaps he places a dozen such traps
around the hole with nothing visible but the frozen fish lying on the
surface. If he sets his traps during a snow-fall, so much the better.
His own tracks will be obliterated and the otter's nose will discover
the fish. Then he takes a bag filled with some substance of animal
odour, pomatum, fresh meat, pork, or he may use the flesh side of a
fresh deer-hide. This he drags over the snow where he has stepped. He
may even use a fresh hide to handle the traps, as a waiter uses a
serviette to pass plates. There must be no man-smell, no man-track near
the otter traps.
While the mink-hunt is fairly over by midwinter, otter-trapping lasts
from October to May. The value of all rare furs, mink, otter, marten,
ermine, varies with two things: (1) the latitude of the hunting-field;
(2) the season of the hunt. For instance, ask a trapper of Minnesota or
Lake Superior what he thinks of the ermine, and he will tell you that it
is a miserable sort of weasel of a dirty drab brown not worth
twenty-five cents a skin. Ask a trapper of the North Saskatchewan what
he thinks of ermine; and he will tell you it is a pretty little whitish
creature good for fur if trapped late enough in the winter and always
useful as a lining. But ask a trapper of the Arctic about the ermine,
and he describes it as the finest fur that is taken except the silver
fox, white and soft as swan's-down, with a tail-tip like black onyx.
This difference in the fur of the animal explains the wide variety of
prices paid. Ermine not worth twenty-five cents in Wisconsin might be
worth ten times as much on the Saskatchewan.
[Illustration:
Fur press in use
at Fort Good
Hope, at the
extreme north
of Hudson's
Bay Company's
territory.
Old wedge press
in use at Fort
Resolution, of
the sub-Arctics.
Types of Fur Presses.]
So it is with the otter. All trapped between latitude thirty-five and
sixty is good fur; and the best is that taken toward the end of winter
when scarcely a russet hair should be found in the long over-fur of
nekik's coat.
III
_Wuchak the Fisher, or Pekan_
Wherever the waste of fish or deer is thrown, there will be found lines
of double tracks not so large as the wild-cat's, not so small as the
otter's, and without the same webbing as the mink's. This is wuchak the
fisher, or pekan, commonly called "the black cat"--who, in spite of his
fishy name, hates water as cats hate it. And the tracks are double
because pekan travel in pairs. He is found along the banks of streams
because he preys on fish and fisher, on mink and otter and musk-rat, on
frogs and birds and creatures that come to drink. He is, after all, a
very greedy fellow, not at all particular about his diet, and, like all
gluttons, easily snared. While mink and otter are about, the trapper
will waste no steel-traps on pekan. A deadfall will act just as
effectively; but there is one point requiring care. Pekan has a sharp
nose. It is his nose that brings him to all carrion just as surely as
hawks come to pick dead bones. But that same nose will tell him of man's
presence. So when the trapper has built his pen of logs so that the
front log or deadfall will crush down on the back of an intruder tugging
at the bait inside, he overlays all with leaves and brush to quiet the
pekan's suspicions. Besides, the pekan has many tricks akin to the
wolverine. He is an inveterate thief. There is a well-known instance of
Hudson's Bay trappers having a line of one hundred and fifty marten
traps stretching for fifty miles robbed of their bait by pekan. The men
shortened the line to thirty miles and for six times in succession did
pekan destroy the traps. Then the men set themselves to trap the robber.
He will rifle a deadfall from the slanting back roof where there is no
danger; so the trapper overlays the back with heavy brush.
Pekan do not yield a rare fur; but they are always at run where the
trapper is hunting the rare furs, and for that reason are usually snared
at the same time as mink and otter.
IV
_Wapistan the Marten_
When Koot went blind on his way home from the rabbit-hunt, he had
intended to set out for the pine woods. Though blizzards still howl over
the prairie, by March the warm sun of midday has set the sap of the
forests stirring and all the woodland life awakens from its long winter
sleep. Cougar and lynx and bear rove through the forest ravenous with
spring hunger. Otter, too, may be found where the ice mounds of a
waterfall are beginning to thaw. But it is not any of these that the
trapper seeks. If they cross his path, good--they, too, will swell his
account at the fur post. It is another of the little chaps that he
seeks, a little, long, low-set animal whose fur is now glistening bright
on the deep dark overhairs, soft as down in the thick fawn underhairs,
wapistan the marten.
When the forest begins to stir with the coming of spring, wapistan stirs
too, crawling out from the hollow of some rotten pine log, restless with
the same blood-thirst that set the little mink playing his tricks on
the hawk. And yet the marten is not such a little viper as the mink.
Wapistan will eat leaves and nuts and roots if he can get vegetable
food, but failing these, that ravenous spring hunger of his must be
appeased with something else. And out he goes from his log hole
hunger-bold as the biggest of all other spring ravagers. That boldness
gives the trapper his chance at the very time when wapistan's fur is
best. All winter the trapper may have taken marten; but the end of
winter is the time when wapistan wanders freely from cover. Thus the
trapper's calendar would have months of musk-rat first, then beaver and
mink and pekan and bear and fox and ermine and rabbit and lynx and
marten, with a long idle midsummer space when he goes to the fort for
the year's provisions and gathers the lore of his craft.
Wapistan is not hard to track. Being much longer and heavier than a cat
with very short legs and small feet, his body almost drags the ground
and his tracks sink deep, clear, and sharp. His feet are smaller than
otter's and mink's, but easily distinguishable from those two fishers.
The water animal leaves a spreading footprint, the mark of the webbed
toes without any fur on the padding of the toe-balls. The land animal of
the same size has clear cut, narrower, heavier marks. By March, these
dotting foot-tracks thread the snow everywhere.
Coming on marten tracks at a pine log, the trapper sends in his dog or
prods with a stick. Finding nothing, he baits a steel-trap with
pomatum, covers it deftly with snow, drags the decoy skin about to
conceal his own tracks, and goes away in the hope that the marten will
come back to this log to guzzle on his prey and sleep.
If the track is much frequented, or the forest over-run with marten
tracks, the trapper builds deadfalls, many of them running from tree to
tree for miles through the forest in a circle whose circuit brings him
back to his cabin. Remnants of these log traps may be seen through all
parts of the Rocky Mountain forests. Thirty to forty traps are
considered a day's work for one man, six or ten marten all that he
expects to take in one round; but when marten are plentiful, the unused
traps of to-day may bring a prize to-morrow.
The Indian trapper would use still another kind of trap. Where the
tracks are plainly frequently used runways to watering-places or lair in
hollow tree, the Indian digs a pit across the marten's trail. On this he
spreads brush in such roof fashion that though the marten is a good
climber, if once he falls in, it is almost impossible for him to
scramble out. If a poor cackling grouse or "fool-hen" be thrust into the
pit, the Indian is almost sure to find a prisoner. This seems to the
white man a barbarous kind of trapping; but the poor "fool-hen," hunted
by all the creatures of the forest, never seems to learn wisdom, but
invites disaster by popping out of the brush to stare at every living
thing that passes. If she did not fall a victim in the pit, she
certainly would to her own curiosity above ground. To the steel-trap the
hunter attaches a piece of log to entangle the prisoner's flight as he
rushes through the underbush. Once caught in the steel jaws, little
wapistan must wait--wait for what? For the same thing that comes to the
poor "fool-hen" when wapistan goes crashing through the brush after her;
for the same thing that comes to the baby squirrels when wapistan climbs
a tree to rob the squirrel's nest, eat the young, and live in the rifled
house; for the same thing that comes to the hoary marmot whistling his
spring tune just outside his rocky den when wapistan, who has climbed
up, pounces down from above. Little death-dealer he has been all his
life; and now death comes to him for a nobler cause than the stuffing of
a greedy maw--for the clothing of a creature nobler than himself--man.
The otter can protect himself by diving, even diving under snow. The
mink has craft to hide himself under leaves so that the sharpest eyes
cannot detect him. Both mink and otter furs have very little of that
animal smell which enables the foragers to follow their trail. What gift
has wapistan, the marten, to protect himself against all the powers that
prey? His strength and his wisdom lie in the little stubby feet. These
can climb.
A trapper's dog had stumbled on a marten in a stump hole. A snap of the
marten's teeth sent the dog back with a jump. Wapistan will hang on to
the nose of a dog to the death; and trappers' dogs grow cautious. Before
the dog gathered courage to make another rush, the marten escaped by a
rear knot-hole, getting the start of his enemy by fifty yards. Off they
raced, the dog spending himself in fury, the marten keeping under the
thorny brush where his enemy could not follow, then across open snow
where the dog gained, then into the pine woods where the trail ended on
the snow. Where had the fugitive gone? When the man came up, he first
searched for log holes. There were none. Then he lifted some of the
rocks. There was no trace of wapistan. But the dog kept baying a special
tree, a blasted trunk, bare as a mast pole and seemingly impossible for
any animal but a squirrel to climb. Knowing the trick by which creatures
like the bob-cat can flatten their body into a resemblance of a tree
trunk, the trapper searched carefully all round the bare trunk. It was
not till many months afterward when a wind storm had broken the tree
that he discovered the upper part had been hollow. Into this eerie nook
the pursued marten had scrambled and waited in safety till dog and man
retired.
In one of his traps the man finds a peculiarly short specimen of the
marten. In the vernacular of the craft this marten's bushy tail will not
reach as far back as his hind legs can stretch. Widely different from
the mink's scarcely visible ears, this fellow's ears are sharply
upright, keenly alert. He is like a fox, where the mink resembles a
furred serpent. Marten moves, springs, jumps like an animal. Mink glides
like a snake. Marten has the strong neck of an animal fighter. Mink has
the long, thin, twisting neck which reptiles need to give them striking
power for their fangs. Mink's under lip has a mere rim of white or
yellow. Marten's breast is patched sulphur. But this short marten with a
tail shorter than other marten differs from his kind as to fur. Both
mink and marten fur are reddish brown; but this short marten's fur is
almost black, of great depth, of great thickness, and of three
qualities: (1) There are the long dark overhairs the same as the
ordinary marten, only darker, thicker, deeper; (2) there is the soft
under fur of the ordinary marten, usually fawn, in this fellow deep
brown; (3) there is the skin fur resembling chicken-down, of which this
little marten has such a wealth--to use a technical expression--you
cannot find his scalp. Without going into the old quarrel about species,
when a marten has these peculiarities, he is known to the trapper as
sable.
Whether he is the American counterpart to the Russia sable is a disputed
point. Whether his superior qualities are owing to age, climate,
species, it is enough for the trapper to know that short, dark marten
yields the trade--sable.