UNDER THE NORTH STAR--WHERE FOX AND ERMINE RUN
I
_Of Foxes, Many and Various--Red, Cross, Silver, Black, Prairie, Kit or
Swift, Arctic, Blue, and Gray_
Wherever grouse and rabbit abound, there will foxes run and there will
the hunter set steel-traps. But however beautiful a fox-skin may be as a
specimen, it has value as a fur only when it belongs to one of three
varieties--Arctic, black, and silver. Other foxes--red, cross, prairie,
swift, and gray--the trapper will take when they cross his path and sell
them in the gross at the fur post, as he used to barter buffalo-hides.
But the hunter who traps the fox for its own sake, and not as an
uncalculated extra to the mink-hunt or the beaver total, must go to the
Far North, to the land of winter night and midnight sun, to obtain the
best fox-skins.
It matters not to the trapper that the little kit fox or swift at run
among the hills between the Missouri and Saskatchewan is the most
shapely of all the fox kind, with as finely pointed a nose as a spitz
dog, ears alert as a terrier's and a brush, more like a lady's gray
feather boa than fur, curled round his dainty toes. Little kit's fur is
a grizzled gray shading to mottled fawn. The hairs are coarse, horsey,
indistinctly marked, and the fur is of small value to the trader; so
dainty little swift, who looks as if nature made him for a pet dog
instead of a fox, is slighted by the hunter, unless kit persists in
tempting a trap. Rufus the red fellow, with his grizzled gray head and
black ears and whitish throat and flaunting purplish tinges down his
sides like a prince royal, may make a handsome mat; but as a fur he is
of little worth. His cousin with the black fore feet, the prairie fox,
who is the largest and strongest and scientifically finest of all his
kind, has more value as a fur. The colour of the prairie fox shades
rather to pale ochre and yellow that the nondescript grizzled gray that
is of so little value as a fur. Of the silver-gray fox little need be
said. He lives too far south--California and Texas and Mexico--to
acquire either energy or gloss. He is the one indolent member of the fox
tribe, and his fur lacks the sheen that only winter cold can give. The
value of the cross fox depends on the markings that give him his name.
If the bands, running diagonally over his shoulders in the shape of a
cross, shade to grayish blue he is a prize, if to reddish russet, he is
only a curiosity.
The Arctic and black and silver foxes have the pelts that at their worst
equal the other rare furs, at their best exceed the value of all other
furs by so much that the lucky trapper who takes a silver fox has made
his fortune. These, then, are the foxes that the trapper seeks and these
are to be found only on the white wastes of the polar zone.
That brings up the question--what is a silver fox? Strange as it may
seem, neither scientist nor hunter can answer that question. Nor will
study of all the park specimens in the world tell the secret, for the
simple reason that only an Arctic climate can produce a silver fox; and
parks are not established in the Arctics yet. It is quite plain that the
prairie fox is in a class by himself. The uniformity of his size, his
strength, his habits, his appearance, distinguish him from other foxes.
It is quite plain that the little kit fox or swift is of a kind distinct
from other foxes. His smallness, the shape of his bones, the cast of his
face, the trick of sitting rather than lying, that wonderful big bushy
soft tail of which a peacock might be vain--all differentiate him from
other foxes. The same may be said of the Arctic fox with a pelt that is
more like white wool than hairs of fur. He is much smaller than the red.
His tail is bushier and larger than the swift, and like all Arctic
creatures, he has the soles of his feet heavily furred. All this is
plain and simple classification. But how about Mr. Blue Fox of the same
size and habit as the white Arctic? Is he the Arctic fox in summer
clothing? Yes, say some trappers; and they show their pelts of an Arctic
fox taken in summer of a rusty white. But no, vow other trappers--that
is impossible, for here are blue fox-skins captured in the depths of
midwinter with not a white hair among them. Look closely at the skins.
The ears of one blue fox are long, perfect, unbitten by frost or foe--he
was a young fellow; and he is blue. Here is another with ears almost
worn to stubs by fights and many winters' frosts--he is an old fellow;
and he, too, is blue. Well, then, the blue fox may sometimes be the
white Arctic fox in summer dress; but the blue fox who is blue all the
year round, varying only in the shades of blue with the seasons, is
certainly not the white Arctic fox.
The same difficulty besets distinction of silver fox from black. The old
scientists classified these as one and the same creature. Trappers know
better. So do the later scientists who almost agree with the unlearned
trapper's verdict--there are as many species as there are foxes. Black
fox is at its best in midwinter, deep, brilliantly glossy, soft as
floss, and yet almost impenetrable--the very type of perfection of its
kind. But with the coming of the tardy Arctic spring comes a change. The
snows are barely melted in May when the sheen leaves the fur. By June,
the black hairs are streaked with gray; and the black fox is a gray fox.
Is it at some period of the transition that the black fox becomes a
silver fox, with the gray hairs as sheeny as the black and each gray
hair delicately tipped with black? That question, too, remains
unanswered; for certainly the black fox trapped when in his gray summer
coat is not the splendid silver fox of priceless value. Black fox
turning to a dull gray of midsummer may not be silver fox; but what
about gray fox turning to the beautiful glossy black of midwinter? Is
that what makes silver fox? Is silver fox simply a fine specimen of
black caught at the very period when he is blooming into his greatest
beauty? The distinctive difference between gray fox and silver is that
gray fox has gray hairs among hairs of other colour, while silver fox
has silver hair tipped with glossiest black on a foundation of downy
gray black.
Even greater confusion surrounds the origin of cross and red and gray.
Trappers find all these different cubs in one burrow; but as the cubs
grow, those pronounced cross turn out to be red, or the red becomes
cross; and what they become at maturity, that they remain, varying only
with the seasons.[45] It takes many centuries to make one perfect rose.
Is it the same with the silver fox? Is he a freak or a climax or the
regular product of yearly climatic changes caught in the nick of time by
some lucky trapper? Ask the scientist that question, and he theorizes.
Ask the trapper, and he tells you if he could only catch enough silver
foxes to study that question, he would quit trapping. In all the maze of
ignorance and speculation, there is one anchored fact. While animals
turn a grizzled gray with age, the fine gray coats are not caused by
age. Young animals of the rarest furs--fox and ermine--are born in ashy
colour that turns to gray while they are still in their first nest.
To say that silver fox is costly solely because it is rare is sheerest
nonsense. It would be just as sensible to say that labradorite, which is
rare, should be as costly as diamonds. It is the intrinsic beauty of the
fur, as of the diamonds, that constitutes its first value. The facts
that the taking of a silver fox is always pure luck, that the luck comes
seldom, that the trapper must have travelled countless leagues by
snow-shoe and dog train over the white wastes of the North, that
trappers in polar regions are exposed to more dangers and hardships than
elsewhere and that the fur must have been carried a long distance to
market--add to the first high value of silver fox till it is not
surprising that little pelts barely two feet long have sold for prices
ranging from $500 to $5,000. For the trapper the way to the fortune of
a silver fox is the same as the road to fortune for all other men--by
the homely trail of every-day work. Cheers from the fort gates bid
trappers setting out for far Northern fields God-speed. Long ago there
would have been a firing of cannon when the Northern hunters left for
their distant camping-grounds; but the cannon of Churchill lie rusting
to-day and the hunters who go to the sub-Arctics and the Arctics no
longer set out from Churchill on the bay, but from one of the little
inland MacKenzie River posts. If the fine powdery snow-drifts are
glossed with the ice of unbroken sun-glare, the runners strap iron
crampets to their snow-shoes, and with a great jingling of the
dog-bells, barking of the huskies, and yelling of the drivers, coast
away for the leagueless levels of the desolate North. Frozen river-beds
are the only path followed, for the high cliffs--almost like ramparts on
the lower MacKenzie--shut off the drifting east winds that heap
barricades of snow in one place and at another sweep the ground so clear
that the sleighs pull heavy as stone. Does a husky fag? A flourish of
whips and off the laggard scampers, keeping pace with the others in the
traces, a pace that is set for forty miles a day with only one feeding
time, nightfall when the sleighs are piled as a wind-break and the
frozen fish are doled out to the ravenous dogs. Gun signals herald the
hunter's approach to a chance camp; and no matter how small and mean the
tepee, the door is always open for whatever visitor, the meat pot set
simmering for hungry travellers. When the snow crust cuts the dogs'
feet, buckskin shoes are tied on the huskies; and when an occasional dog
fags entirely, he is turned adrift from the traces to die. Relentless
as death is Northern cold; and wherever these long midwinter journeys
are made, gruesome traditions are current of hunter and husky.
I remember hearing of one old husky that fell hopelessly lame during the
north trip. Often the drivers are utter brutes to their dogs, speaking
in curses which they say is the only language a husky can understand,
emphasized with the blows of a club. Too often, as well, the huskies are
vicious curs ready to skulk or snap or bolt or fight, anything but work.
But in this case the dog was an old reliable that kept the whole train
in line, and the driver had such an affection for the veteran husky that
when rheumatism crippled the dog's legs the man had not the heart to
shoot such a faithful servant. The dog was turned loose from the traces
and hobbled lamely behind the scampering teams. At last he fell behind
altogether, but at night limped into camp whining his joy and asking
dumbly for the usual fish. In the morning when the other teams set out,
the old husky was powerless to follow. But he could still whine and wag
his tail. He did both with all his might, so that when the departing
driver looked back over his shoulder, he saw a pair of eyes pleading, a
head with raised alert ears, shoulders straining to lift legs that
refused to follow, and a bushy tail thwacking--thwacking--thwacking the
snow!
"You ought to shoot him," advised one driver.
"You do it--you're a dead sure aim," returned the man who had owned the
dog.
But the other drivers were already coasting over the white wastes. The
owner looked at his sleighs as if wondering whether they would stand an
additional burden. Then probably reflecting that old age is not
desirable for a suffering dog in a bitingly keen frost, he turned
towards the husky with his hand in his belt. Thwack--thwack went the
tail as much as to say: "Of course he wouldn't desert me after I've
hauled his sleigh all my life! Thwack--thwack! I'd get up and jump all
around him if I could; there isn't a dog-gone husky in all polar land
with half as good a master as I have!"
The man stopped. Instead of going to the dog he ran back to his sleigh,
loaded his arms full of frozen fish and threw them down before the dog.
Then he put one caribou-skin under the old dog, spread another over him
and ran away with his train while the husky was still guzzling. The fish
had been poisoned to be thrown out to the wolves that so often pursue
Northern dog trains.
Once a party of hunters crossing the Northern Rockies came on a dog
train stark and stiff. Where was the master who had bidden them stand
while he felt his way blindly through the white whirl of a blizzard for
the lost path? In the middle of the last century, one of that famous
family of fur traders, a MacKenzie, left Georgetown to go north to Red
River in Canada. He never went back to Georgetown and he never reached
Red River; but his coat was found fluttering from a tree, a death signal
to attract the first passer-by, and the body of the lost trader was
discovered not far off in the snow. Unless it is the year of the rabbit
pest and the rabbit ravagers are bold with hunger, the pursuing wolves
seldom give full chase. They skulk far to the rear of the dog trains,
licking up the stains of the bleeding feet, or hanging spectrally on
the dim frosty horizon all night long. Hunger drives them on; but they
seem to lack the courage to attack. I know of one case where the wolves
followed the dog trains bringing out a trader's family from the North
down the river-bed for nearly five hundred miles. What man hunter would
follow so far?
The farther north the fox hunter goes, the shorter grow the days, till
at last the sun, which has rolled across the south in a wheel of fire,
dwindles to a disk, the disk to a rim--then no rim at all comes up, and
it is midwinter night, night but not darkness. The white of endless
unbroken snow, the glint of icy particles filling the air, the starlight
brilliant as diamond points, the Aurora Borealis in curtains and shafts
and billows of tenuous impalpable rose-coloured fire--all brighten the
polar night so that the sun is unmissed. This is the region chiefly
hunted by the Eskimo, with a few white men and Chippewyan half-breeds.
The regular Northern hunters do not go as far as the Arctics, but choose
their hunting-ground somewhere in the region of "little sticks," meaning
the land where timber growth is succeeded by dwarf scrubs.
The hunting-ground is chosen always from the signs written across the
white page of the snow. If there are claw-marks, bird signs of Northern
grouse or white ptarmigan or snow-bunting, ermine will be plentiful; for
the Northern birds with their clogged stockings of feet feathers have a
habit of floundering under the powdery snow; and up through that powdery
snow darts the snaky neck of stoat, the white weasel-hunter of birds. If
there are the deep plunges of the white hare, lynx and fox and mink and
marten and pekan will be plentiful; for the poor white hare feeds all
the creatures of the Northern wastes, man and beast. If there are little
dainty tracks--oh, such dainty tracks that none but a high-stepping,
clear-cut, clean-limbed, little thoroughbred could make them!--tracks of
four toes and a thumb claw much shorter than the rest, with a padding of
five basal foot-bones behind the toes, tracks that show a fluff on the
snow as of furred foot-soles, tracks that go in clean, neat, clear long
leaps and bounds--the hunter knows that he has found the signs of the
Northern fox.
Here, then, he will camp for the winter. Camping in the Far North means
something different from the hastily pitched tent of the prairie. The
north wind blows biting, keen, unbroken in its sweep. The hunter must
camp where that wind will not carry scent of his tent to the animal
world. For his own sake, he must camp under shelter from that wind,
behind a cairn of stones, below a cliff, in a ravine. Poles have been
brought from the land of trees on the dog sleigh. These are put up,
criss-crossed at top, and over them is laid, not the canvas tent, but a
tent of skins, caribou, wolf, moose, at a sharp enough angle to let the
snow slide off. Then snow is banked deep, completely round the tent. For
fire, the Eskimo depends on whale-oil and animal grease. The white man
or half-breed from the South hoards up chips and sticks. But mainly he
depends on exercise and animal food for warmth. At night he sleeps in a
fur bag. In the morning that bag is frozen stiff as boards by the
moisture of his own breath. Need one ask why the rarest furs, which can
only be produced by the coldest of climates, are so costly?
Having found the tracks of the fox, the hunter sets out his traps baited
with fish or rabbit or a bird-head. If the snow be powdery enough, and
the trapper keen in wild lore, he may even know what sort of a fox to
expect. In the depths of midwinter, the white Arctic fox has a wool fur
to his feet like a brahma chicken. This leaves its mark in the fluffy
snow. A ravenous fellow he always is, this white fox of the hungry
North, bold from ignorance of man, but hard to distinguish from the snow
because of his spotless coat. The blue fox being slightly smaller than
the full-grown Arctic, lopes along with shorter leaps by which the
trapper may know the quarry; but the blue fox is just as hard to
distinguish from the snow as his white brother. The gray frost haze is
almost the same shade as his steel-blue coat; and when spring comes,
blue fox is the same colour as the tawny moss growth. Colour is blue
fox's defence. Consequently blue foxes show more signs of age than
white--stubby ears frozen low, battle-worn teeth, dulled claws.
The chances are that the trapper will see the black fox himself almost
as soon as he sees his tracks; for the sheeny coat that is black fox's
beauty betrays him above the snow. Bushy tail standing straight out,
every black hair bristling erect with life, the white tail-tip flaunting
a defiance, head up, ears alert, fore feet cleaving the air with the
swift ease of some airy bird--on he comes, jump--jump--jump--more of a
leap than a lope, galloping like a wolf, altogether different from the
skulking run of little foxes, openly exulting in his beauty and his
strength and his speed! There is no mistaking black fox. If the trapper
does not see the black fox scurrying over the snow, the tell-tale
characteristics of the footprints are the length and strength of the
leaps. Across these leaps the hunter leaves his traps. Does he hope for
a silver fox? Does every prospector expect to find gold nuggets? In the
heyday of fur company prosperity, not half a dozen true silver foxes
would be sent out in a year. To-day I doubt if more than one good silver
fox is sent out in half a dozen years. But good white fox and black and
blue are prizes enough in themselves, netting as much to the trapper as
mink or beaver or sable.
II
_The White Ermine_
All that was said of the mystery of fox life applies equally to ermine.
Why is the ermine of Wisconsin and Minnesota and Dakota a dirty little
weasel noted for killing forty chickens in a night, wearing a
mahogany-coloured coat with a sulphur strip down his throat, while the
ermine of the Arctics is as white as snow, noted for his courage,
wearing a spotless coat which kings envy, yes, and take from him? For a
long time the learned men who study animal life from museums held that
the ermine's coat turned white from the same cause as human hair, from
senility and debility and the depleting effect of an intensely trying
climate. But the trappers told a different story. They told of baby
ermine born in Arctic burrows, in March, April, May, June, while the
mother was still in white coat, babies born in an ashy coat something
like a mouse-skin that turned to fleecy white within ten days. They told
of ermine shedding his brown coat in autumn to display a fresh layer of
iron-gray fur that turned sulphur white within a few days. They told of
the youngest and smallest and strongest ermine with the softest and
whitest coats. That disposed of the senility theory. All the trapper
knows is that the whitest ermine is taken when the cold is most intense
and most continuous, that just as the cold slackens the ermine coat
assumes the sulphur tinges, deepening to russet and brown, and that the
whitest ermine instead of showing senility, always displays the most
active and courageous sort of deviltry.
Summer or winter, the Northern trapper is constantly surrounded by
ermine and signs of ermine. There are the tiny claw-tracks almost like
frost tracery across the snow. There is the rifled nest of a poor
grouse--eggs sucked, or chickens murdered, the nest fouled so that it
emits the stench of a skunk, or the mother hen lying dead from a wound
in her throat. There is the frightened rabbit loping across the fields
in the wildest, wobbliest, most woe-begone leaps, trying to shake
something off that is clinging to his throat till over he tumbles--the
prey of a hunter that is barely the size of rabbit's paw. There is the
water-rat flitting across the rocks in blind terror, regardless of the
watching trapper, caring only to reach safety--water--water! Behind
comes the pursuer--this is no still hunt but a straight open chase--a
little creature about the length of a man's hand, with a tail almost as
long, a body scarcely the thickness of two fingers, a mouth the size of
a bird's beak, and claws as small as a sparrow's. It gallops in lithe
bounds with its long neck straight up and its beady eyes fastened on the
flying water-rat. Splash--dive--into the water goes the rat!
Splash--dive--into the water goes the ermine! There is a great stirring
up of the muddy bottom. The water-rat has tried to hide in the
under-tangle; and the ermine has not only dived in pursuit but headed
the water-rat back from the safe retreat of his house. Up comes a black
nose to the surface of the water. The rat is foolishly going to try a
land race. Up comes a long neck like a snake's, the head erect, the
beady eyes on the fleeing water-rat--then with a splash they race
overland. The water-rat makes for a hole among the rocks. Ermine sees
and with a spurt of speed is almost abreast when the rat at bay turns
with a snap at his pursuer. But quick as flash, the ermine has
pirouetted into the air. The long writhing neck strikes like a serpent's
fangs and the sharp fore teeth have pierced the brain of the rat. The
victim dies without a cry, without a struggle, without a pain. That long
neck was not given the ermine for nothing. Neither were those muscles
massed on either side of his jaws like bulging cheeks.
In winter the ermine's murderous depredations are more apparent. Now the
ermine, too, sets itself to reading the signs of the snow. Now the
ermine becomes as keen a still hunter as the man. Sometimes a whirling
snow-fall catches a family of grouse out from furze cover. The trapper,
too, is abroad in the snow-storm; for that is the time when he can set
his traps undetected. The white whirl confuses the birds. They run here,
there, everywhere, circling about, burying themselves in the snow till
the storm passes over. The next day when the hunter is going the rounds
of these traps, along comes an ermine. It does not see him. It is
following a scent, head down, body close to ground, nose here, there,
threading the maze which the crazy grouse had run. But stop, thinks the
trapper, the snow-fall covered the trail. Exactly--that is why the
little ermine dives under snow just as it would under water, running
along with serpentine wavings of the white powdery surface till up it
comes again where the wind has blown the snow-fall clear. Along it runs,
still intent, quartering back where it loses the scent--along again till
suddenly the head lifts--that motion of the snake before it strikes! The
trapper looks. Tail feathers, head feathers, stupid blinking eyes poke
through the fluffy snow-drift. And now the ermine no longer runs openly.
There are too many victims this time--it may get all the foolish hidden
grouse; so it dives and if the man had not alarmed the stupid grouse,
ermine would have darted up through the snow with a finishing stab for
each bird.
By still hunt and open hunt, by nose and eye, relentless as doom, it
follows its victims to the death. Does the bird perch on a tree? Up goes
the ermine, too, on the side away from the bird's head. Does the mouse
thread a hundred mazes and hide in a hole? The ermine threads every
maze, marches into the hidden nest and takes murderous possession. Does
the rat hide under rock? Under the rock goes the ermine. Should the
trapper follow to see the outcome of the contest, the ermine will
probably sit at the mouth of the rat-hole, blinking its beady eyes at
him. If he attacks, down it bolts out of reach. If he retires, out it
comes looking at this strange big helpless creature with bold contempt.
The keen scent, the keen eyes, the keen ears warn it of an enemy's
approach. Summer and winter, its changing coat conceals it. The furze
where it runs protects it from fox and lynx and wolverine. Its size
admits it to the tiniest of hiding-places. All that the ermine can do to
hunt down a victim, it can do to hide from an enemy. These qualities
make it almost invincible to other beasts of the chase. Two joints in
the armour of its defence has the little ermine. Its black tail-tip
moving across snow betrays it to enemies in winter: the very intentness
on prey, its excess of self-confidence, leads it into danger; for
instance, little ermine is royally contemptuous of man's tracks. If the
man does not molest it, it will follow a scent and quarter and circle
under his feet; so the man has no difficulty in taking the little beast
whose fur is second only to that of the silver fox. So bold are the
little creatures that the man may discover their burrows under brush, in
rock, in sand holes, and take the whole litter before the game mother
will attempt to escape. Indeed, the plucky little ermine will follow the
captor of her brood. Steel rat traps, tiny deadfalls, frosted bits of
iron smeared with grease to tempt the ermine's tongue which the frost
will hold like a vice till the trapper comes, and, most common of all,
twine snares such as entrap the rabbit, are the means by which the
ermine comes to his appointed end at the hands of men.
The quality of the pelt shows as wide variety as the skin of the fox;
and for as mysterious reasons. Why an ermine a year old should have a
coat like sulphur and another of the same age a coat like swan's-down,
neither trapper nor scientist has yet discovered. The price of the
perfect ermine-pelt is higher than any other of the rare furs taken in
North America except silver fox; but it no longer commands the fabulous
prices that were certainly paid for specimen ermine-skins in the days
of the Georges in England and the later Louis in France. How were those
fabulously costly skins prepared? Old trappers say no perfectly downy
pelt is ever taken from an ermine, that the downy effect is produced by
a trick of the trade--scraping the flesh side so deftly that all the
coarse hairs will fall out, leaving only the soft under-fur.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 45: That is, as far as trappers yet know.]