Part 18 (1/2)

Perhaps when the great profit-and-loss account of the hereafter is cast up, the trapper reater sue than theround of drive and worry and grind Usually the busy city man has spent nine or ten of the most precious years of his youth in study and travel to learn other hts for his own life's work The trapper spends an idle h a orld learning the technic of his craft at first hand

And the trapper's learning is all done leisurely, calmly, without bluster or drive, just as nature herself carries on the work of her realm

On one of these idle days when the trapper see so lazily over the prarie corowth on the crisp autu up-wind, the trapper at once heads a ard course It coreensomewhere on a dank bank But ravines are not dank in the clear fall days; and by October theodour with all the difference between it and dead leaves that there is between June roses and the dried dust of a rose jar The wind falls He ain, but he knows there nant water somewhere in these prairie ravines; and a sense that is part _feel_, part intuition, part inference from what the wind told of the marsh sgy botto, or they would not be so bold--flackers up, wings about with a clatter, then settles again a space farther ahead when the ducks see that the intruder reelse had taken alarh the dry reeds; for a wriggling trail is there, shohere a creature has dived below and is running a deep in the shade of the highest flags solemnly perches a small prairie-owl It is al It hunches up and blinks stupidly at all this noise in the swamp

”Oho,” thinks the trapper, ”so I've disturbed a still hunt,” and he sits if anything stiller than ever, only stooping to lay his gun down and pick up a stone

At first there is nothing but the quacking of the ducks at the far end of the swas and a water-snake has splashed away to some dark haunt The whisky-jack calls out officious note froht! Me--ht!--he's quite haropher mounds

Then the interrupted activity of the swa the riot act to young teals, old geese co necks to drink at the water's edge, lizards and water-snakes splashi+ng down the banks,the warmth of the short autu fruit, the harvest-hoion north and west of Minnesota--the Indian land of ”sky-coloured water”--the sloughs lie on the prairie under a crystal sky that turns pools to silver On this almost motionless surface are mirrored as if by an etcher's needle the sky above, feathered wind clouds, flag ste As the mountains stand for majesty, the prairies for infinity, so the marsh lands are types of repose

But it is not a lifeless repose Barely has the trapper settled hih the water at the fore end of the wriggling trail A round rat-shaped head follows this twitching proboscis Then a brownish earth-coloured body sith a wriggling sidelongowlet A little noiseless leap! and a drippingflat tail and webbed feet scrabbles up the moss-covered tree towards the stupid bird Another moment, and the oould have toppled into the water with a pair of sharp teeth clutched to its throat Then the man shi+es a well-ai blindly through the flags to another hiding-place, while the wriggle-wriggle of the waters tells where the rowth From other idle days like these, the trapper has learned that musk-rats are not solitary but always to be found in colonies Now if the musk-rat were as wise as the beaver to whom the Indians say he is closely akin, that alarmed marauder would carry the news of the man-intruder to the whole swamp

Perhaps if the others reun what ht of every musk-rat from the marsh But musquash--little beaver, as the Indians call hihtened from his home as _amisk_,[44] the beaver In fact, nature's provision for the musk-rat's protection seems to have emboldened the little rodent almost to the point of stupidity His skin is of that burnt uuished from the earth At one moment his sharp nose cuts the water, at the next he is cole; and while you are straining for a sight of hih the pool, he has scurried across a mud bank to his burrow

Hunt hih swa from the Chesapeake and the Hackensack to the swamps of ”sky-coloured water” on the far prairie, little n of dio, in 1788, so little was reat North-West Company of Canada sent out only 17,000 or 20,000 skins a year So rapidly didand i for 200,000 le Hudson's Bay Company fort In Canada the climate compels the use of heavier furs than in the United States, so that the all-fur coat is in greater demand than the fur-lined; but in Canada, not less than 2,000,000 musk-rat furs are taken every year In the United States the total is close on 4,000,000

In one city alone, St Paul, 50,000 le stretch of good round has yielded that nun of the hunt telling on the prolific littlefrom 7 cents to 75 cents and the value of the musk-rat-hunt becomes apparent

What is the secret of thecreatures of the chase like buffalo and timber-wolf have been almost exterminated?

In the first place, settlers can't farm swamps; so the musk-rat thrives just as well in the swamps of New Jersey to-day as when the first white hunter set foot in As and snakes as on water mussels and lily-pads If one sort of food fails, the estion as the bear and changes his diet Then he can hide as well in water as on land And most important of all, musk-rat's family is as numerous as a cat's, five to nine rats in a litter, and two or three litters a year These are the points that make for little musquash's continuance in spite of all that shot and trap can do

Having discovered what the dank whiff, half ani the colony He knows there is no risk of the little still-hunter carrying alarether probable that the fleeing ht for the colony On the other hand, the h the rushes

Besides, the trapper observed tracks, tiny leaf-like tracks as of little webbed feet, over the soft clay of the marsh bank These will lead to the colony, so the trapper rises and parting the rushes not too noisily, follows the little footprint along the in of the swamp

Here the track is lost at the narrow ford of an inflowing stream, but across the creek lies a fallen poplar littered with--what? The feathers and bones of a dead owlet Balancing hi than boots!--the trapper crosses the log and takes up the trail through the rushes But here musquash has dived off into the water for the express purpose of throwing a possible pursuer off the scent But the tracks betrayed which wayif he does not find the little haycock houses on this side, he can cross to the other

[Illustration: Fort MacPherson, now the most northerly post of the Hudson's Bay Company, beyond tree line; hence the houses are built of imported timber, with thatch roofs]

Presently, he al just at this place It is the wreck of a wolverine's ravage--a little wattled dome-shaped house exposed to that arch-destroyer by the shrinking of the swamp So shallow has the water become, that a wolverine has easily waded and leaped clear across to the roof of the musk-rat's house A beaver-daht of the wolverine's claws; how rass and ether with soft clay? The roof has been torn fro plainly the domestic economy of the allery of sticks and grasses, where the fah walls below the water-line and two or three little openings that must have been safely under water before the swamp receded Perhaps a mussel or lily bulb has been left in the deserted larder From the oozy slime below the mid-floor to the topmost ill not measure more than two or three feet If the swamp had not dried here, the stupid little er's claould probably have coone on living in danger till another wolverine came But a water doorway the musk-rat must have That he has learned by countless assaults on his house-top, so when the marsh retreated the musk-rats abandoned their house

All about the deserted house are runways, tiny channels across oozy peninsulas and islands of the ht make The trapper jumps across to a dry patch or mound in the midst of the slimy bottoht--hollow; a ees from this house had scuttled from the wolverine But now all is deserted The water has shrunk--that was the danger signal to theto a deeper part of the swamp Perhaps, after all, this is a very old house not used since last winter

Going back to the bank, the trapper skirts through the crush of brittle rushes round the swanant bayou, heavy with the ss, peers out and sees what rese town on water--such a number of wattled houses that they had shut in the water as with a dali trail across the water; but fro

If it inter, the trapper could proceed as he would against a beaver colony, staking up the outlet fro the ice round the different houses, breaking open the roofs and penning up any fugitives in their own bank burrows till he and his dog and a spear could clear out the gallery But in winter there isis for odd days before the regular hunt

Opening the sack which he usually carries on his back, the trapper draws out three dozen ser than a rat or mouse trap Some of these he places across the runithout any bait; for the -s pomatum Some he baits with carrot or apple Others he does not bait at all, sis where he knows the owlets roost by day But each of the traps--bait or no bait--he attaches to a stake driven into the water so that the prisoner will be held under when he plunges to escape till he is drowned Otherwise, he would gnaw his foot free of the trap and disappear in a burrow