Part 19 (1/2)

Sir Alexander MacKenzie reported that in 1798 the North-West Company sent out only 100 raccoon from the fur country Last year the city of St Paul alone cured 115,000 'coon-skins What brought about the change?

Simply an appreciation of the qualities of 'coon, which coht and is especially adapted for a cold clireater force to 'coon The 'coon in the East is associated in one's mind with cabbies, in the West with fashi+onably dressed men and women

And there is just as wide a difference in the quality of the fur as in the quality of the people The cabbies' 'coon coat is a rough yellow fur with red stripes The Westerner's 'coon is a silky brown fur with black stripes One represents the fall hunt of s, the other the midwinter hunt of a professional trapper in the Far North

A dog usually bays the 'coon out of hiding in the East Tiny tracks, like a child's hand, tell the Northern hunter where to set his traps

Wahboos the rabbit, er, and the common 'coon--these are the little chaps whose hunt fills the idle days of the trapper's busy life At night, before the rough stone hearth which he has built in his cabin, he is still busy by fire-light preparing their pelts Each skinthe skin fur side in, the trapper pushes into the pelt a wedge-shaped slab of spliced cedar Into the splice he shoves another wedge of hich he ha the skin All pelts are stretched fur in but the fox Tacking the stretched skin on a flat board, the trapper hangs it to dry till he carries all to the fort; unless, indeed, he should need a garantlets--in which case he takes out a square needle and passes his evenings like a tailor, sewing

CHAPTER XVII

THE RARE FURS--HOW THE TRAPPER TAKES SAKWASEW THE MINK, NEKIK THE OTTER, WUCHAK THE FISHER, AND WAPISTAN THE MARTEN

I

_Sak the Mink_

There are other little chaps with her honour than inside linings, and wahboos, whose snowy coat is put to the indignity of i of black cat for the ermine's jet tip There are mink and otter and fisher and fox and erht in coin of the realm

On one of those idle days when the trapper see 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 swaer 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 fros and shrill lonely callings to an unseenhawk is as silent as the very personification of death

Apparently he can'tdown there in the swa 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, fro An older felloould not be advertising his intentions in this fashi+on

Besides, an older haould have russet-gray feathering Is the rascally young hawktrout that usually frequent the quiet pools beloaterfall Or does he aie that has not yet learned the wisdom of caution That is why there are sored hawks in our ray veterans whose craft circu 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 shi+fts his position that hethe hawk

Down on the pebbled beach below the waterfalls lies an auburn bundle of fur, about the size of a very long, slied cat, still as a stone--soed torpid with fish, stretched out full length to sleep in the sun To sleep, ah, yes, and as the Danish prince said, ”perchance to dreaood care never to sleep where they are exposed to their countless enemies This sleep of the weasel arouses the lass The sleeper is aa 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 swaerously 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 clingingDown bird and beast fall Over they roll on the sandy beach, hawk and s to beat the treacherous little va! Now the bird flounders up craning his neck fros are prone They cease to flutter

Running to the bank the trapper is surprised to see the little blood-suckerit as all creatures akin to the weasel family usually do That iven their first lesson in bird-hunting, in yrfalcon

By a reddragged, a little webbed footprint on the wet clay, a tinyof 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 assurasses where they run until the white of winter covers the land Then--as if nature were to exact avenge 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 ould be worthless now but will be valuable in the winter, it is not every day that even a trapper has a chance to trail afamily

But suddenly the trail stops Here is a sandy patch with sorasses 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 fa the rushes Thein his hand, he is dragging out bones, feathers, skeleton s, proht to the burrow by the mink, when a little cattish _s-p-i-t!_ al war, 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 rasses, but somehow this one had been left Will he take it ho 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 fro to see if he could not catch the whole family, mother and kittens, for an Eastern museum Furtively at first, the mother had cos to keep the kittens warm and lain in wait for thecomfortably cared for, than she deserted theracious ene 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 careen and senna tea boiled can't cure that So keenly did the gipsy longing co to the woods by way of the chih a parchap that served the trapper as aAnd the third bobby dealt such an ill-te's nose that the co over these experiments, the trapper wisely puts the mink back in the nest ords 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, al 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 ahis kittens, only to have the little viper set on them with tooth and claw as soon as its eyes opened? Also hbours 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

The trapper did co all the swamp-lands for beaver-dams Swamp lands often mean beaver-daish stream