Part 18 (2/2)
Thirty marten traps that yield six martens do well. Thirty musk-rat traps are expected to give thirty musk-rats. Add to that the twenty shot, and what does the day's work represent? Here are thirty skins of a coa.r.s.e light reddish hair, such as lines the poor man's overcoat. These will sell for from 7 to 15 cents each. They may go roughly for $3 at the fur post. Here are ten of the deeper brown shades, with long soft fur that lines a lady's cloak. They are fine enough to pa.s.s for mink with a little dyeing, or imitation seal if they are properly plucked. These will bring 25 or 30 cents--say $2.50 in all. But here are ten skins, deep, silky, almost black, for which a Russian officer will pay high prices, skins that will go to England, and from England to Paris, and from Paris to St. Petersburg with accelerating cost mark till the Russian grandee is paying $1 or more for each pelt. The trapper will ask 30, 40, 50 cents for these, making perhaps $3.50 in all. Then this idle fellow's day has totaled up to $9, not a bad day's work, considering he did not go to the university for ten years to learn his craft, did not know what wear and tear and drive meant as he worked, did not spend more than a few cents' worth of shot. But for his musk-rat-pelts the man will not get $9 in coin unless he lives very near the great fur markets. He will get powder and clothing and food and tobacco whose first cost has been increased a hundredfold by s.h.i.+p rates and railroad rates, by keel-boat freight and pack-horse expenses and _portage_ charges past countless rapids. But he will get all that he needs, all that he wants, all that his labour is worth, this ”lazy vagabond” who spends half his time idling in the sun. Of how many other men can that be said?
But what of the ruthless slaughter among the little musk-rats? Does humanity not revolt at the thought? Is this trapping not after all brutal butchery?
Animal kindliness--if such a thing exists among musk-rats--could hardly protest against the slaughter, seeing the musk-rats themselves wage as ruthless a war against water-worm and owlet as man wages against musk-rats. It is the old question, should animal life be sacrificed to preserve human life? To that question there is only one answer. Linings for coats are more important life-savers than all the humane societies of the world put together. It is probable that the first thing the prehistoric man did to preserve his own life when he realized himself was to slay some destructive animal and appropriate its coat.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: _Amisk_, the Chippewyan, _umisk_, the Cree, with much the same sound. A well-known trader told the writer that he considered the variation in Indian language more a matter of dialect than difference in meaning, and that while he could speak only Ojibway he never had any difficulty in understanding and being understood by Cree, Chippewyan, and a.s.siniboine. For instance, rabbit, ”the little white chap,” is _wahboos_ on the Upper Ottawa, _wapus_ on the Saskatchewan, _wapauce_ on the MacKenzie.]
II
_Sikak the Skunk_
Sikak the skunk it is who supplies the best imitations of sable. But cleanse the fur never so well, on a damp day it still emits the heavy sickening odour that betrays its real nature. That odour is sikak's invincible defence against the white trapper. The hunter may follow the little four-abreast galloping footprints that lead to a hole among stones or to rotten logs, but long before he has reached the nesting-place of his quarry comes a stench against which white blood is powerless. Or the trapper may find an unexpected visitor in one of the pens which he has dug for other animals--a little black creature the shape of a squirrel and the size of a cat with white stripings down his back and a bushy tail. It is then a case of a quick deadly shot, or the man will be put to rout by an odour that will pollute the air for miles around and drive him off that section of the hunting-field. The cuttlefish is the only other creature that possesses as powerful means of defence of a similar nature, one drop of the inky fluid which it throws out to hide it from pursuers burning the fisherman's eyes like scalding acid. As far as white trappers are concerned, sikak is only taken by the chance shots of idle days. Yet the Indian hunts the skunk apparently utterly oblivious of the smell. Traps, poison, deadfalls, pens are the Indian weapons against the skunk; and a Cree will deliberately skin and stretch a pelt in an atmosphere that is blue with what is poison to the white man.
The only case I ever knew of white trappers hunting the skunk was of three men on the North Saskatchewan. One was an Englishman who had been long in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company and knew all the animals of the north. The second was the guide, a French-Canadian, and the third a Sandy, fresh ”frae oot the land o' heather.” The men were wakened one night by the noise of some animal scrambling through the window into their cabin and rummaging in the dark among the provisions. The Frenchman sprang for a light and Sandy got hold of his gun.
”Losh, mon, it's a wee bit beastie a' strip't black and white wi' a tail like a so'dier's cocade!”
That information brought the Englishman to his feet howling, ”Don't shoot it! Don't shoot it! Leave that thing alone, I tell you!”
But Sandy being a true son of Scotia with a Presbyterian love of argument wished to debate the question.
”An' what for wu'd a leave it eating a' the oatmeal? I'll no leave it rampagin' th' eatables--I wull be pokin' it oot!--shoo!--shoo!”
At that the Frenchman flung down the light and bolted for the door, followed by the English trader cursing between set teeth that before ”that blundering blockhead had argued the matter” something would happen.
Something did happen.
Sandy came through the door with such precipitate haste that the topmost beam brought his head a mighty thwack, roaring out at the top of his voice that the deil was after him for a' the sins that iver he had committed since he was born.
III
_Wenusk the Badger_
Badger, too, is one of the furs taken by the trapper on idle days. East of St. Paul and Winnipeg, the fur is comparatively unknown, or if known, so badly prepared that it is scarcely recognisable for badger. This is probably owing to differences in climate. Badger in its perfect state is a long soft fur, resembling wood marten, with deep overhairs almost the length of one's hand and as dark as marten, with underhairs as thick and soft and yielding as swan's-down, shading in colour from fawn to grayish white. East of the Mississippi, there is too much damp in the atmosphere for such a long soft fur. Consequently specimens of badger seen in the East must either be sheared of the long overhairs or left to mat and tangle on the first rainy day. In New York, Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto--places where the finest furs should be on sale if anywhere--I have again and again asked for badger, only to be shown a dull matted short fawnish fur not much superior to cheap dyed furs. It is not surprising there is no demand for such a fur and Eastern dealers have stopped ordering it. In the North-West the most common mist during the winter is a frost mist that is more a snow than a rain, so there is little injury to furs from moisture. Here the badger is prime, long, thick, and silky, almost as attractive as ermine if only it were enhanced by as high a price. Whether badger will ever grow in favour like musk-rat or 'c.o.o.n, and play an important part in the returns of the fur exporters, is doubtful. The world takes its fas.h.i.+ons from European capitals; and European capitals are too damp for badger to be in fas.h.i.+on with them. Certainly, with the private dealers of the North and West, badger is yearly becoming more important.
Like the musk-rat, badger is prime in the autumn. Wherever the hunting-grounds of the animals are, there will the hunting-grounds of the trapper be. Badgers run most where gophers sit sunning themselves on the clay mounds, ready to bolt down to their subterranean burrows on the first approach of an enemy. Eternal enemies these two are, gopher and badger, though they both live in ground holes, nest their lairs with gra.s.ses, run all summer and sleep all winter, and alike prey on the creatures smaller than themselves--mice, moles, and birds. The gopher, or ground squirrel, is smaller than the wood squirrel, while the badger is larger than a Manx cat, with a shape that varies according to the exigencies of the situation. Normally, he is a flattish, fawn-coloured beast, with a turtle-shaped body, little round head, and small legs with unusually strong claws. Ride after the badger across the prairie and he stretches out in long, lithe shape, resembling a baby cougar, turning at every pace or two to snap at your horse, then off again at a hulking scramble of astonis.h.i.+ng speed. Pour water down his burrow to compel him to come up or down, and he swells out his body, completely filling the pa.s.sage, so that his head, which is downward, is in dry air, while his hind quarters alone are in the water. In captivity the badger is a business-like little body, with very sharp teeth, of which his keeper must beware, and some of the tricks of the skunk, but inclined, on the whole, to mind his affairs if you will mind yours. Once a day regularly every afternoon out of his lair he emerges for the most comical sorts of athletic exercises. Hour after hour he will trot diagonally--because that gives him the longest run--from corner to corner of his pen, rearing up on his hind legs as he reaches one corner, rubbing the back of his head, then down again and across to the other corner, where he repeats the performance. There can be no reason for the badger doing this, unless it was his habit in the wilds when he trotted about leaving dumb signs on mud banks and brushwood by which others of his kind might know where to find him at stated times.
Sunset is the time when he is almost sure to be among the gopher burrows. In vain the saucy jay shrieks out a warning to the gophers. Of all the prairie creatures, they are the stupidest, the most beset with curiosity to know what that jay's shriek may mean. Sunning themselves in the last rays of daylight, the gophers perch on their hind legs to wait developments of what the jay announced. But the badger's fur and the gopher mounds are almost the same colour. He has pounced on some playful youngsters before the rest see him. Then there is a wild scuttling down to the depths of the burrows. That, too, is vain; for the badger begins ripping up the clay bank like a grisly, down--down--in pursuit, two, three, five feet, even twelve.
Then is seen one of the most curious freaks in all the animal life of the prairie. The underground galleries of the gophers connect and lead up to different exits. As the furious badger comes closer and closer on the cowering gophers, the little cowards lose heart, dart up the galleries to open doors, and try to escape through the gra.s.s of the prairie. But no sooner is the badger hard at work than a gray form seems to rise out of the earth, a coyote who had been slinking to the rear all the while; and as the terrified gophers scurry here, scurry there, coyote's white teeth snap!--snap! He is here--there--everywhere--pouncing--jumping--having the fun of his life, gobbling gophers as cats catch mice. Down in the bottom of the burrow, the badger may get half a dozen poor cooped huddling prisoners; but the coyote up on the prairie has devoured a whole colony.
Do these two, badger and coyote, consciously hunt together? Some old trappers vow they do--others just as vehemently that they don't. The fact remains that wherever the badger goes gopher-hunting on an unsettled prairie, there the coyote skulks reaping reward of all the badger's work. The coincidence is no stranger than the well-known fact that sword-fish and thrasher--two different fish--always league together to attack the whale.
One thing only can save the gopher colony, and that is the gun barrel across yon earth mound where a trapper lies in wait for the coming of the badger.
IV
_The 'c.o.o.n_
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