Part 19 (1/2)
Sir Alexander MacKenzie reported that in 1798 the North-West Company sent out only 100 racc.o.o.n from the fur country. Last year the city of St. Paul alone cured 115,000 'c.o.o.n-skins. What brought about the change?
Simply an appreciation of the qualities of 'c.o.o.n, which combines the greatest warmth with the lightest weight and is especially adapted for a cold climate and constant wear. What was said of badger applies with greater force to 'c.o.o.n. The 'c.o.o.n in the East is a.s.sociated in one's mind with cabbies, in the West with fas.h.i.+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' 'c.o.o.n coat is a rough yellow fur with red stripes. The Westerner's 'c.o.o.n is a silky brown fur with black stripes. One represents the fall hunt of men and boys round hollow logs, the other the midwinter hunt of a professional trapper in the Far North.
A dog usually bays the 'c.o.o.n 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, musquash the musk-rat, sikak the skunk, wenusk the badger, and the common 'c.o.o.n--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 skin must be stretched and cured.
Turning the 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 wood which he hammers in, each blow widening the s.p.a.ce and stretching 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 garment for himself--cap, coat, or gantlets--in which case he takes out a square needle and pa.s.ses 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
_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 fas.h.i.+on.
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 circ.u.mvents 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 s.h.i.+fts 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-gla.s.s. 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 thras.h.i.+ng 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 p.r.o.ne. 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 gra.s.s 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 a.s.sumes the shades of the russet gra.s.ses 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 gra.s.ses 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 gra.s.ses, 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.