CHAPTER IX 



THE RARE FURS — HOW THE TRAPPER TAKES SAKWASEW THE 

 MINK, NEKIK THE OTTER, WUCHAK THE FISHER, AND WAPIS- 

 TAN THE MARTEN. 



Sakzvasezv the Mink 



There are other little chaps with more valuable fur than mus- 

 quash, 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 monot- 

 onous silent persistence above the swamp. What quarry does he 

 seek, this lawless forager of the upper air 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 



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