310 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



IV 



W apis tan the Marten 



When Koot went blind on his way home from the rabbit-hunt, 

 he had intended to set out for the pine woods. Though blizzards 

 still howl over the prairie, by March the warm sun of midday has 

 set the sap of the forests stirring and all the woodland life awakens 

 from its long winter sleep. Cougar and lynx and bear rove through 

 the forests, ravenous with spring hunger. Otter, too, may be found 

 where the ice mounds of a waterfall are beginning to thaw. But it 

 is not any of these that the trapper seeks. If they cross his path, 

 good — they, too, will swell his account at the fur post. It is 

 another of the little chaps that he seeks, a little, long, low-set animal 

 whose fur is now glistening bright on the deep dark overhairs, soft 

 as down in the thick fawn underhairs, wapistan the marten. 



When the forest begins to stir with the coming of spring, wapistan 

 stirs too, crawling out from the hollow of some rotten pine log, 

 restless with the same blood-thirst that set the little mink playing 

 his tricks on the hawk. And yet the marten is not such a little 

 viper as the mink. Wapistan will eat leaves and nuts and roots 

 if he can get vegetable food, but failing these, that ravenous spring 

 hunger of his must be appeased with something else. And out 

 he goes from his log hole hunger-bold as the biggest of all other 

 spring ravagers. That boldness gives the trapper his chance at 

 the very time when wapistan's fur is best. All winter the trapper 

 may have taken marten ; but the end of winter is the time when 

 wapistan wanders freely from cover. Thus the trapper's calendar 

 would have months of muskrat first, then beaver and mink and 

 pekan and bear and fox and ermine and rabbit and lynx and marten, 

 with a long idle midsummer space when he goes to the fort for the 

 year's provisions and gathers the lore of his craft. 



Wapistan is not hard to track. Being much longer and heavier 

 than a cat, with very short legs and small feet, his body almost 

 drags the ground and his tracks sink deep, clear, and sharp. His 



