CHAPTEE XVII 



THE BARE FUES HOW THE TEAPPEE TAKES SAKWA- 

 SEW THE MINK, NEKIK THE OTTEE, WUCHAK THE 

 FISHEE, AND WAPISTAN THE MAETEN 



Sakwaseiv the Mink 



THEEE 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 monot 

 onous 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. 

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