WAPISTAN THE MARTEN 253 



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 trap 

 per 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 

 musk-rat 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 feet are smaller than 

 otter s and mink s, but easily distinguishable from those 

 two fishers. The water animal leaves a spreading foot 

 print, the mark of the webbed toes without any fur on 

 the padding of the toe-balls. The land animal of the 

 same size has clear cut, narrower, heavier marks. By 

 March, these dotting foot-tracks thread the snow 

 everywhere. 



Coming on marten tracks at a pine log, the trap 

 per sends in his dog or prods with a stick. Finding 



