Feb. 17, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
205 
Buying the Canoe 
By CARITA LEMMON 
S is, having finished her chapter, snuggled 
deeper into the big armchair, blinking at 
the fire. 
“Sis, we’ll have to buy a canoe this spring.” 
“I know it, Jim,” she murmured, “but,” rub¬ 
bing thumb and fingers together with monetary 
insinuation, “where’ll we get it, boy?” 
“Er—fur trading,” he answered, with a large 
gesture. 
“In Jersey? With little old New York just 
over the Palisades? What’ll we trap, Jimmy, 
field mice or the priceless cattail?” 
“A-aw! mink. I believe there are mink still 
around, along the edges of the flats, up the side 
creeks and ditches. They use the same den year 
after year, you know, and if we found a home 
den, we might trap three or four right there. 
CAUGHT. 
Six mink pelts would bring the price of a canoe 
all right.” 
Sis yawned with frank unconcealment and 
turned again to her book. ‘Certainly, Jim, and 
I’ve been told the surest way is to put salt on 
their tails.” 
With a fine scorn for girls, Jim went out into 
the January sunshine to look over the field of 
proposed operations. Down across the marshes 
he went, shattering crystal panes of “air ice” 
at every stride. There was two inches of fluffy 
snow on the ground, ideal for tracking, and he 
noted many rabbit tracks, and the wee trails of 
mice, delicately chaining stump to stump. Just 
where the woods, flanked by wading alder 
bushes, merge with the wide flats, Jim stopped 
with a satisfied “I thought so.” There were m'nk 
tracks without doubt. Skirting regiments of s*^ark 
cattails, Jim followed the trail to the s'ight eleva¬ 
tion of a ditch bank that ran like a long finger 
from the woods out across the salt meadows. 
There he came upon what must have been in 
minkdom a Fifth avenue mansion. Mink are 
confirmed globe trotters, but this was evidently 
a favorite resort, placed as it was between the 
fat fields by the creek and the upland hunting 
grounds. Tracks led away from it in three di¬ 
rections, and Jim, feeling that he now had, as 
it were, an introduction to the inner circles of 
minkdom, chuckled gleefully. 
“Oh, there’s mink, mink, lashin’s of mink!” 
he chanted, paraghrasing Sandys’ countryman, 
and hurried home to crow over Sis. She, fired 
with sudden enthusiasm, helped him rummage 
house and stable for traps, and joyfully tramped 
down to the ditch to watch him make the first 
sets. Afterward they followed along the two 
streams that empty into the creek and found 
more tracks, and under a tangle of brush by an 
uprooted tree, a small den. In one place Jim 
broke the ice over a pool and scooped out a net¬ 
ful of killies to serve as bait. Tremendous vital¬ 
ity they have, these little fish, squirming and 
gasping for hours after being taken from the 
water. A man once said he had found on a 
bank some frozen killies that he took home. 
When they thawed, one of them began to open 
and shut his mouth, and finally gasped: “I’m 
dry; give me a Scotch.” Oh, well— 
It was customary in those days for Jim to eat 
his breakfast in the pantry about 9:40, so when 
he appeared next morning at 7 :25 and offered to 
carry in the muffins, his mother beamed at him. 
“He must have heard, after all, what I said last 
evening about promptness,” she thought. “Dear 
boy, he does try to please me.” But Sis began 
to flick her duster about with perilous speed and 
knew that she would have to sneak out of wash¬ 
ing the dishes if she was to be in at the death, 
if there was a death that day, in the family of 
Putorius Vison, Esq. 
The two returned from this first visit to the 
line in topping spirits, for was there not, hang¬ 
ing limply from the trap in Jim’s hand a poten¬ 
tial five or six dollars toward the price of the 
canoe? They bore the spoil up to the attic where 
there was a tab’e with a newspaper spread on 
it. Jim laid the m-'nk there, and drew forth 
a murderous looking knife. 
“Y—you’re going to do this part of it. aren’t 
you, Jim? Sis quavered. 
“Well, Sis,” he began, very intent on the knife, 
“you know, you really haven’t done very much 
to help, so far. If you wouldn’t mind doing 
this?” 
If anyone but Jim had asked it. However, she 
swallowed hard, and limply took the knife. Ugh ! 
The mischief that had lurked in Jim’s eye came 
out and sat boldly on his face. Gravely he gave 
directions, palely she carried them out, until an 
unlucky jab of the knife wrought her own, and 
the mink’s undoing. With a horrified gasp Sis 
dropped the knife and fled away from the scent¬ 
laden atmosphere, leaving Jim to reflect that a 
practical joke after all is apt to be like the 
swine who turn again and rend you. The end 
of the week brought them another mink, a victim 
to a carnal appetite for killies. Then came a 
thaw, and a time of raining and freezing that 
blocked the traps and tried Jim’s patience. But 
it cleared after awhile, and at last one night 
Putorius, Jr., evidently came home at a shock¬ 
ing hour, tried to sneak in the side door with¬ 
out waking the mater, and stepped into a No. 
I trap. There they found him next morn¬ 
ing, jaws bloody, ground all torn up, and he 
still fighting mad. The old man side-stepped 
next and was caught in an equally tight place. 
By this time the partners, so sure were, they of 
success, were discussing what time to order the 
canoe, but their hopes were dashed. Whether 
there never had been but four mink in the 
neighborhood, or whether others, alarmed, had 
fled, it remained that the ditch, knew Putorius no 
more that winter. 
“Of course,” Jim pondered, “there’ll be plenty 
of muskrats down there in the spring, but we’d 
have to catch a lot of them. Wish to goodness 
we could trap two more mink somewhere.” 
Sis, on the rug, frowned thoughtfully at the 
fire. “Jim, why don't you look along Phillips’ 
ditch?” Jim smiled tolerantly. “Oh, it’s much 
too civilized there. Maybe there’s one along the 
Cres.skill brook, though.” 
Now, this stream rose, and still rises, in a 
ONE MORE. 
marsh on the Palisades and dashes down the 
hillside with a great deal of noisy enthusiasm 
under the gloomy shade of hemlocks. Up there, 
where the brook was conducting itself with all 
the dash of a professional trout stream Jim 
found mink tracks, and though he feared that 
the animal had just passed through on a forag¬ 
ing expedition, he set the traps. The mink did 
not materialize, but a half wild cat did, and with 
its short tail and long legs, feathered out at the 
joints, was an interesting case of reversion to 
type, but though Jim was glad to see one less 
“varmint” in the world, he was growing discour¬ 
aged, and the season was on the wing. 
“Jim,” Sis began, “at least you might look by 
Phillips’ ditch.” 
“No use,” he answered patiently, “people 
around there every day. No mink would fre¬ 
quent a place like that. If you want to pack me 
up some lunch to-morrow. I’ll go over to the 
Cherry Hill brook. If that fails, we’ll have to 
bank on the inglorious muskrat.” 
Now, Sis had not been at all impressed by his 
