Vison, the Mink (American Woodland Tales)

by Jean Craighead George

  “Well,” he called to his friends, “I see you did right well!”

  “It sure was a good trip,” Al said as he looked up from his work. “Best fishing I’ve had in years.” Buck came down to hear the details.

  “Ain’t heard nothin’ from old Sam, have you, Buck?” Will asked.

  “No, I thought he went with you. He hasn’t been around here these past few days.”

  “Well, now that beats everything,” Will replied. “He sure did disappear. Al, I ’spect we better go out and look for him in the morning. I just guess he’s out on the river somewhere.”

  The men went home. That night the turtles found the entrails of the fish. Procyon, the raccoon, came through the bushes, following the aroma of the debris. Eagerly he ate.

  Vulpes slipped down to the canal in the dark and took the delicious fish heads back through the woods to his den.

  At dawn the buzzards circled down from their roosts and finished the remains of the fishing expedition.

  Sam lived like a king on his island. He kept his mink close to his sycamore tree with offerings from his abundant catch. At night he would wait until the beautiful creature awoke and came bounding toward his camp for the remains of a rabbit, or the head of a fish. Sitting silently, he would watch the active creature bound onto a rock, look the situation over, and boldly dart from pan to pan until he found the fresh food the man had set out for him.

  Old Sam was always astonished by the mink’s audacity and curiosity. He looked over all the shiny objects at Sam’s camp—his knife, his axe—and would occasionally dart off with a small piece of string or a burnt matchstick.

  “Vison and me is both outlaws,” Sam would chuckle when the mink had vanished back into the garden of flowers. “Old Will ain’t gonna catch Vison, and old game warden Stanley ain’t gonna catch Sam.”

  About three days later, Sam was fishing off the end of his island when he heard the clunking of a boat pole. He ducked down into the bushes and waited silently. As he strained to see who was coming, a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He thought he recognized the figure of Stanley.

  The boat drew nearer and nearer. Now he could see two men. The closer he watched, however, the more curious he became. If it was Stanley, he had got some one of the river men to pole him out. The handling of the big flat boat in the swift current was too expert for a novice.

  Sam waited until the boat had rounded the last boulder. Then he clearly made out the faces of his friends, Will and Al.

  “Hall-o there,” a voice called out. Sam did not answer.

  “Sam, are you there?” The old Negro set his rod in a crotch and eased quietly up the shore of the island.

  “Now, what do them boys want?” Sam muttered. “They wouldn’t turn me over to the law.”

  Will and Al had now pulled up at the little beach. He could hear Al’s voice.

  “Yep, he’s here all right. Here’s my boat tucked under those limbs.”

  “Wonder what the trouble is?” Will said.

  Sam slipped noiselessly toward the men, still suspicious, but curious about their mission.

  “Hey, Will, Al,” Sam whispered when he was almost upon them. The two men looked up, startled, recognized their friend, and then beamed.

  “Sam! Well, you sure had us worried. Where’ve you been?”

  “Right here,” Sam said suspiciously. “Who sent you? Old game warden Stanley?”

  “Stanley?” Will said in amazement. “No, now what would he want with you?”

  “He was waiting for me at your car the morning of the big fish, and I just slipped him and came out here for a few days.”

  Will threw back his head and laughed.

  “That’s a good one, Sam. He wasn’t looking for you. He was looking for me. Had some bulletins he had promised to bring by.”

  A slow grin crept across Sam’s face. He chuckled, then broke into a hearty, shrill-pitched laugh.

  “Guess I fooled him. Didn’t I, Will?” he said, “running off when he didn’t even want me!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE HOT WINDS of summer dried the marshes along the river bottom and burned the hills and fields. The river dropped, leaving a muddy rim to crack in the sun like a jigsaw puzzle. The mosquitoes and flies filled the still air with their whining buzz. July and August had come to the Potomac River.

  Vison spent the torrid weeks on the islands. He traveled from one to the next, taking the mice and muskrats as he came upon them, and moving on when the hunting required. During the still, windless hours of the night, he left his island hideout and went down to the water to swim. Splashing through the rapids, fighting and breasting the current, he swam through the channels between the islands. He looked up to see the blue-black sky arched above the intertwining elms. The trees were woven together from island to island by the latching fingers of the grape vines, and they made great corridors down which the river took its languid course. In these river corridors Vison found fishing excellent. Night explorations after minnows and sunfish led him to new realms beneath the exposed roots of the elms and into the pot holes of the great river rocks, carved by sand and pebbles swirling around and around in the current.

  As September came, the outlaw watched the downpour of a hurricane passing along the coast fill the Potomac and cover the river bottom with swirling, muddy waters. The flood sent much of the waterlife to shelter. When food became hard to find, Vison left the islands and boulders and swam back to his Maryland shore. He returned to Muddy Branch and his foot-log den as the warblers gathered in flocks to move south with the sun.

  When the first hunt of October filled the hills with the bellowing voices of the hounds, Vison was a large and beautiful animal. His pelt was nearly prime. A blending of dark umbers and golden browns with shining black guard hairs on his tail made him as fine a mink as ever loped across the pebbles and sands of Muddy Branch. He weighed over three pounds, and his black eyes shone with health and vigor.

  Upon his return to Muddy Branch he checked all his old dens as he circled a wide area in hunting. He regularly patrolled this broad region. Parts of this range he shared, but the territory around his foot-log den he held for himself. So with the first snow flurries of winter, Vison was a powerful and vigilant owner of streams, swamps, fence rows, springs, woodlands and fields.

  More and more Sam was becoming a part of the meandering Muddy Branch. Vison accepted him as he did Procyon and Vulpes and the other animals that tramped his territory. He learned quickly how to escape the man’s dull eyes and insensitive nose. He generally kept out of his way, for his size demanded respect, but he also learned to make use of him when the opportunity arose. There was the morning Sam shot a squirrel near the foot-log den.

  The loud report of the shotgun awoke the outlaw. His first reaction was to withdraw deeper into his den; then his curiosity overcame his instinct, and he thrust his head out through the leaves. A big fox squirrel plummeted from the tree and dropped on the floor of the woods not far from him. Like a rocket, he left his hideout and sped to the animal. He took the squirrel to the foot of a beech tree and cached it in a hollow stump where he could hide.

  The old man of Red Sand Hill looked for his game. It was not on the ground. He was sure he had shot it, for he had seen it fall. He searched the base of the tree. No squirrel. Looking up into the yellow-brown leaves, he checked to see if it might have caught on a limb. The squirrel was not there. He kicked the leaves aside once more and then, puzzled, walked off through the woods in search of more game for his kettle.

  When Sam had gone, Vison came out of his stump and set upon this easily purloined meal.

  Some days later, Sam stole from Vison. The mink had just caught a sunfish and had placed it on a stone in the creek. He dived down into the water for another that was swimming past his rock. Sam arrived at Vison’s fishing rock at this moment. He saw the sunfish upon the stone and picked it up. The familiar tooth marks on the back of the head told Sam it was Vison’s fish. Tipping his hat toward the
stream, he thanked his friend and walked away with the fish.

  When Vison came back to the rock, Sam had vanished. Vison looked about for his fish. From the rock to the water to the bank he darted. When he came upon the scent of Sam, strong on the top of the bank, he gave up the hunt and went back to the underwater world.

  The old Negro came to Vison’s territory frequently, until Vison could distinguish Sam from other men by his scent, his footsteps, and his humming voice. And it was through these visits that Sam eventually discovered Vison’s foot-log den.

  Sam was coming through the woods at dawn, having spent the night down the river. As he came up the bank of Muddy Branch, he kept a lookout for Vison. He heard the mink playing in the water around the roots of a fallen tree. Sam came upon him silently. Through the brush he could see him leap from the log to the silt, toss a piece of bark into the air, and pounce upon it as it struck the ground at the edge of the stream. Vison rolled and turned, rubbed his neck in the dry sand, scratched his back, and then slipped into the water and swam toward the foot log. He sprang out of sight beneath the log.

  Sam followed him. There on the bank, concealed by the dry spears of nettles and the leafless vines of a wild cucumber, was a small hole that led off into the earth. Sam knelt down and inspected it closely. The remains of a mouse lay about three feet away from the brush-covered entrance, and a well-worn path led from the water to the log. It was used, and used frequently.

  He walked away quickly after the survey, gloriously happy that he had found the den of the elusive mink of Muddy Branch. Sam thought of Stacks and how he would also like to know this secret. It was a temptation to tell Will and to lead the trapper of Seneca right to Vison. Yet he did not want his mink to be taken. As he walked home, he fought the desire to show Stacks this den. He wanted Will’s approval and recognition. Someday, he felt, the information would be too much for him to keep, and he would deceive his woodland friend. This knowledge made him weary and unhappy. He skirted the hill where Stacks’ house stood and took the long road home to Red Sand Hill.

  Stacks, however, knew that Vison denned somewhere on Muddy Branch. His frequent travels through the woods had given him many clues to the whereabouts of the den. A screaming blue jay had led him to where Vison was hunting. The scales and tail of a fish showed where he had been fishing. A spoor here and there showed that he had crossed River Road and was probably in the muskrat pond. But Will did not know the exact location of the den.

  This fall the woodland was well aware of Vison. He had taken a prominent place in the life of the wilderness. Jays pestered him when he went abroad by day, and the hungry, half-starved hounds of the river country would pick up his trail and chase him along the stream beds. Stacks was tracking him down, and Al was still prepared to shoot him on sight.

  But as the woodland closed in on Vison, so Vison became a keener and more wary mink. He learned to lose the jays almost as soon as they found him. The hounds he easily eluded by swimming up the stream, and the scent of Stacks he now associated with the strong lures and open traps. These smells he shied away from. Sam was the only one he tolerated, and their strange friendship was a chance and occasional thing.

  Bubo, his other great enemy, he avoided. He knew where the owl hunted and where he was roosting. If Vison crossed these areas, he was constantly under threat of attack; so he moved through the dense underbrush, never giving his enemy a chance to strike.

  Oddly enough, the mink learned that one of his safest hideouts was in and around the homes of men: the squatter’s porch, the foundations of Will Stacks’ shack. For nights at a time he would leave Muddy Branch and lope off to the hill where Will’s small house sat like a box before the woods. Here he would catch mice and dine on the trimmings from the trapper’s pelts.

  One night he found a hole between the foundation stones. He slid through the hole and emerged in the darkness under the house. Stacks was sleeping, and but for the occasional squeaking of the springs in his old iron bed, there was no sound in the shack.

  Vison moved over the powdery earth, tracking the scents and noises as he explored this new territory. Above him, woven to the floor boards, were the wintering cocoons of butterflies and moths. He pulled these down, took the pupae from their fibrous mantles, and dined upon them. After eating, he selected a dry pocket at the base of a supporting beam and slept for a few hours.

  Vison stirred in his sleep. Momentarily awake, he was about to fall back into his deep slumber when he heard a faint swish and caught a fleeting movement alongside the beam above him.

  A large blacksnake that lived between the plaster walls of the shack had come down from its snug resting place and was gliding through a crack in the floor.

  In the warm pockets of the walls the snake was protected and had not yet curled into the torpid hibernating sleep of the wintering reptiles. The snake was sliding almost silently, using the cracks and projections of the floor as purchase points for its creeping scales and undulating body. Then the snake stopped with part of its long body swaying slowly over the earthen floor beneath Will’s shack.

  It was at this moment that Vison saw it. But the forked tongue of the snake had caught particles of dust carrying Vison’s scent. A special sense organ in the roof of the snake’s mouth smelled these particles carried by the flicking tongue. Warned of Vison’s presence, the snake slid back through the crack in the floor. Vison rose and stretched his own long supple body in a swift thrust after the retreating snake. But the blacksnake was gone. Vison sniffed the crack through which it had left, roused to kill. However, he could not follow through the narrow opening.

  The reptile had been feeding on mice and rats around Will’s house. Vison took over this hunting for himself. Field mice came through the loose stones, and the insects provided him with occasional bits of food. When thirst drove him out, Vison would slip through the hole by which he had entered, leap to the rim of Stacks’ squat rain barrel, and refresh himself.

  During the day the footsteps of Will Stacks would sound on the thin flooring as he wandered from shed to living-room. One evening while preparing his traps and lures for the coming season, he opened the bottle of mink lure to check its potency. A few drops spilled over the lip of the jar and onto the wooden work table. As the cold air of night settled in, the downward draft brought the smell of the lure seeping through the knot holes and cracks to the nose of the outlaw.

  He lifted his head into the air trying to locate the intruding mink. The scent seemed to come from the boards above. Vison reared to his hind feet and pawed the floor. The scent was stronger now, but it was mixed with the aroma of man. The mink dropped down to all four feet, no longer too curious about the stranger. Far back in his mind he connected this combination of scents with the swirling waters and the closing trap. He slipped between the rocks and bounded out into Stacks’ yard. The night was clean and cool and he raced down the hill, through the dry stalks of goldenrod and ragweed to the shores of his stream.

  On returning to his home territory, Vison took his place once more among the chipmunks, squirrels, mice and rabbits, fitting quietly into the wildlife of the stream.

  The last days of October were native to the wild blood of the outlaw. Winds came down the river and churned the leaves over the hills. The milkweed seeds burst their pods and swept across the fields before the gale. The leafless willows bent and dipped; and stars rode up the night sky as big as nickels.

  Over the chilled earth, through the thickets and leaves, bounded the lively Vison, roaming the hills and valleys in response to the racing of the wind and the moaning of the willows. He ran to every den and hideout along his trail, checking for life and food. He went down to the canal in undulating leaps to race against the wind along the muddy shores. He crossed the canal locks, went down to the river, and came galloping back to the fields at dawn. This was Vison’s weather; its wildness matched all the vigor of the energetic mink. Even at midday he came sparkling out of his den to circle the woods in excitement, cavort across the
snapping yellow leaves, and go down to his stream to listen for the sounds of prowling feet.

  One rolling dusk, when the hickory nuts were splattering on the fallen leaves, Vison heard a faint, far sound. It came from the river like a dissonant chord and was swept away on the turning wind. Vison sat up and cocked his head. The sound was like a call, and the outlaw turned from his prowlings along the stream to follow the cry to the river. At the canal the nasal “wanck” returned with the wind. Vison entered the water. Halfway across the canal, he made a surface dive, went down into the wavering bottom, swam through an old automobile tire, and came up at the far edge of the bank. Weaving between the jewel-weed stalks without touching them, Vison climbed the bank of the retaining wall and went to the river. He followed the shore up toward the dam. The ducks had come in from the north, and the eddies and backwaters of the islands were dark with the honking horde.

  Leaping with nervous excitement, Vison pranced back and forth along the river’s edge and finally dived into the water and swam to the nearest island. No sooner had he drawn himself up on a rock, matted with driftwood and honeysuckle vines, than he caught the scent of another mink. Vison picked his way across the fallen logs and water-strewn debris. His head was held high, and his strong hind feet hugged the ground. The first mink smelled Vison, then saw him, and left his hunting post to challenge him. He stopped when he sensed the self-assurance of the poised visitor. This was no mink to bully. He turned and went back to his hunting, leaving the freedom of the island to Vison.

  In the morning Vison was hungry. He selected a male scaup for his breakfast. The outlaw slipped gently into the water and swam to a reed patch in front of his chosen quarry. Silently he went down into the river and with open eyes circled the green mass of reeds. He closed in on the slowly circling feet of the sleeping duck.

  Just as Vison was ready to lunge into the soft breast, a black duck, not three feet away, awoke with a startled quack, slapped the water with its wings, and shot up into the air. At this alarm, twenty or thirty ducks leapt to their wings. Their feathers gleamed as they caught themselves on the air and circled out into the early light.