CHAPTER XII
PROSPECTING FOR FUR
It was not yet light next morning when Jack was awakened by a dull tapping, not often repeated, and as his senses grew clearer it seemed to him that the sound was like that made by an animal stamping its hoof on the ground. He crept silently out of his blankets, felt about for his cartridge belt and gun, and when he had found both, crept to the door. He had hardly got there when he heard again, more faintly, a stamping of a hoof, and then a snort which he knew was made by a deer.
Meantime, Hugh had awakened, and, raised on his elbow, was watching Jack. The light was still so faint that objects could hardly be distinguished, but gradually, as the eastern sky began to flush and the light crept up toward zenith, Jack made out a deer standing fifty or sixty yards away, and looking at the tent, and then heard rather than saw it stamp its foot. Two or three times he put his rifle to his shoulder and glanced along the barrel, but he could not yet see his fore sight. Two or three times the deer stepped forward a little way, and then stopped and again stamped. Evidently the tent, shining white in the dim light of the morning, puzzled her, and she was trying to make out what it was. She had never seen anything like this before. As the light grew, Jack could see that it was a small doe, probably a yearling, and just the meat they needed. At length he put his gun to his shoulder again and found that he could see the sights, though not very clearly, and drawing a coarse sight and aiming low down at the brisket of the animal, which stood facing him, he pulled the trigger. The deer sprang in the air, and then turning, ran swiftly toward the brush and disappeared.
"Get it?" asked Hugh, as Jack moved back on his bed and began to put on his trousers and shoes.
"I don't know," said Jack, "the light was too dim for me to see much. I ought to have killed her, but I could hardly see my sights. I wouldn't be much surprised, though, if we were to find her. She seemed to me to jump as if she had been hit."
In a very few moments Hugh and Jack were both dressed, and while Hugh began to kindle the fire, Jack walked off in the direction where the deer had last been seen. It was now full day, and before he had gone far the brilliant disk of the sun began to show over the eastern horizon.
The tracks were plainly seen where the deer had sprung into the air, and then turning, had run swiftly toward the willows. It was easy to follow the trail, but there was no blood, and this gave Jack rather a feeling of chagrin, for he did not like to feel that he had missed. As he went on the tracks were less deeply marked in the ground, rather as if—Jack thought—the animal had recovered from its fright. He had only just begun to think about this, when suddenly he almost fell over the deer lying in front of him. It had run about a hundred yards. Jack turned and looked back toward the tent and at that moment Hugh, who had been putting wood on the fire, turned his head and looked toward his companion. Jack waved his hat as a sign that he had found the animal, and then began to prepare it to take to camp. It was a young doe and quite fat, and Jack felt quite pleased that he had got so good a piece of meat. It did not take long to prepare it for camp, and as the animal was small, and the distance short, Jack took it by the ears and easily dragged it over the smooth grass up to the camp.
"Well," said Hugh, as he stooped over and felt of the carcass, "that's good. A nice little white-tailed yearling, and quite fat. From now on we've got to kill bucks or yearlings or dry does, for the old ones that are nursing their young won't be fit to eat."
"It's queer, Hugh," said Jack, "I didn't find a bit of blood on the trail. I just followed the tracks, and I was watching them so closely that I almost fell over the deer at last. The bullet entered the breast low down and went through the whole length of the animal, and both where the bullet went in and where it came out, the skin had slipped to one side so as to cover the hole in the flesh. Of course she bled a lot, but not a drop of it came out of her body."
"Yes, that happens so every now and then in those shots that go through an animal lengthwise, and they're especially likely to happen if the animal was standing when the shot was fired, and then makes a big effort afterward."
Breakfast was nearly ready, and by the time Jack had washed his hands Hugh had poured out the coffee and they both sat down.
"Well, Hugh," said Jack, "what are we going to do to-day? Shall we move, or shall we stop here one more night?"
"I think," said Hugh, "that the best thing we can do is to take the saddle horses and go on up the creek a few miles on this side and prospect. After we've done that, we can make up our minds what is best to be done, but it's pretty certain that we will want to go over and camp two or three nights by that pond that we saw yesterday."
"Yes," said Jack, "I should think that was something that we ought to do, sure."
It took but a few minutes to skin the deer and hang the carcass up in one of the cottonwood trees, where it would be safe from any wolf or coyote that might come about the camp, and then catching up their riding horses, they saddled them and started up the stream.
For several miles the bottom was wide and usually thickly fringed with willows. Several times they dismounted, tied their horses, and went in as far as they could toward the main stream, but twice they were stopped by water, or mud, or by beaver sloughs that were too wide for them to cross. Hugh said little, but shook his head from time to time as he looked over the valley. It was evident that he was dissatisfied. Jack forebore to ask questions, for he could see that Hugh was occupied in observing, and was thinking hard. They had gone five or six miles up the valley, and it was now about noon, when, on rounding a point of willows, they could see before them quite a large pond.
Hugh drew up his horse and for ten or fifteen minutes sat there watching, and then drawing back, he rode up behind the willows, dismounted, and tied his horse. Jack did the same.
"This looks better, son," said Hugh. "We'll go in here afoot as far as we can and watch this pond and see what we can see. I think there are beaver here, and probably this is the place we want to camp by."
As quietly as possible they made their way toward the edge of the water, passing on the way several trails where the beaver had been dragging brush to the water. The signs showed that this had been done no longer ago than last night, for on the ground were scattered fresh, green willow and cottonwood leaves, and in two or three places the bark had been knocked off willow stems by whatever had been dragged along, and these wounds were absolutely fresh. Presently they came to the edge of the willows, and still keeping themselves concealed, crept up to a little knoll, where they sat down and peered through the tangle of stems out over the pond. There before them was a long dam which Jack, with his experience of the day before fresh in his mind, could see had been recently worked on. Out in the water were a number of the hay-stack-shaped houses of the beaver, and even while they were looking, to Jack's astonishment and delight a beaver appeared on one of them, carrying in his mouth a long, white, peeled stick which he placed among others on the roof. Jack looked at Hugh, wondering if he had seen the beaver, too, and Hugh gave a little motion of his head. At two or three points on the dam animals were at work, beaver, of course, but too far off to be certainly recognized. Jack wished with all his heart that he had brought his glasses.
For nearly an hour they sat there, and then crept away as noiselessly as they had come, apparently unobserved by the animals.
When they had returned to their horses, Jack felt that he might speak. "Wasn't that a pretty sight, Hugh?" he said. "I don't think I ever saw anything quite as fine as that. I believe it would be a great deal more fun just to get up close to these beaver and watch the way they live, than it will be to trap them and kill them."
"So it would, son," said Hugh, "if we were just coming out for fun; and I reckon it's pretty nearly as good fun for me to watch them critters as it is for you. At the same time I feel as if we needed some of that fur that is swimming around there, and as if we were going to get it. It'll be quite a lot of work, but it's work that will be fairly well paid for."
"Yes, Hugh, of course you're right. I want to trap some beaver and get some fur, and either take it home or sell it; but didn't we have a good time when we were sitting out there watching those animals? I tell you, when that beaver crept up on the house there and put that white stick in it's place, my heart pretty nearly jumped out of my body. I never expected to see anything like that."
A Beaver Appeared with a Long Stick, Which He Placed with Others on the Roof.—[Page 130.]
"Yes," agreed Hugh, "it was nice. I'll acknowledge that; and we're likely to see lots more of it. Of course we want to see the pleasant sights, and then besides that we want to get something to show for our trip. I think we'll do both. Come on now, let's mount and go on further. The day is only about half gone and I want to learn all I can."
From here on for quite a long way up the stream, beaver seemed abundant. The valley had grown much narrower, and instead of being a wide, grass-grown prairie with more or less morass about it, it was a narrow valley filled with beaver ponds, most of which seemed to be occupied.
They took a hasty survey of it and had no more opportunity to watch the animals at their work and their play. Several times as they were riding along the edge of the valley they startled white-tailed deer from the willows, but all those they saw were old does.
"I reckon," said Hugh, "that the fawns are too little as yet to run with their mothers. The old ones hide them and run away, and then just as soon as the danger is past they circle back and come close to them again. Curious thing, isn't it, son, that these little fawns don't give out any scent?"
"Mighty curious if it's so, Hugh."
"That's what people say," declared Hugh, "and I reckon likely it's true, because, if you think of it, you'll know that the wolves and coyotes are hunting all the time for these little fawns, and it's pretty sure that they don't find many of them. If they did, the deer wouldn't be half as plenty as they are."
"Then I suppose the white tails hide their young ones just as the elk and the antelope do," said Jack.
"Yes," said Hugh, "that's just what they do, or for a matter of fact just the way a buffalo cow hides her calf, or a common cow hides hers. You see all these animals seem to have that one instinct. When their young ones are very small and too weak to run fast or far, they hide them, and the plan works well, too, for I guess it carries most of them through. That fawn that those two lynxes were eating the other day was probably either one that they stumbled on by accident, or else perhaps one that had died from some sickness. They do that sometimes."
The sun was only a couple of hours high when they turned their horses and, riding out on the prairie, galloped swiftly back to camp. The straight road and good pace made their return journey seem much shorter than it had been in the morning.
Supper over, they lounged about the fire, on which Jack had piled so much wood that it gave a bright and cheerful blaze. Hugh was evidently thinking over what he had seen during the day and making up his mind about to-morrow, and Jack, feeling lazy, stretched out on the ground near the fire, and presently went to sleep.
A little later Hugh called to him and said, "Rise up, son, and let us talk over what we are going to do. We'd better settle that before we go to bed."
Jack rubbed his eyes and sat up sleepily, while Hugh got out his tobacco and filled his pipe, and then sitting cross-legged before the fire and puffing out huge wreaths of smoke, he said to Jack, "Now, son, there are plenty of beaver here, and if we have any luck at all we could load one horse just from this stream. I don't know, though, whether it's going to pay us to spend weeks of time setting traps and skinning beaver. I think it's worth while for us to do some trapping and get some fur, but I doubt if it's worth our while to spend the whole summer doing it. Suppose to-morrow we move up close to that big pond that we found to-day and make camp there and then trap until we get tired of it. When we've had as much as we want of this one place, we can move on and go somewhere else. It isn't quite as if we were trying to make money enough trapping to carry us over the winter. You don't greatly need the money that the fur would bring, and as for me, I've got my job, and it's no matter of life and death to get this fur. We're out here mainly for pleasure and for you to learn something about the country, and the ways of the things that live in it. We are free to do about as we please. What do you think?"
"Why, Hugh," replied Jack, "that seems to me a good way to look at it. Let's trap here as long as we want to, and then travel on and go somewhere else. I want to get up into the high mountains, and I suppose you do, too. We want to have a little hunting and to see as much of the country as we can."
"All right, son," said Hugh, "we'll let it go at that. And to-morrow morning in good season we'll move camp up the creek. I'll be glad to get these horses onto fresh grass. Of course, they are not working to amount to anything and don't greatly need the food, but I've sort of formed the habit of wanting my horses always to have the best there is going."
"All right," rejoined Jack; "the first thing when we get up to-morrow I'll bring in the horses and saddle them, and it won't take so very long to get started."
"No," Hugh assented, "that's one good thing about us, we travel pretty light and can go fast and far if we have to."
There was a little pause while Hugh knocked the ashes out of his pipe, got his tobacco and lighted the pipe again. Then Jack said to him, "Hugh, there's one thing I want to ask you about; how does it come that these beaver here are so tame and are out swimming around in the water in the middle of the day? I have always heard that in old times it was sometimes possible to see beaver out at their work in the early morning and again in the evening, but that during the day they were always in their holes. I thought that the beaver was a night animal, and that of late years, since it had been trapped and hunted so much, it never came out at all in the daytime."
"That is something, son, that I can't understand at all: why we've seen these beaver the way we have. I don't think I ever saw beaver acting just this way, though I've heard of old men, those that were out here trapping in the early days, say that in those times beaver were about all day long. They didn't talk as if the beaver were a night animal, but as if it were going about through the day, just, for example, as prairie dogs do, or whistlers, or others of these gnawing animals that we commonly see. I've an idea that it's only since people began to hunt the beaver that he has took to working nights and sleeping days, but of course I don't know anything about this; that's just my notion. Anyhow, from the way these beaver here are acting, I should say that it was a long time since they had been trapped or disturbed in any way, and that seems queer, for you see we are not very far from the railroad, and there are always idle people lying around a place like Laramie, people that believe they know how to trap, and who, if they knew of a place like this, would think they could make their everlasting fortune here. I wonder some of those fellows haven't found the place. Then, on the other hand, we're not so very far from where the Utes range, and it would seem to me only natural that some of their young men might run across a place like this and try to get the fur. Of course, if they had come they would have made a scatteration of these beaver by tearing down the dams and getting as many of the animals as they could out of the houses. But nothing has been disturbed; there's no sign of white people or Indians, and, what is a great deal better evidence, the beaver are absolutely tame. We'll get some of them before long, I reckon."
"I hope so," said Jack, as he rose to his feet and threw another stick or two on the fire. Then squatting down by it, he said: "Three or four days ago, Hugh, I asked you how big beaver were, and you told me, and ever since then I've been trying to think of something that my uncle told me two or three years ago about an old time sort of beaver that doesn't exist any more on the earth. I think it was what you were telling me about the Indians' belief in medicine beavers that made me think of it. Uncle George told me that out in Ohio there was found a skeleton, or part of the skeleton, of a great big animal just like a beaver, but about as big as a black bear. That would mean, I suppose, weighing three or four hundred pounds, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "about that."
"Well," said Jack, "this beaver lived in those old times, a good way back, but not nearly as far back as those older times when the coal was made. It lived about the same time that they used to have mastodons in this country."
"Hold on," said Hugh, "say that again. What is a mastodon?"
"Why," said Jack, "it's a great big animal, a good deal like an elephant. You have seen elephants, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Hugh, "once when I was a small boy I saw one. He was a powerful big animal."
"Well," said Jack, "a mastodon was like an elephant, only bigger, and he was different in some ways, but I've forgotten how. I think it was something about his teeth. The mastodon didn't live such a very great while ago, because I remember Uncle George said that the bones of those that they have found had not yet turned to stone. Of course all these fossils that come from the older times have changed into regular stone. They are just rocks with the shape of bones or shells or whatever it may be."
"Yes," said Hugh, "I know about that, because I've seen a heap of them. They're just rocks in the shape of the different things that they used to be."
"Well," said Jack, "anyhow the main thing is that in that time when there were mastodons in this country, there was also a big animal like a beaver, that would weigh several hundred pounds."
"He must have had fine fur," said Hugh, "but I reckon it would have been powerful hard work setting traps for that fellow. You'd have to have bear traps to catch him, and it's no joke to set a bear trap. You say all they know about him is that they found his bones?"
"That's all," said Jack. "Uncle George showed me a picture of a skull once, and I remember that it was longer than a wolf's skull, and it had two great big gnawing teeth reaching down from the front of the jaw."
"Powerful strange things there used to be on this earth a long time ago," said Hugh, in a meditative tone.
"Yes, indeed," answered Jack, "and think how little we, any of us, know about those things. Even the smartest men, those who have given up all their time to studying these things, don't seem to know much about those old times. I know it's awful easy to ask them questions that they can't answer."
"I suppose a man of that kind doesn't want to say anything unless he's dead sure it's so," said Hugh. "Likely enough he's made his reputation by always being right, and he's afraid to make any guesses."
"Maybe that is it," said Jack, "but I remember one time going to New Haven with my uncle, and we went into the Peabody Museum, and one of the professors there, a Mr. Marsh, took us around and showed us the greatest lot of bones you ever saw. He could tell us a great many things about the skeletons and parts of skeletons that he showed us, but I know my uncle asked him a great many questions about other things, and he would just laugh and say he didn't know anything about it, and nobody else did."
"Well," said Hugh, "it's each man to his trade. I suppose I can hunt and trap and know something about animals, and these professors work over their birds and their bugs and their bones. Some of the stories they tell are pretty hard to believe, and yet I reckon they are all true."
"Oh, I guess so," said Jack.
The next morning before daylight had fairly broken, Jack was afoot and on his way out to the horses. They were brought in and tied up to the willows, their saddles put on and ropes coiled, picket pins got together, and all the various property of the camp, which so easily becomes scattered about, was collected before breakfast was ready.
The bear skin, which had now been drying for three or four days, was taken from the ground and brought into camp. Hugh, when he looked at it, said that it was in first-class condition and had not been burned by the sun.
"Save all these pins, son," he said, "wrap them up in a gunny sack; they may be useful to us later on, and may save us half a day's whittling."
"Now," he said, "you take hold of one side of this hide and I'll take hold of the other, and we'll fold it up hair side in and make it small enough to go on top of one of the packs. It won't frighten the horse so much, now that it has lost its fresh smell."
They folded the hide as Hugh had said, and it made a small, flat package of convenient size to go in the load.
After they had eaten their breakfast, Jack took down the tent and folded it, rolled the beds, and got most of the packs ready. Hugh's kitchen was the last thing to be prepared, and then after a general tightening of the saddles, the loads were lashed on the horses' backs and they set out up the creek. Jack's last duty, and one which he performed at every camp, was to ride carefully about the fire, and about where the tent had stood, and look all over the ground, to see whether anything had been left behind.
It was nearly noon when they reached the new camp ground. A pretty spot, raised well above the level of the stream bottom, with a big fringe of willows to the west, which would give shelter from any storm rushing down the mountains, and a little grove of cottonwoods which made a pleasant shade and would furnish fuel. Along a ravine which emptied into the bottom there grew a few box elder trees.
"Well, Hugh, this is a good camp," said Jack.
"First-class," replied Hugh, "all except the water. Suppose you go down into the willows there and see if you can find a spring. There must be water right close by here, but I haven't seen any."
In a few minutes Jack returned, reporting an excellent though small spring right in the edge of the willows close to the camp.
"We ought to dig it out, son, and make it bigger, if we are going to water the horses there," remarked Hugh.
"All right," said Jack, "I'll do that now."
After the tent had been put up, two of the horses picketed, and dinner eaten, Hugh said to Jack, "Now, son, if you want to go off on a prospecting tour this afternoon, you better go. I am going to be busy all the afternoon looking over my traps and making my medicine."
"Your medicine, Hugh," asked Jack, "what is that?"
"My beaver medicine," Hugh answered; "that is the stuff we are going to use to make the beaver come into the trap."
"Oh, yes," said Jack, "I know; I've heard about that. It's a great secret how it's made, isn't it, Hugh? I used to ask the trappers up among the Blackfeet, and they always made some joke about it and never would tell me what it was."
"Well," answered Hugh, "you'll find all trappers are just like that, but before we get home I guess you will see me make it, and then if you use your eyes and nose, perhaps you'll learn how to make it yourself. But this afternoon," he went on, "I am going to take out my traps and go over them, see that they work well, and get them ready to set to-morrow. If you want to go hunting or looking around, or studying anything, you go ahead and do it, only I'd get back here an hour or two by sun, so that we can have our supper by daylight."
"All right," said Jack. "I think I'll take my rifle and walk on up the creek. We don't greatly need any meat, but I might see something that was worth shooting at."
"Well," said Hugh, "if I were you I wouldn't shoot much down in the valley. I'd like to keep everything about camp as quiet as possible for the next two or three days."
"I'll remember it," said Jack, and rising he took up his rifle and strode off up the stream.