CHAPTER XIV
SETTING FOR BEAVER
"Well, son," said Hugh, as he was cooking breakfast next morning, "we've got a full day's work cut out for us, and we'd better make it as light as possible. You may as well go and catch up the saddle horses and bring them in. We have a load of traps to carry, but we can put them on our saddles. Down in this country, and at this time, we can set our traps without danger, and yet, just as a matter of habit, we'd better take our guns along. Those and the ax and our traps and my bottle of 'medicine' will be all that we'll need."
"All right," said Jack; "I'll go now, and bring the horses in and saddle up"; which he did.
By the time the horses were saddled, breakfast was ready, and soon after they had finished, the sack of traps was emptied on the ground, and Hugh tied four behind his saddle, and Jack four behind his.
"My, but these traps are heavy," observed Jack; "and strong, too. I should think that they would hold any animal except, perhaps, a bear."
"Yes," said Hugh, "they're strong enough, and they've got to be to hold a beaver, for he pulls pretty hard when he gets his foot in a trap. However, if they are properly set he doesn't have a chance to struggle long, for he plunges right for deep water and the trap holds him down, so that he drowns."
Just as they were about to start, Hugh disappeared into the tent, and rummaging around among the packages there, presently emerged with a good-sized stick of wood in his hand, to one end of which was tied a long buckskin thong forming a loop, which he hung over his head so that the stick rested on his breast.
Jack looked at it in some astonishment, and then saw that the stick was apparently a big wooden bottle formed of a birch stick three inches or more in diameter, in which a hole had been bored. This hole was stopped by a wooden plug driven into the hole, thus corking the bottle tightly. Evidently the stick had been used a long time, for it was worn and polished by much handling.
"Well, Hugh," said Jack, "I suppose that is your beaver medicine, but I never had any idea that you carried it in a bottle like that."
"Yes, son, that's the bottle, and I have used it for a good many years. You know that in old times when I first came out into this country glass bottles and tin cans weren't very plenty here, and glass doesn't last long anyhow. This is the sort of a bottle that everybody used in early days, and I've had this for a long time and had considerable luck with it."
"I never dared ask you what the medicine was made of, Hugh," said Jack, "but I suppose when you get to using it you'll let me have a smell of it, won't you?"
"Sure," said Hugh. "That's what it's made for, to be smelled of. But before you know what beaver medicine is made of, you'll have to be a real trapper."
The two swung themselves into the saddles and started off up the stream. Jack carried the ax, the head of which was protected by a leather case which covered its cutting edge, in his rifle scabbard under his leg.
"Now, son," said Hugh, "judging from what you said yesterday about the creek above here, I believe it's worth our while to ride quite a way up and see whether it gets narrow. If it does, we can perhaps set our traps first up there, because they will be easier to handle. I don't want to set around these big ponds if I can help it. There is too much danger of our losing some of our traps, and then if a beaver gets out into deep water it's barely possible that we might lose the float-stick, or else that it might get hidden, and even if we should find it out in deep water there's no way to get at it except to swim for it. You and I don't want to do that if we can help it. This water is pretty cold, for it comes right down from the snow."
"That is one of the things I was wondering about, Hugh; how you were going to find your traps or your beaver in case they got out into the water in these ponds a long way from shore."
"I'll show you how we fix that sort of thing, son; but as I say, we haven't traps enough to take very much risk."
As they went on up the stream Jack pointed out to Hugh where he had killed the panther the day before, and showed him the pond where he had seen the birds.
Not very far above this they came to a place where a few willows grew, and where a beaver dam, holding back the water, had made a long, narrow, and rather deep pond running through the meadow.
"There," said Hugh, pointing to it, "that looks like a good place to set, but we'll go on further and see what we find."
Above this pond the stream for some distance rippled noisily over a rocky bottom, but soon they came to another dam, above which was found another long and narrow pond with two or three houses near its lower end. At two places toward the upper end there were grassy points which projected into the pond, and one of which ran nearly across it.
"That looks like a good place for us to set a couple of traps, son," said Hugh. "Now, I wish that you would go into that pine timber just at the edge of the meadow and get me a couple of dead pines if you can find them, six or eight feet long and three inches through at the butt. Then sharpen the butt end so that I can drive it good and deep into the mud, so that it will hold. When you get the sticks, come around by the outer edge of the meadow and then ride in as near the edge of the pond as you can, coming well below me. I am going over now to the edge of the water to sort o' prospect."
Jack rode up into the timber and soon found a couple of young, dead trees which he chopped down, and from which he cut the required lengths. Then trimming the branches from the sticks, he sharpened the butt of each, and hanging one of them on either side of the horse, rode slowly back.
Hugh's black horse was grazing at the edge of the meadow, and Hugh himself could be seen down close to the water's edge.
Jack left Pawnee by Hugh's horse, and taking the sticks on his shoulder walked over to the water's edge, making a circle so as to come toward Hugh from the down-stream side. Before he had reached the water, Hugh signed to him to stop, and then came back toward him and said, "There's a good place here for two traps, and I'll set them, and you may as well come with me and watch what I do." Jack noticed that Hugh had stuck in his belt half a dozen straight willow twigs from a foot and a half to three feet long and about as large around as a lead pencil.
"Now, the first thing you want to remember, son, is that you mustn't leave any sign or any scent for the beaver to notice. They're smart animals, and if they see anything unusual, or if they smell anything strange, it puts them on their guard and you're not likely to have them go to your traps. Of course, here it's a little different because these beaver seem so tame, but you may as well try to begin right."
"Now I'm going to set two traps, one on each of these little points that you see running out into the pond. We've got to start in here and walk in the water up to where we're going to set, and I think that right close under the bank here we'll find the bottom hard enough for us to travel on. Just away from the bank it drops off sharply, and that is the best kind of water to set in for beaver. Now I will go ahead with these traps and you follow after me, carrying those sticks. You've cut them just about right, and I'll show you pretty soon what they're for. They are what we call float-sticks."
Hugh took two of the heavy traps in his hand and entering the water began to wade up the stream. Jack noticed that he kept far enough from the banks so that his clothing did not touch any of the overhanging grass or weeds. The water was not so deep as Jack had supposed, and did not come up within several inches of the tops of his rubber boots. He stepped into the water after Hugh, and tried to imitate all his motions, dragging after him the two float-sticks, but keeping also away from the bank. Presently Hugh stopped at the lower of the two points and waded out a step or two, but the water deepened so rapidly that he at once drew back. He now turned to Jack, and reaching toward him Jack passed Hugh one of the float-sticks. Hugh made a large loop of the long chain which was attached to the trap and passing it over the small end of the pole let it down to within a foot or two of the butt, and then drew the loop close between the stubs of the branches which Jack had cut off in trimming the little tree. Hugh took some pains with this, working on the chain until it tightly encircled the stick and could not be pulled up or down. Then taking the stick by its smaller end, he felt with it for the bottom some six or eight feet out from the bank, and when he had found a place that was satisfactory to him, thrust the sharpened end of the stick into the mud at the bottom. By repeated efforts he drove the stick so deep that the end which he held in his hand was almost submerged. Meantime, the trap, which was fast to the other end of the chain, lay on the bottom close to his foot. He now took the trap, and rolling up his sleeves, stood with one foot on either spring of the trap and by his weight bent these springs down so that he could set the trap. Then holding it by the chain he lifted the trap out of the water and brought it within ten or twelve inches of the grassy margin of the pond. Then he said to Jack, who stood silently near him, "We can't do much talking here, son, but after we get these traps set I'll explain to you what I've been doing, and why. Take notice, though, that I'm putting this trap in pretty shallow water, but that there's deep water just outside."
Hugh worked a little while on the bottom until he had scraped out a flat, firm bed in which the trap was placed, then from the up-stream side of the trap he scraped up one or two handfuls of soft mud and scattered it above the trap so that two or three minutes later, when the water had cleared, Jack could barely see the outline of the jaws showing in the mud which covered trap and chain. Then Hugh drew from his belt one of the shorter of the willow twigs, submerged it, and with his knife, also held under water, split the twig in half a dozen places for an inch or two from the end. Then he returned his knife to its sheath, and still holding the twig under water with his other hand, drew the cork from the bottle of beaver medicine, lifted the twig from the water and thrust the split end into the bottle and drew it out dripping with a brownish fluid, the odor of which, as it came to Jack's nostrils, seemed exactly that of a rotten apple. Then Hugh thrust the other end of the willow twig into the bottom on the shoreward side of the trap, so that the split end stood about ten inches above the trap. "There," said Hugh, "that's done. Now let's go on, but be very careful when you come to the trap to keep out from the shore as far as you can, and to step well over the chair."
A little further on, when they came to the second point, this operation was repeated almost in the same way, except that here Hugh took eight willow twigs and thrust them into the bottom, running out toward the deep water, four on the up-stream side of the trap and four on the down-stream side, the twigs being so arranged as to form a wide V which might guide the beaver toward the bait-stick which formed the apex of the V. In arranging these guiding wings, Hugh was careful not to touch any part of the twigs which projected above the water with his hand, but when he thrust the twigs into the bottom he held his hand under water, and the portion of the twig that he had touched was also under water.
Hugh and Jack now retraced their steps, going down the stream until they reached the point where they had entered it. Then Hugh motioned Jack to go ashore, and after he had done so, Hugh splashed the bank where Jack had stepped, plentifully with water, and passing on a few yards further down the stream left it by a little bay, the shore of which he plentifully wetted with water before he stepped out on the grass. Then the two went over to their horses, mounted, and rode up the stream.
Jack had watched closely what Hugh had done and understood why most of the operations that he had gone through with had been performed, yet there were many questions that he felt like asking.
"Now, son," said Hugh, after they had reached the upper end of the meadow, "let us go into this little piece of pine timber of yours and cut some more float-sticks; it is worth our while to carry some of them along with us. I don't know whether in trimming those sticks you intended to leave those branches sticking out as long as you did, but whether you meant to do it or not, it was just the right thing."
"Yes, Hugh," said Jack, "I understood from what you had told me what you wanted those sticks for, and of course I could see that you wanted them fixed so that the chain in the trap would not slip either way."
"That's it, exactly," said Hugh; "and I'm glad you listened so carefully and understood so well. Now, of course, if we couldn't find sticks with the branches just right, as those two sticks had, we might have to cut a notch in the float-stick, or we might have to try to bind the chain to it in some way or another. But there's work enough about beaver trapping at best, and if you can find the right kind of sticks, always better use them."
In the pine timber there were plenty of dead young trees, from which they selected four which made good float-sticks.
"I don't know, Hugh," said Jack, as they were hanging the sticks on their saddles, "just why you take a dry stick."
"Well," said Hugh, "there are two or more reasons for that. In the first place the beaver, if they happen to find the dry float-stick, are less likely to try their teeth on it than they would be if the stick were green. If you used a green cottonwood or willow or birch stick for your float-stick, very likely the beaver might carry it and your trap off into deep water before they got near the trap. Besides that, if a trapped beaver dives for deep water and manages to pull up your float-stick and it floats away, a dry one will float higher than a green stick and will be more easily seen and recovered."
"Yes, I see," said Jack. "That's plain enough. I suppose that you kept your hands under water so much in order to wash away the human scent."
"Yes," said Hugh, "that is so. There are lots of men who will never hold the trap or the bait-stick or anything connected with the trap, so that the wind will blow from them to it. They believe that the human scent will stick to anything, and that the beaver can smell it. I don't go quite as far as that, but I do know that if there were a hard breeze blowing I'd always get to the leeward of the trap and of all the things I left near the trapping ground."
"Well," said Jack, "I wondered as I saw you setting those traps to see how awful careful you were about everything you did."
"Well," said Hugh, "I suppose that's habit, but it's necessary. You take a man that is careless, and that leaves sign about everywhere, and you'll find that he never catches any fur. I have been out with men of that kind, and they were always poor trappers."
As the two started on Jack looked at the sun and asked, "Do you know what time it is, Hugh?"
"About noon, I guess," said Hugh.
"I guess so, too," said Jack, "and just think, it's taken us a whole morning to set two traps."
"Yes," replied Hugh; "it has taken a long time, and we'll be lucky if we get two or three more set before it's time for us to turn back to camp, but in two or three days you'll find that things will run along a good deal smoother and we won't have to take quite so much time as we have to-day."
They went on up the stream, keeping well back from it, but occasionally, where there was an opening in the brush, riding out to the bank. A mile or two further on another dam was found with a pond smaller than the one below, and immediately above this the rise of the valley was sharper so that the stream was swift and shallow.
After they had left the horses and were prospecting along the bank for a place to set, Hugh pointed out to Jack a slide from the grassy bank down into the water, which he said had been made, not by the beaver, but by an otter. "Sometime," he said, "we may try to catch that fellow. We're not rigged for it to-day, and I guess we'd better stick to beaver." At a little point near the head of the pond on the east side Hugh set another trap just as he had set the two previous ones, and then going to the head of the pond they crossed over and set another on the west side. Here the main current ran close under the bank, and Hugh was obliged to build up a little bed of stones and gravel on which to rest his trap.
"You see, son," he said, "you must have your trap so near to the top of the water that when the beaver makes a kind of a dive with his foot to raise his head up close to the medicine on the bait-stick, he will strike the pan of the trap with a foot and so spring it. Sometimes, if the water is a little deeper over the trap than a man thinks is just right, and he hasn't any way of building up a firm bed for the trap to rest on, he will take a stick and thrust it into the bank, pointing out level into the water about two inches below the surface. The beaver, swimming along toward the medicine, will hit this stick and it will stop him, and then when he makes a strong effort with his foot to get over it he will sink his foot so deep under water as to hit the pan of the trap.
"There," he said, as he backed away from the last trap set. "Now let us walk up the stream for a little way, and then go out of it and around to the horses. I have always thought that if a man takes reasonable care in setting his traps, there is more danger that the beaver will notice where he's gone in and out of the stream than there is of their suspecting something about the trap. Of course, you've got to be careful always in setting, but I've always had an idea that when a beaver gets the scent of the medicine in his nose he becomes so intent on that that he doesn't notice other signs right about the trap."
They kept on up the stream for quite a little way, and then leaving it, went around to their horses again. Hugh looked at the sun as they mounted, and said, "We have lots of time to get back to camp, and I think it might be worth while for us, on our way back, to go down to the two traps we set below. We might easily have something in one of them, seeing how tame these beaver are, and how they seem to be out all day long."
On the way back, they stopped as suggested, but only went near enough to the bank of the stream to see that neither trap had been disturbed, and then returned to camp. Half an hour was spent in stretching the lion's skin that Jack had killed the day before, and while they were at work at this Hugh said, "There seem to be quite a lot of lions in this country, son, and it's worth while to kill one every chance we get. We might run across a camp of Utes down here, and the Utes, like all other Indians that I know anything about, think a great deal of lion's skins. The chances are that you could trade this skin for three or four good beaver, and of course those would be worth a great deal more than a lion's skin, which is good for nothing except to look at. The Indians, you know, like lions' skins to make bow cases and quivers. I have often thought that maybe they have the same idea about the lion's skin that they do about the feathers of hawks or owls."
"How do you mean, Hugh?" asked Jack.
"Why," said Hugh, "you know that the Indians think a great deal of all the birds that catch their prey; that is, the eagles, hawks, and owls; they value them and their feathers in war, and they think that wearing those things helps them to be successful in war. I suppose the idea is that as the hawk or the eagle is fierce and strong and successful in attacking his enemies, so they, if they wear his feathers, will be fierce and strong and successful. In other words, they think that the qualities of the bird will be given to them if they have about them something that belongs to the bird.
"Well, now, here's a mountain lion; he is cunning and cautious, creeping about and scarcely ever being seen, able to catch his prey and hold and kill it with his sharp claws and his strong teeth, and maybe the Indians think that if they have about them something that belongs to him they will also have some of his qualities."
"Jerusalem, Hugh," said Jack, "I like to hear you tell about what the Indians believe, and why they believe it. I wonder if most men who have seen much of Indians understand as well as you do how they think about things. Of course, it's fun to hear you tell about their habits and what they do, but it's better fun yet to hear you tell about how they think about the different matters of their living."
"Well, son," said Hugh, "I've talked a heap with Indians about all these matters, and I do like to hear how they feel about them. I guess maybe there are lots of other people feel the way you and I do; but most of the old-time hunters and mountain men didn't think about much of anything except gathering a lot of fur and then going in and selling it, and getting their money and spending it as quick as they could, and then starting out to get more fur.
"I mind that once your uncle, when I was telling him some story about Indians, said to me, 'The proper study of mankind is man,' and when I told him I thought so, too, he said that that was something that some poet said a couple of hundred years ago."
"Well, I guess it's so, Hugh," said Jack, "no matter who it was said it."
When the panther skin had been stretched, Hugh told Jack to put around it the same protection that they had stretched about the grizzly bear skin, and soon after this had been done supper was ready. The dishes were washed before the sun had set, and building up the fire, the two companions lounged about it with the comfortable feeling which follows a day of hard work. For setting traps, although it does not sound like very hard work, had really required a good deal of effort.
"Now, son," remarked Hugh, "we want to get started to-morrow morning in good season, and we ought to be on our way before it's plain daylight. Of course, I hope that we'll find a beaver in every trap, but it may be that we won't find anything but feet."
"How do you mean, Hugh? Is it so that the beaver will gnaw their feet off to get out of a trap?"
"Not so," said Hugh. "I don't reckon a beaver knows enough for that in the first place, or could do it in the second. A beaver's foot is made up of a whole lot of pretty strong bones, and I question whether even a beaver could cut through those bones, and then he wouldn't know enough to do it. All a beaver knows when he gets caught is to struggle, and pull, and twist, and turn, and try to get away. Very often, if the traps are not properly set, they do get away, leaving their feet in the trap, but they don't gnaw their feet off; they twist them off. That is something that can be done and often is done, and that's the reason, as maybe I've told you before, that we always try to set our traps so that a beaver as soon as he gets caught, will plunge into deep water, and will be held there by the trap until he drowns. Then he has no opportunity of fighting with the trap and trying to get free. Of course, it often happens that it isn't possible to set your traps so that your beaver will drown, and where that isn't possible, you are likely to lose a good many of the beaver that you catch. It used to be a common thing to catch beaver with only three feet, sometimes with only two, and I once caught one that had only one foot, a hind foot that he got into the trap."
"I should think, Hugh, that a beaver that had been caught once and had got away would be mighty hard to catch again."
"Yes," said Hugh, "that's so, of course. He's always on the lookout for a trap, and then, too, if a beaver has lost a foot, a quarter of the chance of getting him is gone. If he's lost two feet he's only got two feet that can get into the trap, instead of having four, like an ordinary beaver. Lots of queer things happen in beaver trapping. I reckon I never told you that story of old Jim Beckwourth's about the beaver and the trap that was stolen by a buffalo."
"No," answered Jack. "That sounds as if it ought to be a queer story or a pretty good lie."
"Well," replied Hugh, "Jim Beckwourth had the name of being the biggest liar that ever traveled these prairies, but I wouldn't be surprised if he told the truth that time, and, anyway, Jim Bridger was with him when he found the trap with the beaver in it out on the high prairie a couple miles from where it was set.
"It seems, according to the story—it happened long before my time—that Jim came to a place where he'd set a trap and found that it was gone. There was sign there that some buffalo had crossed the creek just at this point. Jim hunted up and down the stream and couldn't find hair nor hide of the trap. The next day he and Jim Bridger went back again and looked some more, and not being able to find anything, they started on to join their party that was moving, and followed the buffalo trail that led from the place where the trap had been set. They had gone a couple of miles out on the prairie when they saw something, and going up to it found it to be a beaver, still in the trap, with the chain and float-stick all attached. Jim always claimed that one of the buffalo when crossing the creek got his head tangled in the chain of the trap and carried beaver, trap, and float-stick away out to the prairie before dropping it. It's a good story, but I'd hate to swear to it or to anything else that Jim Beckwourth ever said."
"That is a good story, Hugh," said Jack. "Isn't it wonderful," he added after a pause, "what strange things happen out here on the prairie, but there are lots of them that people back East wouldn't believe at all."
"Well, of course," said Hugh, "we all of us measure things up by what we ourselves have seen and done, and when we hear about things that are outside of the range of our own experience, we think they're wonderful."
For an hour or two longer they sat about the fire chatting over various matters, and then on Hugh's repeating the suggestion that to-morrow morning they must be early afoot, they went to bed.