It is also quite a task to clear a suitable space, fell a right-sized tree, and construct one of these penlike traps; and although Old Cy and Ray started early, it was mid-afternoon that day ere they had the third one ready and awaiting its possible victim.
As gum-gathering was also a part of their season’s plan, they now left the swamp valley, and, ascending the spruce-clad upland, began this work, which is also worthy of description.
The chewing gum of commerce, so delightful to schoolgirls and small boys, is the refined, diluted, and sweetened product of gum nuts, or the small excrescences of spruce sap that exudes and hardens around knot-holes and cracks in the bark of those trees. These form into hardened nuts or knobs of gum, from the size of a hazelnut to that of butternut, and are worth from a dollar to a dollar and fifty cents a pound. A long pole with a sharpened knife or chisel fastened to its tip is used by gum seekers. It can be gathered from the time frost first hardens it until spring, and to gather three to five pounds is considered a good day’s work.
Ray’s first attempt at this labor seemed like nut-gathering at home, only more romantic, and when they were well into the vast spruce growth bordering one side of the Beaver Brook valley, he became so interested in hunting for the brown knobs, loosening them, and picking them up that he would have soon lost all points of the compass, except for Old Cy.
There is also a spice of danger seasoning this pursuit. A wildcat might at any moment be seen watching from the crotch of a tree, or a bear might suddenly emerge from the thicket. It was hard work also, for while some parts of a spruce forest may be free from undergrowth, not all portions are, and this tangle is one not easy to move about in.
There was also another element that entered into the trapping and gum-gathering life,–the possible return of the half-breed.
“He hain’t nothin’ agin us,” Old Cy asserted, when the question came up. “We didn’t chase him the day he stole Chip, ’n’ yet I s’pose he’ll show up some day, ’n’ mebbe do us harm.”
It was this fear that had led Old Cy to leave one of their canoes in a log locker, securely barred, and also to caution the hermit to remain on guard at the cabin while he and Ray were away.
A canoe is the one most vital need of a wildwood life, for the reason that the streams are the only avenues of escape and afford the only opportunities for travel.
The wilderness, of course, can be traversed, but not easily. Swamps will be met and must be avoided, for a wilderness swamp is practically impassable. Streams can be forded, but lakes must be encompassed, and even an upland forest is but a tangled jungle of fallen trees and undergrowth.