The Demon Trapper of Umbagog: A Thrilling Tale of the Maine Forests

by Daniel P. Thompson

“The summer is coming; rejoice ye, rejoice!”

So smiled every thing, animate and inanimate, in the visible physical world, as circumscribed to this secluded settlement, on the morning when opened the first scene in the closing act of our story’s changeful drama. But in the moral world, so far as the interests and feelings of most of our leading personages were involved, the skies were overcast with contrasted clouds of doubt and darkness.

On that morning, at the Elwood Landing, on the western shore of Umbagog, stood a collected group of excited people, of different ages and sexes, gazing anxiously across the lake in the direction of the great inlet, as if expecting the appearance of some object or person from that quarter. But, before naming the cause of their assembling and the objects of their present solicitude, we will leave them a moment for a brief—but, for the understanding of the reader, necessary—recurrence to what had transpired, in the interim between the departure of the two Elwoods and Gaut Gurley, and the present occasion.

For nearly a month after her husband and son left home, Mrs. Elwood had been wholly unable to obtain any tidings of them, or any information even of their locality on the upper lakes. And gloomily, O how gloomily, with her, passed the long and dreary days and sleepless nights of that dismal period! Little had occurred to vary the monotony of her harrowing anxieties; and that little tended rather to increase than relieve them. For, even from the limited intercourse she had with families of the settlers,—although their conversation, out of regard to her feelings, was restrained and guarded, when the subject nearest her heart was introduced,—she gathered the fact that she was not alone in her fears and anxieties, but that they were shared, to a greater or less extent, by the people of the whole settlement; among whom the subject was being daily discussed, at every fireside, with avowed apprehensions that some fearful fate was awaiting one or both of the Elwoods, in their sojourn in the forest, in whose dark recesses there would be no witnesses to restrain the evil-doer from the purposes of robbery and revenge which they generally believed he secretly entertained. But, among all the settlers, no one had exhibited so much anxiety and restlessness as the hunter, Phillips. He had been almost continually absent from home, evidently to distant places, but where and with what objects he declined to make known. The direction and object of one of these secret journeys, however, was inferred from the unexpectedly early return of Fluella, the lovely maid of the forest, who had no sooner reached her old home than she flew to the Elwood cottage, to mingle her tears and sympathies with those of the anxious and troubled matron; who, in the circumstances, could have received no more acceptable visit. With the opening of the season, also, other absentees had returned to the settlement. Carvil had come back, to ascertain what had been effected in relation to the supposed robbery of the furs, the fall before, having intrusted his interests to the care of Phillips; and now feeling, with the others, apprehensive for the result of the new expedition, he was anxiously awaiting the return of the absent trappers. Tomah, the eccentric young Indian, likewise had surprised the settlers by his sudden reäppearance among them, in a suit of superfine broadcloth, hat and boots to match, gold watch, showy seals, and all the gewgaw etceteras that go to make up the animal they call a city dandy. He had sold his moose, it appeared, for four hundred dollars, and brought nearly the whole of it home on his bedizened person,—with the object, as he soon admitted, of dazzling the hitherto obdurate Fluella.

“Yes,—catch her sartain, now,” he said, with a complaisant glance over his dashing rig, on departing for the chief’s, as soon as he ascertained the fair object of his pursuit had returned to her father’s. But he soon came back, in a great miff, and offered to sell the whole of his fine new outfit for just one half what it cost him. Contrary to expectation, he declared he would have nothing more to do with Gaut Gurley; concerning whom he had seen something, about the time of the trial, to awaken his suspicions, and against whom he now evidently stood ready to array himself, with the rest, on the next occasion.

With these few incidents, April passed away, and the first day of May, the usual limit of the fur season, had arrived; but with it the absent trappers had failed to make their appearance. Another week passed, and still they came not. “What could it mean?” was on every tongue. Men ominously shook their heads, and women and children began, in the connection, to talk in suppressed voices of the dark character of Gaut Gurley.

At this juncture, word came that Gaut had returned, and had several times been seen about his home. A man was immediately dispatched to Gaut’s residence, for inquiries about the Elwoods; but the messenger returned and reported that Gaut said he parted with them on the Maguntic,—he to go over the mountains to his home, on the Magalloway, and they, in their canoe, that had been frozen up in Oquossak, the fall before, to go to Bethel to sell their furs. Further than this, he knew nothing about them.

“I don’t believe a word of it!” exclaimed the hunter, who with many others had anxiously awaited, at the tavern, the messenger’s return; “not one word of it! They would not have gone off to Bethel after such an absence, before returning home; or, if they had, they would have been here before this time. But the story shall be investigated without twelve hours delay. It is time we were moving in the business. Who will furnish me with a good saddle-horse?”

The horse was furnished; and within half an hour the excited hunter was speeding his way to Bethel.

He returned early the next morning, in a state of still greater excitement and concern than before; having ridden all night, in his anxiety to reach the settlement by the time people were up, so that immediate measures might be put afoot to scour the country in search of the missing Elwoods, whose continued absence had now become doubly mysterious and alarming, by the discovery he had made, as he feared he should, that they had not gone to Bethel at all, nor been seen or heard of anywhere in that direction.