The doctor was there and after examining pard said he feared it was a bad case of fever. I waited a few days to see if he would be able to go back to camp and then the doctor told me that he would not be out of bed in two months and advised me to keep out of the woods or I would be brought out on a stretcher. I had my mind on all those deadfalls that we had built and all the coon, mink and fox that we could catch, and was determined to go back to camp notwithstanding our friend's advice to the contrary. After looking around for another partner which I was unable to find as no one wished to go and stay longer than a day or two (what we call summer trappers), I again packed my knapsack and went back to camp. The next morning, after catching a good lot of trout for coon and mink bait, I began the work of setting the hundred or more deadfalls that pard and I had built. As soon as I had all the deadfalls set I hunted up good places to set the traps that we had. I was so busy all the time that there was no chance to get lonesome. Every day there were coon and mink to skin and stretch. Now and then a big, old coon was so strong that he would tear the deadfall to pieces and I would be compelled to build it all over and make it stronger.
What a difference there is now with the many styles of traps and the H-T-T to guide the young hunter and trapper. If I could have had a couple dozen of the No. 1 1/2 Victor traps made as at the present time, I would have been as proud as a small boy with a new pair of boots, although I think what was lacking in modern traps was fully made up by the number of furbearing animals.
I had been so busy during the two weeks I was in camp that I had forgotten the day of the week; neither did I take time to kill a deer or to go up to the road to see if anyone had written, to see if I was dead or alive. There was a stage passed over the road twice a week. I had nailed a box with a good tight lid on a tree by the road so that I could send a line out home for anything I wanted or my family could write to me.
I had two or three traps set for foxes up towards the road along the edge of a laurel patch where there were plenty of rabbits and the foxes worked around to catch rabbits. I thought I would go to the road and be there about the time the stage passed along and see if I could hear anything from pard and the folks at home and then I could tend the traps on my way back to camp.
WOODCOCK AND SOME OF HIS CATCH.
I was at the road shortly before the stage came along and was surprised as well as delighted to see a neighbor boy by the name of Frank Curtis aboard the stage as he had said he would come over and stay a day or two with me in camp. Frank had not been allowed to spend much time with a gun or traps, but like most boys, he liked a gun. My mother died before I was eleven years old and father allowed me to trap and hunt about as I liked.
When we got down near the traps we set our packs down--I say we, for my folks had sent me a new supply of provisions--and went to look after the traps. The first one had a rabbit leg in it and it was plain to be seen that some animal had eaten the rabbit. We reset the trap and went on to the next trap which was set in a little gorge or hollow. A few yards below the trap two large trees had blown down across the little hollow. The tree on the side farthest down the hill from the trap had broken in two where it fell over the hollow and dropped down so that it laid close to the ground while the tree on the upper side, the side nearest the trap, lay a foot from the ground in the hollow.
The trees were two or three feet apart right at the hollow but were close together on one side. When we came to where the trap had been set we found trap and drag gone and nothing in sight. We soon discovered the animal which we supposed was a coon, had gone down the ravine toward the two large trees that had fallen across the hollow. We went to the logs and looked between them. There we could see the clog but the animal was crowded back under the logs so we could see but little of it.