The time in question was the last days of October or the first of November, and the day a very warm one for that time of the year. I had been walking very fast, in fact where the ground was favorable, I would take a dog trot. I wished to make the rounds of the traps and get out of the woods that day. When I came to where the second trap had been set, I found it gone, clog and all. The place where the trap was setting was in the head of a small ravine and near the edge of a windfall, just on the lower side of the bait pen, and but a few feet from it lay the partly decayed trunk of a large tree. I jumped on to this tree to get a good look down into the windfall to see if bruin was anywhere in sight. I had scarcely got on the log when I received a reception which I think was something equal to that the Russian Naval Fleet met with in the Corean Straits. I had jumped square into a colony of large black hornets, and they did punish me terribly in three minutes' time. My feet were swollen so that I was obliged to remove my shoes and my entire body was spotted as a leopard with great purple blotches and the internal fever which I had was most terrible. I thought that every breath that I drew was my last. I was two miles from the wagon road and nine or ten miles in the wilderness. No one knew where I was, nor where the traps were set.
I thought no more of the bear. I only thought of reaching the wagon road. I began one of the worst battles of my life, but after a struggle of three hours I got to the road more dead than alive. But here fortune favored me for soon after a man by the name of White (one of the county commissioners who had been in the southern part of the county on business) came along. He took me home where the doctor soon got me on my feet again.
I told my oldest brother where he would find the trap, so he took a man and team and went early the next morning and got the bear all right. It was four or five days before I felt able again to go into the woods and look at the traps, but when I did, I found a small bear, (a cub) dead and the skin nearly worthless. This was 45 years ago, but I am still working at the same old trade, in a small way.
At another time and previous to the time mentioned, I, with a partner, was trapping on the headwaters of Pine Creek. We had been in camp about a week, when one day we had been setting a line of traps about three miles from camp. It was in November and the weather was very disagreeable, yet we were hustling for we knew that the snow would soon be on us, and then we wished to put in all the time we could hunting deer.
On the day in question Orlando (that was my partner's name) long before noon was complaining of a bad headache, and said that it seemed as though every bone in his body ached. I tried to persuade him to go to camp but he insisted on setting more traps. About three o'clock in the afternoon he was obliged to give up, and said he would sit down where he was and wait until I could go further up the stream and set a couple more traps. I said no, we will go to camp, so we started. We were about three miles from camp, but Orlando could only go a few steps when he would be obliged to rest. He soon became so weak that I could only get him along by partly carrying him. He was several years younger than I, but he was somewhat heavier, so he was rather more of a load than I could well manage.
I kept tugging away with him, and about 9 o'clock in the evening I got him to camp, where I fixed him as comfortable as I could, then I began a race of about eleven miles to Orlando's father's house. The distance was about one-half of the way through the woods and it took me until 12 o'clock to make it, but we soon had a team hitched to the wagon and were on the way back to the camp where we arrived about 3 o'clock in the morning. We could only get within about one and a fourth miles of the camp with a wagon, so we had to leave it there and go on with only the horses. When we got to the camp we found Orlando no better, so we got him on to one of the horses and by steadying him the best we could, managed to work our way back home. We arrived there about 8 o'clock in the morning and found a doctor already waiting.
To make a long story short, it is sufficient to say that Pard had a long run of typhoid fever, and if he had been in the woods alone he would have surely died. I could relate other incidents where a pard did come in very acceptable.
As it is a necessity to have a partner, it is also necessary to have a good one, for the successful trapper has no idler's job on his hands. You should always have a partner who is able to read and write and should have a pencil and paper in your pocket, for it often happens that you wish to leave a message at a certain place where Pard and you expect to meet on the trap line. Then each one takes a different line of traps, and circumstances has happened since you left camp in the morning that it changes the entire program. It also often happens that you get into camp at a different time than what you expected and wish to go out again and take up another line of traps, and you should try to keep one another informed as to about what section you are working in.
Always endeavor to carry out the plans as near as possible the way they were planned before leaving camp in the morning. Of all things, do not accept of a man who is lazy or void of manly principles as a partner, for sooner or later you will drop him. Then it will make no difference how much you have done for him or how much you have befriended him in times past, he will do you all the dirt he is capable of doing.
If you want to know all about a man, go camping with him. Probably you think you know him already, but if you have never camped on the trail with him, you do not. It may be that he is your near neighbor or he may have been a partner in business, but if you have not camped with him, you have yet to learn him. It is not a hard job to believe a man a good fellow when at home, but when you have camped with him on the trail, then you will know him. When your companion wishes to annoy any game, which you may find in your traps for the mere purpose of hearing the animal moan with pain; will shoot birds and animals just for the purpose of killing if you have a team with you, and your companion will ride up the steep hills where other men would walk; will neglect his beasts of burden in any way, this man you should never choose as your camping or trapping partner. But when you find one who will never wantonly torture a dumb animal and is kind to his beasts of burden, always giving it all the advantages and kind treatment possible, this man you needn't fear to accept as a trapping partner for in this man you will find "a friend indeed when in need."