Little Rifle; or, The Young Fur Hunters

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

In the left hand Little Rifle carried a beaver-trap, while a small, silver-mounted rifle rested upon his right shoulder, and was held in place by his other hand.

The day was drawing to a close, and there was a mellowed subdued quiet resting upon wood and stream that made the hour and the place one of the most attractive imaginable. The branch of the Columbia, at this point, flowed quite swiftly but with a steady, unruffled sweep, that was in perfect keeping with silence and solitude. The banks on either hand were varied by rock, wood and prairie, the country itself being of the most romantic nature.

Looking off to the east and south, the eye caught a glimpse of distant mountain peaks, standing out white and clear against the blue horizon, like a snowy conical cloud, and the intervening stretch of country was broken by hills, ravines, gorges, wood, stream, rocks and prairie, in an interminable jungle, making a country that was the chosen roaming-ground of the fiercest wild animals, the most valuable game, and the wild Indian, and the equally wild hunter and trapper.

Turning the eye to the westward, it was greeted with a vision of magnificence and grandeur. In this clear, brilliant air, which makes the climate of Oregon rival that of Italy, there was a sharp, clear distinctness to the Cascade Range, fifty miles away, that would have made any one believe that the distance was scarcely a quarter. Some of the loftiest peaks shone white against the sky, but as they towered aloft, their immense slopes could be seen to be covered with verdure, that was tinged with a misty blue, when viewed through the half a hundred miles of atmosphere.

Little Rifle was moving up the left bank of the stream, with his face turned toward the Cascade Range, except when he darted his quick, wide-awake glances in the direction of the river’s bank on his right hand, varied now and then by an equally inquisitive look at the wood and rocks in front and on his left.

“Uncle Ruff told me yesterday that there were plenty signs of beaver further up the stream,” mused the lad, as he walked along, “and I know that they have been thinned out down below, so that I haven’t had a bite in this trap for three days. I’ll set it a mile or two further up, where it will pay to make it a visit early in the morning.” And he held up the trap and turned it around before his eyes, as if it were a new thing altogether. It resembled the ordinary “steel-trap,” except that it was considerably larger.

The ease with which the lad carried the cumbersome load, attested the strength which this manner of living had given him. Like all little chaps, he was given to conversing with himself, when walking alone, and to-day he seemed in quite a chatty vein.

“Old Ruff went off on a hunt yesterday, and told me he would not be back for several days, and I’m to keep the old cabin till he shows himself again. I’ve done that often enough to understand it; but I wish he was home to-night.”

Something like a shade of sadness passed over the boy’s face as he uttered these words. It may be that it was only a natural feeling of loneliness; an evidence of that longing for companionship, which, at times, comes over us all, and is scarcely ever absent from youth.

“I wonder whether Uncle Ruff knows any more of my life than he has told me,” he added, following up the vein of thought. “That is little enough, at any rate. Years ago, when I was very young, he found me, and hasn’t any more idea than have I of who my parents are, and how it was I came to be in this part of the world.”