“Then,” said James, “we shall not get any crop, not even the second year.”
“You will get a crop into the ground the second year, and harvest it the third, though you may get a crop the second year, but in the meantime you will keep the ground you have now and be getting something from that. If it should prove a dry summer you could burn it in June of the second year, and sow it with spring rye or barley, and if you get a good burn, an extra burn, you might venture to put in corn, for a crop comes along master fast on a burn, the hot ashes start it right along.”
“I don’t think,” said James, “we had better try to burn it till after wheat harvest, as we shall have the other pieces, and it would interfere so seriously with Mr. Whitman’s work, that if he was willing I shouldn’t be.”
The old gentleman now told James there was another way in which he might earn something for himself; he might shoot the coons that would be getting into the corn in the moonlight nights, and when there was no moon he might tree them with the dog, and shoot them by torchlight, and the hatters at the village would buy the skins. There was a pond in the pasture where there were plenty of muskrats.
“How do you get the muskrats?”
“This time of year set traps in the edge of the water for them; in the winter they make houses among the flags at the edge of the pond and go to sleep like flies, then you can catch ‘em in their houses. You can now shoot very well with a rifle, and if it was not for going to school you might in the winter get a wolf or a bear; a wolf’s pelt would bring two dollars, but a good bearskin would bring twenty, more than all the potatoes you worked so hard to raise. But no doubt you might trap a fox or two, and their skins bring a good price.”
“But where should I get a trap?”
“Come along with me.”
The old gentleman took James into the chamber over the workshop and opened a chest, in which were traps of all sizes and adapted to catch different animals, from a mink to a wolf or bears; there were but two of the latter but great numbers of the others, all clean and oiled, and in excellent order. He then opened a closet in which were chains to fasten the traps to prevent the animals from taking them away, and clogs, and broad chisels on long handles. The latter, the old gentleman told him, were ice chisels to cut ice around the beaver lodges in the winter.
“When I was younger, I used to leave Jonathan and the other boys to take care at home in the winter, and I and old Vincent Maddox used to take a hoss each, and traps, and rifles, and go over the Ohio river and trap and hunt sometimes till planting time, and sometimes I took one of my own boys. It’s a kind of pleasure to me to clean up the old traps, and repair ‘em, and look ‘em over, brings back old times, though I never expect to use ‘em much more ‘cept perhaps to take a fox or an otter.”