The Wilderness Trail

by Francis William Sullivan

A little while later, armed with ax and knife, and accompanied by Jean, who carried the home-made fish-line, Donald led the way through the woods to the river that had brought him such precious freight on the tide of tragedy. That morning while angling, his eyes had seen many things. Fifty feet from where he sat, he had observed an iced pool in which a back-set from the swift stream probably moved sluggishly. He had noticed little tracks of five-toed, webbed feet on the thin drift of powdery snow that led to the bank above this pool. Last of all, he had seen a smooth incline worn by these webbed feet down to the brink of the pool.

“Otter!” he had said to himself; and he had resolved to come back later.

Now, with crisp instructions as to silence, he advanced noiselessly, trying every bit of crust before he set his weight upon it, avoiding tufts of underbrush, and repressing his breathing. Jean, a true daughter of the North, sensed these precautions almost by instinct, and followed his example. He did not seek the fishing-hole of the morning, but rather a clump of trees on the bank back of the incline, thanking fortune that the light wind was in his face, so that the man-smell could not be carried down to the pool. With infinite care, the two approached the shelter of the trees, and, presently, when the wind rustled among the boughs, parted them and looked through.

There, on the bank, was the whole colony of otters, engaged in an exhilarating pastime. Head-first, tail-first, sidewise, singly and in groups, the little animals were coasting down the toboggan-like path they had worn from the top of the bank to the water's edge. No sooner did they roll to the bottom than they raced to the top and started all over again, slithering, careening, tumbling. To the girl, it was a strangely ludicrous sight, but to Donald it was familiar enough. The otters were indulging in the favorite amusement of their kind—sliding down a snow-bank.

The two observers turned away soon, and, with exaggerated care, made their way back to the little shanty, where Donald at once set about mending the broken trap. In two hours' time, he had succeeded in fixing it temporarily. Then, after wrapping Jean in her blankets and furs on the spruce-coveted bunk, he rolled up in his own coverings before the fire for the night.

The next morning, Donald caught a fish for breakfast, and then returned to the otter-slide with his trap and the piece of meat he had rescued from the pack. Baiting the trap with part of a fish, he buried it in the snow at a point where the otter must come down the slide to the pool. Then, he rubbed the meat in the tracks where he had stepped, and brushed snow across them, obliterating every trace of his presence. After that, he returned to the shanty, for there was still much to be done.

On his way to the fish pool that morning, he had seen a number of sharply impressed, three-toed clusters of footprints, and recognized the tracks of the hare. Now, he searched the by-ways of the low ground in the vicinity, and finally discovered a line of undergrowth like a hedge, through which a passage had been forced. The hard-packed runway told him that here the long-ears passed through on their foraging expeditions. He cut a number of small sticks and planted them across this opening, leaving barely enough room for a small animal to pass. Then, he took from his pocket the string of moose-gut that had made part of the fish-line, and fashioned it into a running noose. This he hung across the opening, and tied the other end to a bent twig, which would spring up immediately a pull dislodged it from its caught position. Here, too, he carefully effaced any man-trace, and afterward went on to the second hedge, where he set a snare made of his moccasin strings. At noon, he returned to his snares, and found two strangled rabbits hanging in mid air, frozen to the consistency of granite. Releasing them, he reset the snares, and returned jubilantly to the cabin with his catch. . . . And they had rabbit stew that day.

This was only the beginning. It was food, and no more. As the days passed, Donald spent many hours in the forest, chopping saplings and underbrush for the fire, going farther and farther from the cabin in his search for the proper materials. Long since, he had chopped the broken and battered sledge out of the ice, and hauled it home. But it was damaged beyond repair, the smooth boards that made its riding surface having been broken and splintered hopelessly. But there was still use for it. With remarkable ingenuity, he fashioned a small sleigh, some four or five feet long. Then, from the harness of the dead dogs, he made trappings for Mistisi, who, apparently anxious to help in all he saw going on around him, took to them kindly. After this, it was easy work to gather wood, however far distant. The dog made regular round trips from the cabin to the spot where the man was at work, and shortly a great pile of wood formed a wind-break for the shanty.

Jean Fitzpatrick now attended to the fishing alone, and what they did not use for food was packed away out of Mistisi's eager reach in the preserving cold. The rabbit-snares with two settings yielded three or four of the animals every day, and these, skinned and cleaned, added to the store of reserve food.

The otter-trap worked successfully, but required repairing after each catch, so that it was scarcely worth the trouble of setting, since rabbits and fish continued plentiful. One night, however, after a series of sharp sniffs at the door while the rabbit was broiling, and the discovery of padded prints in the snow next day, Donald worked more carefully over the contrivance, and set it to catch larger game—for bob-cats were about.