Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains

by George Bird Grinnell

"Well," said Hugh, "I guess that has happened to all of us at one time or another, but after it's happened a few times, we get to understand that you can't hit things with a rifle ball unless you shoot straight every time."

"My! I felt cheap when I missed," said Jack. "It was not so much that I should have to come and tell you what a stupid thing I had done, but it was the change from being so sure and so confident that I had what I wanted, to seeing it slip through my fingers and skip off."

"Well," said Hugh, "I was astonished to hear your shot and then see you come into camp without anything, because, of course, I know as well as you do that usually you shoot pretty carefully, and you've been mighty lucky in your hunting. I sort o' fixed my palate for some fried antelope liver to-night, and it seemed like quite a drop to come down to bacon."

"Well, the next shot I fire," declared Jack, "you bet I'll take care and try to send the ball where it belongs. I don't want to have this thing repeated."

"Well," replied Hugh, "if you are going to shoot a rifle you've got to give it your attention first, last, and all the time. You never can be sure of hitting anything unless you keep your mind fixed on what you're doing. A careless man is neither a good hunter nor a good rifle shot."

"Well," said Jack, "you bet I'm going to remember that after this."

During the afternoon Hugh had spread out the green hides in his bundle and given them an opportunity to dry a little more, and then had repacked them, so that bright and early the next morning they were on their way again. Soon after noon they reached the crossing of the Michigan, and on the way there Jack got a shot at a fine buck antelope and killed it, and put the hams and sirloins on his horse. They made a pleasant camp in a grassy bottom of the Michigan, and after eating, Jack set out to walk a little distance down the creek in search of adventure.

While strolling along the bluffs overlooking the narrow river bottom, he came upon a little slough in and near which was several sorts of water birds. Of these the most interesting was a family of green-winged teal, an old mother, followed by eight tiny young. As soon as the old bird saw Jack she swam to the margin of the pool and ran off into the grass with the eight little ones strung out in a line and pattering over the mud behind her. The scene was a pretty one, and much as Jack would have enjoyed seeing one of the little fellows closer at hand, he did not go near the grass which she had entered, to disturb the small family. A little further down the river in a quiet pool he saw, a hundred yards below him, a duck swimming about in plain sight. Making a little round back from the water, so as to get out of sight of it, he crept up and tried to see the bird in order to find out what it was, but it had disappeared. Going on down the river, he happened to look back and he saw in the same place what seemed to be the same duck doing the same things. Again he went away from the water and returned to the place, and tried to see the bird, but again it disappeared. Jack wondered if it might not be one of the medicine birds about which the Indians had talked, a spirit which took the form of a bird and then, perhaps, changed into some other object of the landscape.

It was not nearly supper time when he returned to camp. He found that Hugh had spent the afternoon busying himself about the hides, and that these, except the bear's skin, were by this time all dried. Hugh declared that there was no reason now why they might not go on and make a full day's march, because the bear hide could finish drying at any time.