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

by George Bird Grinnell

"Why," said Hugh, "that's better yet. But I don't know if we've got axes enough for three people to handle; we've only one in our camp."

"I think we have two," said Mr. Clifford.

"Well," said Hugh, "if you have two, why don't you and Henry go down and get your man and the three axes and come up here, and then just as soon as we've finished our work we can go and cut some timber. There's lots of it here, and it's right handy to snake down. Then, while we are chopping, the boys can get the horses, and they can snake the logs out to where we'll need them."

"Good enough," said Jack. "I'll bet we'll get those logs down faster than they can cut and trim them."

Mr. Clifford and his son started on their errand, and not long after their return with Jones and the three axes the work of skinning the fur was over, and the beaver carcasses were ready to be used for bait.

Hugh now led the way up on the hillside to where there were a number of tall, slender pines, and he and Mr. Clifford and Jones each attacked one. The trees were eight or ten inches through, and were soon brought to the ground. Then they were cut in twenty-foot lengths, and the branches trimmed from them. Meantime, Jack and Henry had gone down to the camp, saddled four of the riding horses, which were brought back to where they were chopping, and Jack, putting a lariat around one end of a log, and taking a turn of the other about his saddle horn, started off to draw the stick out to the place where the trap was to be built. Hugh showed Henry how to do the same thing, and thus the logs were gradually brought out of the timber and to the meadow. Once in a while the end of a stick would catch on a root, and it would be necessary to dismount and lift it over, but after a while a trail was worn, in which the logs slipped smoothly. Before long Hugh declared that enough sticks had been cut, and then, going to the tops of the trees which had been cut down, he cut a number of stakes about eight feet long, which he sharpened at one end, Mr. Clifford and Jones helping him in this work. Then the boys snaked bundles of these stakes down to the building ground, and waited to see Hugh make his trap. He built his pen in the shape of a narrow V, driving these sharpened sticks into the meadow and piling the logs against them so as to make a wall of logs. Shorter logs and brush were then piled on top of the V nearly to its opening. A bed-stick was laid across the opening, just as had been done with the mink dead-fall, and the fall-log was arranged to run between four tall stakes, two on either side. All this was not done without much use of the ax, much lifting of logs, and much expense of strength and perspiration; but at last, when it was done, Hugh seemed satisfied, and said, "There, I guess that will do. Now," he said, "we will lift up this fall-log and prop it so that the bears cannot pull it down. They may not feel like going in the first night, but if there should be any young, foolish ones in the family they'll go in, and when the old ones see that they are not hurt, they'll come in, too. Then the next night we'll see what will happen."

The trigger and spindle for the trap were not yet prepared, but Hugh had cut two sticks from which they were to be made, and declared that he would do that work in camp. The carcasses of the beaver were now thrown into the traps so that they lay about four feet inside of the bed-stick, and were fastened there by a stout stick driven through them into the ground.

"There," said Hugh, "I guess now we can quit. That job is all right, and if we get some beaver to-morrow, we're likely to have bear the next morning."

They all felt better when they had returned to camp and washed off the grime of their work and were sitting around the fire. It was not yet supper time, and yet there was not time for the boys to go off on the target-shooting trip which Jack had planned. He spoke of this to Henry, and explained to him over again how hopeless it was for him to do any hunting unless he had learned just how his gun shot, and just how the trigger pulled off.