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

by George Bird Grinnell

"Well," said Hugh, "I reckon we've got to get back that trap of ours and see what there is in it."

When they had come opposite the float stick, Hugh put the ax in the water, and taking the long willow pole from Jack, reached out, caught the float-stick and pulled it in within reach of his hand, and he gave the willow back to Jack and began to drag the trap toward him. Almost at once he said to Jack, "Well, son, we've got a beaver, I reckon"; and a moment or two later, after hauling in the chain, he lifted the trap out of the water, and Jack saw the head and shoulders of a good-sized beaver.

"Now," said Hugh, "we'll go up and look at the other trap, and then set over again. These are pretty good places, and we might catch several beaver here."

As Jack passed the trap and the beaver, which here lay almost at the surface of the water, he looked down at it with the greatest interest, but there was no time to stop and examine it. Hugh was plowing along through the water toward the other point, and Jack could see the end of the float-stick of the trap there just sticking out of the water, and looking much as it had looked the day before, after the trap had been set. Hugh said nothing, but advanced to the point, and then motioned to Jack to give him the willow pole, with which he felt in the water near the base of the float-stick and after two or three efforts hauled in the trap, in which there was a beaver.

"Pretty good luck so far, son," said Hugh. "Now I am going to set this trap over again here, because that float-stick is firm and this is a rattling good place. Suppose you take this beaver and drag it down to the place where we leave the creek, and then maybe take the other beaver down there, too. By the time you've done that, I'll have set the two traps, and then we'll take the two beaver out."

Jack took the dead beaver by a fore-paw and walked back along the shore. When he had reached the other trap, he tried to take the other beaver from it, but the springs were too stiff, and so he left it and went on down to the point where they were to go out of the water. As he looked back, he saw Hugh coming down to the trap in which the beaver was, and leaving the animal that he had been dragging at the edge of the water, he went back to Hugh, who by this time had freed the other beaver and was at work resetting the trap. Jack dragged this beaver down to the first one, and in a few moments Hugh had overtaken him, and they started across the meadow, dragging the beaver over the grass.

When they reached the horses one of the animals was put on behind each saddle and they started up the creek to visit the other traps. Here their luck had been equally good, and two beaver were taken from these two traps and the traps reset.

"Well, son," said Hugh, "if this sort of thing keeps up we'll have to bring a pack horse along with us to carry the beaver into camp. Now let us take all four of these animals up into that pine timber over there and skin them and save ourselves the trouble of carrying them to camp. If we need any of the meat we can take that down, of course."

"It looks to me, Hugh," said Jack, "as if the skinning of these four beaver was going to be quite a job." "Well," said Hugh, "so it will. I didn't suppose that we'd get more than two to-day, and figured that we would take them down to camp, but after this I think it would be a good idea for us to carry our skinning knives and whetstones with us."

"Our skinning knives, Hugh?" questioned Jack. "Why, we've both got our skinning knives in our belts now."