Visiting the game warden, Joe Wilson, and listening to his old friend's sage advice had started Andy on a whole fresh train of thought and furnished new ideas. He sat at the table in his little house and devoted himself to serious thinking.
Muskrat pelts were fairly valuable in the fall, as soon as the weather turned cold enough to make them so. But they were far and away at their best, and brought the highest prices, if taken in late winter or early spring. In order to realize the maximum profit from his venture—and even to think about anything else would be silly—the entire crop of pelts would have to be harvested in a comparatively short time. This posed a problem which, until now, Andy had not even considered.
Nor had he thought of sharing with his neighbors, he admitted honestly. He now saw this as a near necessity, aside from being a kindly gesture.
Though everything looked favorable, as yet he could not possibly know whether his plan to turn the swamp into one big muskrat ranch would end in success or failure. But he did know that there could be no intermediate point. Muskrat pelts, which, depending on the fur market, might bring a little more or a little less than two dollars each—and probably would average that—were not so valuable that a few, or even a few dozen, would be worthwhile. He had to take a great many. But if he restricted himself to the best part of the trapping season—even though he worked as many hours as possible seven days a week during that time—how many pelts would one man, working alone, be able to handle? Without knowing the limit, he was sure that there had to be one.
Merely setting enough traps and moving them whenever a sufficient number of muskrats had been taken from any one portion of the swamp would, within itself, be no small task. In fact, though most of it could be done before trapping started, just patrolling the swamp and deciding how many pelts might safely be taken, and still leave an adequate foundation breeding stock, would be a big job. Then there would be skinning the catch, making stretching boards and stretching the pelts. All of this not only had to be done, but it must be well done. A poorly cleansed or badly stretched pelt was not worth nearly as much as one cared for expertly.
It would be to his benefit—and theirs, too—if he accepted Joe Wilson's advice and asked the Casman brothers and Old Man Haroldson and his sons whether they cared to participate. Since Andy was furnishing the swamp, all the initial investment and all the basic work, it would be feasible and acceptable to work something out on a share basis. It would, naturally, be useless to ask Luke Trull to cooperate with anybody in anything. Andy caught up a stub of pencil and a scratch pad and began to figure.
He had planted twelve muskrats, of which he had six, two pairs and two lone females, left. They had produced thirty-eight young, and though Andy could not be sure—he had found the remains of two baby muskrats without identifying what had killed them—he thought that at least thirty remained. He intended to plant twenty more mated pairs, and judging from past experience, he could expect to lose half of them. If the rest, and supposing ten females survived, propagated in proportion to the first planting, there would be somewhat more than ninety young. If each adult female produced at least one more litter—
Andy threw his pencil down and stared across the table. So many factors entered into the picture that there was about as much possibility of accurately forecasting how much increase there would be as there was of knowing definitely which cow in a herd would switch its tail to the left first. If he could keep furred and feathered predators down and Luke Trull out, and if he were lucky, there might be anywhere between 150 and 200 muskrats in the swamp with the coming of spring. That would not be nearly enough to start reaping a harvest of pelts. It wouldn't even be an adequate breeding stock, and perhaps there would not be enough muskrats to start trapping the following spring. But by the third year, always assuming that luck was on his side, the venture should show at least a modest return.
At any rate, he would see Ira and Jud Casman and Old Man Haroldson and his five strapping sons in the near future. He would explain what he was doing and what he hoped to do and he would point out that, if he had their co-operation, which he thought he'd get, nobody would become rich but there would be something for all who cared to join in. Coming in the spring, when other work was slack, such funds would be welcome. Luke Trull was and would have to remain Andy's problem.
Rising, the boy walked to the window and peered into the darkness. He hadn't seen the frost-coated kitten since early morning, and in addition to anxiety, he felt an unaccountable sense of disappointment. Somewhat irritably, he tried to shrug it away. Why should he have sensed a powerful bond between the kitten and himself? And why was he forever getting ideas and fancies which no one else seemed ever to entertain? Obviously the kitten, at best a half-wild thing, had gone back into the wilderness out of which it had come. That was its privilege.