The Oxbow Wizard

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“I sure did,” replied Andy, brightening. “He was counted a smart fighter even for them days—but I was the snag he busted himself on.”

“I betcher! Well, I’ll be back in time to cook dinner, so you just keep quiet while I’m gone.”

“No, you take yer grub along and I’ll have supper ready when you git back. I ain’t a cripple yet.”

Young Dan put some food in his pockets and went about his day’s work, armed as usual with axe and rifle. He set out on the line of traps that ran crookedly almost due west, for this was the one that had been longest neglected. Andy Mace had been along it last, just before the forty-eight-hour storm, and now the tracks of his snowshoes were buried deep. Young Dan kept to his course without difficulty, however, though the line was not blazed. He worked easily by signs that would have meant nothing to a city man. His guides were certain trees and bushes and humps and hollows; and the wilderness was full to crowding of such things. So much for the line of general direction—but some of the traps lay several score of yards to the right and left of that line. A modest blaze had been cut in the bark of tree or sapling at several of these points of deflection.

Young Dan drew two blanks and then a fine big lynx. He skinned the lynx before going on. The fourth trap was empty, but the bait which had been placed on and around it so artfully had been snatched away even more artfully. He rebaited with frozen trout. The fifth trap was snapped tight on the forepaws of a skunk. The skunk itself was gone but Young Dan soon discovered odds and ends of hair and bone scattered in the snow in the immediate vicinity. Something with an amazing appetite had beaten the trapper to that trap, for certain. Young Dan set these things to rights and passed on, wondering at the driving power of hunger.

Two more blanks, a red fox and a skunk followed. The last trap on the line was empty and evidently undisturbed. The bait was covered with snow. Young Dan felt for it with a small stick and twitched a bit of it to the surface. He replaced it with a frozen trout, left it lying on the snow as an extra lure and turned away. He even took a step away; and then he turned back sharply and with the stick drew closer the piece of bait which he had twitched out of the snow. He took it up in his mittened hands and examined it closely. His eyes rounded and his lips parted with astonishment. Then his face took on an expression of blank bewilderment. He gazed all around at the crowding underbrush and soaring spires of the forest, then straight up at the clear sky, then down again at the lump of frozen bait in his hand.

“That’s queer,” he said. “Andy was here last, and that was before we went fishing—yes, and before the last snow. We were baiting with porcupine that day. I wonder where he got this from.”

He tossed the thing back into the snow and, still wondering, went his way. His way now was not by the back trail, but sharp to the right, and then more to the right, until his course lay southeast. He traveled by the sun. The way was rough and tangled, and the “going” was heavy. He struggled over blow-downs and through cedar-twined fastnesses of swamp. After a couple of miles of it he sat down to rest and eat his lunch. After that he came to a patch of open barren, desolate and flat under the colorless sun. He held to his course straight across the level, a distance of about two miles, and made good time. Beyond the barren he entered a forest of big timber and crossed a wide ridge of maples and yellow birches; and far beyond the ridge he came at last to the locality of the southernmost trap of the southern line.

Young Dan had traveled close upon fifteen miles since breakfast, and here he was still six miles at least from camp as the crow flies—and what would have been a laughing matter to a crow was a tough job for him. He almost found it in his heart to hope that all the traps between him and his supper were empty. No such luck! In that first trap, the farthest from home, he found a big bobcat—a cheap pelt on a big body.

It was past eight o’clock when Young Dan pushed open the door, staggered into the camp and let his load thump to the floor. He dropped his axe, too, stood his rifle against the wall, threw aside his fur cap and mittens, and sank into a chair with a grunt of relief.