Although the Indians do not play it very much now, the Chief, Hank, and I have a lot of fun in the winter playing with snow-snakes, which are pieces of birch or ash about five feet long and an inch thick, with one end shaped up like a snake’s head. You can play it on snow or ice and the idea is to throw it so that it will slide a long distance. Sometimes you build up a little hump of ice or snow so that when the stick is thrown horizontally it shoots out in the air just above the ice and gets a good start before the slide begins.
Now that the cool weather is here my pet deer mouse visits me almost every evening and the dogs know him so well they don’t even look up when he scampers across the floor. Tripper used to chase him, but now that mouse is so spunky he will wait until the dogs are through eating and then go over and pick up what scraps they leave. He is the fussiest mouse about his looks and is always sitting up and washing his face with his paws.
Hank had a tame skunk for a while and he was as nice a pet as a man could have. Used to follow him around in the woods and made friends with the dogs which had a right healthy respect for the little black and white fellow. Hank never removed his scent sac and his skunk never misbehaved. But just the same that is taking a chance because no matter how tame a skunk is a sudden fright may make him forget his manners.
It takes time and a lot of patience to tame a wild animal. The easiest and best way is to get them young and bring them up. I had a bear cub once and he was about the most comical rascal you ever saw, but when he got big his playing got pretty rough, so I took him back in the woods and turned him loose to make his own way in the world. Another time I brought home a fawn that was lost and reared him on canned milk until he could take care of himself. He was as tame as a lamb and followed me through the woods everywhere I went. When he was about six months old he went back to his own kind, which is the way it ought to be.
The way to attract wild animals is to feed them the things they like. Put the food in the same place at the same time every day so they will learn to expect it. That’s how Gabby, my moosebird, was tamed. I used to sprinkle crumbs on the edge of the porch every morning after breakfast and he soon learned to be there when I came out. At first he would sit in a tree and fly down when I went away. After a while he came closer and finally he would light on my shoulder the minute I came out of the door. One thing to remember in working with animals is not to make any quick movements. Don’t try to rush the taming. The birds and animals have so many enemies they are afraid to take any chances. Once they know they can trust you they are your friends.
All this talk about animals reminds me of the time I went on a trip with a young fellow from the city. This friend, Pete, was new to the woods and he couldn’t get over the way the rabbits are attracted by a campfire and come around at night out of pure curiosity. One night about two o’clock he poked me awake and whispered:
“One of those rabbits is nosing around the tent close to my feet. Here is where I get a chance to tell the boys back home I kicked a rabbit in the face.”
With that he pulled back his leg and let fly. His foot landed with a thud and I knew then it was no rabbit. So, Pete jumped up and stuck his head out of the tent. It was bright moonlight and what he saw was a big black bear high-tailing it for the tall timber. I don’t know which was scared the most, but I know Pete lay awake the rest of the night. It so happened that our bacon was stored close to the foot of his bunk, which was what the bear was after. I still laugh about that night and I heard that when Pete got home he made a pretty good story of how he kicked a “giant” black bear in the face, leaving out the part about the rabbit.
There is always something interesting going on at Cache Lake and one of the reasons is that you never know what Hank will do next. Not long ago he got an idea to dye an old piece of canvas the color of the marsh grass like the camouflaged jungle suits used by the marines, so he could make himself a blind to help in photographing the snow geese. Neither of us knows very much about dyes, so we called in the Chief and sure enough he could tell us. The color Hank needed was a soft yellow which is close to the color of the grass in the shallows of Snow Goose Lake, so the Chief boiled down some bark from an ash tree and got just about the right color. He said he was not sure how much weather it would stand, for one must have alum to set the color. The young leaves of the birch in early spring also make a fine yellow, he told us.
The boiled-down juice of many of the berries gives bright dyes. One of the fine reds comes from the ground cranberry. For coloring moose hair and porcupine quills for decorating their moccasins the Indians make other kinds of red from elderberries and bearberries. A dark red dye can be made from the pinkish inner bark of hemlock, and dark brown from pine bark. Boiled blueberries give a purplish-red dye.
Rotting wood is used to make blue dyes and a grayish-blue color is made by boiling down shredded alder bark. A black dye comes from boiling the shredded bark, roots, and berries of the sumac, and the Indians also used soot from their fires mixed with fish oil to make a black paint. Green comes from boiling the leaves and bark of cedar. The Chief says to try a lot of different kinds of leaves and barks to discover new dyes, so we are going to try.it. If you find any colored earth you can dry it on the stove and then sift it through coarse cotton cloth and mix the powder with oils to make a fairly good paint for indoor decorations.
The Chief, Hank, and I have been having a wonderful time building a crystal detector radio receiver. It all began when a friend of ours, Mr. Beedee, a radio engineer, came up for a week’s rest last fall and got an idea it would be a real achievement to build a radio from the odds and ends of material you could find lying around a camp in the north woods. Of course, we couldn’t expect to find materials to make earphones, but he thought if we worked hard enough we could dig up the rest. Before he left he made a diagram for a set and said he would send the earphones. So we started a search for parts.
It was like one of those scavenger hunts you hear about. When the three of us put all our findings together we had some pieces of well-seasoned pine board, various bits of metal, two or three dozen brass-headed tacks, an empty spool, a handful of assorted screws, and an old cardboard salt box.
The two main problems were the tuning coil and a variable condenser. Following Mr. Beedee’s diagram we found we would need about 150 feet of insulated copper wire. Any size between number 22 to 28, or even finer, would do. For a while it looked as if we were not going to have any radio, but Hank got an idea and we snowshoed over to the old abandoned mine to see what we could find there. As luck would have it, in one corner of the blacksmith shop where it had lain for nigh on to twenty years was an old ignition coil once used for firing a gas engine. I certainly was excited when I pulled that thing apart and saw what was inside. Sure enough, there was a winding of fine wire, just the kind we wanted.
The salt box turned out to be just the thing for winding our coil on, so we cut off one end four inches long and soaked it in melted candle wax so it wouldn’t take up moisture. Then we began winding, beginning one-quarter of an inch from one end of the box and put on a total of 166 turns. At the start of the winding we anchored the wire by passing it back and forth through three pinholes punctured in the cardboard tube so the wire wouldn’t slip. Every seven turns we twisted a little loop to make a tap until we had eight of them. Then we wound on 40 turns without any taps. From then on to the end we made a tap every ten turns, scraping off the insulation on each tap to make a good connection. Those taps, connected by short wires to the switch points, make it easy to use any desired number of turns on the coil to tune in a station.
When all the turns were wound, the end of the wire was again fastened by passing it back and forth through pinholes in the tube. Then we painted the coil with candle wax to keep the wire in place. While we were doing that the Chief made a little wooden disk to go on top of the coil to hold the crystal detector.
Making the movable condenser had us puzzled for a while, but we looked on the diagram and it said tinfoil would do
, so we started to hunt and it wasn’t long before the Chief thought of the tinfoil lining of the packages our tea comes in. We got enough to make two sheets four by six inches and the Chief smoothed it out very evenly with the edge of a knife. We also needed some waxed paper and found what we wanted on a package of dry cereal. Meantime Hank cut out a pine baseboard for our set 14 inches long and 12 inches wide.
The first thing we did then was to start on the condenser and you will get an idea from our friend’s diagram how we made it. Out of an old piece of tongued and grooved siding I cut two narrow guides and from another piece of the board we made a slider five and one-quarter inches wide and six inches long. Fitted between the two guides, this piece slides back and forth very nicely after being shellacked and waxed, making it easy to adjust the condenser.
The next step was to use shellac to fasten one of the sheets of tinfoil onto the baseboard at a 45-degree angle, leaving one corner free to connect a wire, and then covering it with waxed paper extending the full width and length of the guides which are twelve inches long. Then we screwed the guides in place on top of the waxed paper, making sure that the slider board moved back and forth freely with just enough clearance so it didn’t touch the baseboard.
On the bottom of the slider at a 45-degree angle we fastened the other sheet of tinfoil, which was also glued down with shellac, leaving one end turned up over the edge of the slide for connecting a wire. The slider ought to be shellacked, too, for you want to keep all wood parts as dry as possible. Then the Chief screwed the spool on top for a handle, fitted wood strips at each end as stops for the slide, and our condenser was done.
I used two narrow strips of brass cut from the name plate of an old canoe for the two switch blades and then copper wires from the various taps on the coil were brought down and fastened under brass-headed tacks. The connections for the earphones, antenna and ground were made of little bits of copper wire, but we hope to have something better, such as a binding post, or spring clips, some day.
For a cup to hold our detector crystal we used one of the Chief’s .38-55 caliber rifle shells cutting it off about onehalf inch from the cap end so that we could screw it to the top of the coil. Matter of fact you could use the end of a 28 gauge shotgun shell or even one of those little cups they use on brass curtain rods.
For a cat whisker you take about two inches of fine steel wire sharpened to a point at one end where it touches the crystal, which should be a little lump of galena or silicon or even iron pyrite. I have heard that you can use a couple of razor blades set in slots in a block of wood, with a fine wire resting on the edges for a detector. Some fellows say a small piece of coal will do, but I don’t put much reliance on such detectors.
The best detector of all is one of the small fixed crystals that you can buy in any radio store. When our earphones arrived, tucked in with them was a fine fixed crystal and I can tell you we didn’t lose much time putting it in place. It has a small tip on one end, so we set the large end in the holder and made it snug by tamping in tinfoil and then wound the fine bare wire around the tip to make the other connection, for the cat whisker is inside these manufactured detectors.
For a spell it looked as if we would have no antenna, but then I thought of the copper wire I used for deep trolling for lake trout and we stretched a hundred feet of it between two jack pines above the cabin, taking care to insulate the ends. From one end we brought an insulated lead wire through the window to our receiver. We also took some bare wire through the window and buried it in a damp place below the eaves for a ground connection.
For insulators on our aerial we used pieces of broken syrup bottles, but if you have no glass you can take a well-seasoned piece of hardwood, such as the end of a broomstick, about six inches long, drill holes about an inch from each end and boil it in candle wax to keep out moisture.
I never will forget that evening when at last we had everything ready and I put on the earphones and listened for the new government station that has been built in the woods about twenty-five miles from us to cover the north country. At first I didn’t hear anything so I changed the little switch blades and moved the condenser slider and all of a sudden I heard a girl singing Annie Laurie, clear and sweet!
But the radio hasn’t taken up all of our time, for a while ago when Chief Tibeash was up near the carry at the head of the lake, three wolves drove a deer out of the woods. It was a long chance, but he let go with his .38-55 carbine, and brought down one of the gray killers. The others ran and the deer escaped. Having nothing but a small shoulder pack, the old man made a travois of two twelve-foot birch saplings lashed together with crosspieces and skidded the wolf down to my place. In addition to having a fine pelt, he will get bounty to boot. Not often do you get close enough for a shot at a wolf. What really took the Chief up the lake were signs of an otter slide at an open place in a creek. He has an idea he will have a fine skin one of these days.
From the window of my cabin I can see a porcupine sitting in a big pine at the edge of the clearing. He has been there nearly a month feeding on the sweet inner bark and paying no attention to cold and snow squalls. Their habit of girdling trees causes some damage, but porky is about the only animal a man can get without a gun when he is badly in need of food. By the way, don’t pay any heed to that old tale about them throwing their quills. It isn’t so. Porcupine liver is not bad when it is fried with bacon and the meat can be stewed or roasted after parboiling, but I cannot say I like it.
The snowshoe rabbits are turning white and on quiet, moonlit nights they play up on my ridge as I can see by their tracks, but they are always on the alert for weasels, owls, and foxes, their mortal enemies, and once in a while a scream that sounds like a hurt child marks the end of a rabbit. You have often heard it said “only the strong survive,” and that is certainly true up here, for most of the wild things have their enemies and they all have to fight the cold and hunt food to keep alive. The weak ones die and the strong live on. That is nature’s way of improving all living things.
In the woods where your life is controlled by the weather there is naturally a lot of talk about weather signs. I suppose you have heard the old one about the breastbone of a goose in November. Some folks believe that if the bone is thick the winter will be cold and snowy, but if it is thin you can expect a mild season. And there are some that believe that a heavy storm this month means snow right through to spring. Others tell you that as the wind blows this month so it will blow in December. I know a man who is dead sure that the kind of weather you have on November twenty-first will tell the kind of winter to look for. But, as I have said before, it is not one sign but many that give you some idea of what to expect. Even then things can change fast and a snow squall can turn into a blizzard.
The snowshoe rabbits are up on my ridge
The company’s patrol plane has gone over for its last trip before the freeze-up, for there is always a waiting period when the plane can’t land on wheels or pontoons and must wait for snow to land with skis. But as soon as the ice is solid and cushioned with snow he will be back. Circling over the cabin to say good-by he dropped a bundle of magazines that were mighty welcome, for Hank and I are great readers.
I had quite an experience lately and I might have known something strange was afoot when Hank came over with a mysterious air and asked me to visit him next day, providing there was a breeze blowing. That is what puzzled me. I was just that curious that I hiked over the next morning, since it was a fine clear day with a light breeze. When I came in sight of Hank’s cabin the dogs ran ahead as they always do, but this time they set up such a commotion I knew something special was happening. There was no sign of Hank at the cabin, but it didn’t take me long to locate him, for the dogs led the way out onto the lake, which was a sheet of glare ice, it being almost December.
Never before in the north woods or anywhere else have I seen such a sight, for there was Hank tearing over the ice in a contraption which you might call an ice boat made from the natura
l crotch of a tree, with a smaller crotch reversed to make a bowsprit. On it he had rigged a mast and hoisted his canoe sail. Rough and ready as it was, that ice boat certainly did cut capers on the ice and you could see that Hank was more than pleased at my surprise.
When he had shown off for a while and had the dogs almost tired out chasing him, he swung up in front of me with a fine flourish and gave me a chance to look over the craft. It didn’t take me more than a glance to account for Hank’s mysterious trips to the abandoned mine and all the hammering and banging that had been coming from that direction for several days. He had explained that he was just picking up scraps of iron that might come in handy, and on the ice boat they certainly did. The runners, which were about twenty inches long, were made of three-eighths inch angle iron, four inches wide on each side, and judging from the work on them I suspect Hank wore out several hacksaw blades. With an odd assortment of bolts he had fastened the runners to blocks which were then bolted to the end of the tree forks, two in front and one on a pivot on the stern for steering. He had dragged over some boards to make a platform, or, as you might call it, a cockpit, and with a spruce sapling for a mast held in place by three wire stays, and another sapling for a boom, the strange craft was ready for sailing.
I knew that the hardest part of that job had been to find a tree fork with evenly balanced arms and Hank agreed that he had got himself a crick in the neck walking in the woods to find just the right kind.
I tried out his boat and it handled well. Flying over the ice at fifty miles an hour is next to riding in an airplane for speed, but it seems faster because you are so close to the surface. The next thing was to get the Chief over and give him a ride. The wind being just right Hank gave the signal on his horn and in a couple of hours the Chief hove in sight. The old Indian is a fine sport and when Hank suggested that he come for a ride he didn’t hesitate a second. When they came back the Chief crawled off and walked around the ice boat thoughtfully two or three times. If you expect him to show excitement you will be disappointed, but there wasn’t much doubt that he was pleased though I suspect he had never before had as fast a ride. All he said was “Pimasiw,” which means, “He goes with the wind.”
Cache Lake Country Page 21
