The Adventurous Life of Tom Iron Hand Warren: Mountain Man (The Mountain Men Book 5)

by Terry Grosz

  Understanding that they would be a valuable target for any Indians on the loose who were ‘horse hungry’, especially with their valuable animal string and what they were carrying in the way of provisions, the men began their everyday ritual of remaining alert to their surroundings, just as soon as they left the front gates of the fort or any other form of safety. For the next several days, they slowly trailed their pack animals as they headed westerly along the northern side of the Missouri River. Upon reaching the Big Muddy River, the men forded at a set of low riffles and then continued westerly once again into the unknown prairies and hunting grounds of the dreaded Gros Ventre. For the next several days, the men passed herd after herd of peacefully feeding or resting buffalo, as they crossed the rolling hills of the verdant prairie en route to the Poplar River country and its fabled, much-rumored beaver trapping grounds.

  Finally arriving at the confluence of the Poplar River where it entered the Missouri River, the men rested and grazed their double hobbled livestock under their watchful eyes on the lookout for any sign of horse-stealing Indians. Numerous times during their travels to date, the men had crossed trails of numerous unshod horses moving to and fro throughout the prairie, but as of yet had not seen hide nor hair of any of their riders. However, the men knew the Indians were in country and close at hand, based on the freshness of their horses’ droppings, campfire signs and dead and partially butchered buffalo carcasses left out on the prairie after the Indians had made a kill and left what they did not need.

  By the third morning with their horses now well rested, the men crossed the Poplar River at a shallow ford and proceeded northwesterly up the Poplar until they came to a string of wooded hills on the western side of the river. There they paused out of sight of any hostile watching eyes out on the open prairie in a swale, rested their livestock and began looking for a secluded place nearby in the timbered hills in which to build a cabin. This they did because all along the Poplar River and its adjacent marshy areas, they had observed numerous signs of beaver. Beaver ponds abounded, signature mounded houses of the animals were everywhere, and mud and stick dams were numerously interspersed throughout the entire low-watered areas. Additionally, there were even heavier beaver signs all along the entire Poplar River that the men had observed as they slowly traveled along upon entering the country they planned on spending a season trapping. All in all, the country abounded with beaver sign as other Free Trappers had so informed Old Potts in his previous conversations with them recently back at Fort Union. Conversations from a number of Free Trappers who had trapped the area but decided to leave all those good trappings behind because of the heavy Gros Ventre Indian presence at what seemed to be every turn in the trail. With all those excellent beaver signs, the men had decided the placement of their new home would be so dictated near those areas to be trapped but off the main beaten trail of that historically traveled by the numerous local Indian bands moving around ahead of the trappers’ line of travel.

  After several days of looking and finally discovering a flat spot in the wooded terrain adjacent a small but vigorously flowing spring, Old Potts informed the group that to his way of thinking, that was the best out-of-the-way and secluded spot they had seen for the building of their new cabin. Sitting there resting on his horse, Iron Hand took a ‘gander’ at his new home site to be as well. They had a good flat piece of ground upon which for their cabin to sit, there was an abundance of firewood nearby, they were not out in the open where just any passing Indian would notice their presence, the area was open enough so it could be fairly easily defended from the shooting holes soon to be built into the cabin’s walls, and a good flow of water and a meadow were nearby for the horses. From all of what Iron Hand could observe, Old Potts’s past experience as a trapper had just been brought to bear in the selection of their new home site.

  However, now that they were there in their new home site location for the trapping season, the hard work was now looming on their horizon. The men unpacked all their livestock and using the packs of goods and their saddles, made a small ‘walled’ fort around the base of two pine trees for their general protection in case of a surprise attack by the local inhabitants. Their horses were then hobbled and put out into the nearby tree-surrounded meadow to graze under the watchful eyes of the men who were soon to be working close at hand. Then Big Foot and Iron Hand took their crosscut saws and axes and went up into the adjacent stands of timber nearest their chosen cabin site. There they felled green trees for the log roof and walls of their soon to be built cabin. As they did, Crooked Hand and Old Potts gathered up large rocks from the creek’s waters flowing below the wellhead of their vigorously flowing spring, dug out, rocked up and constructed a firepit adjacent their new cabin site for all of their outside cooking that would take place during their nicer weather.

  At the end of that first day, out from the forest came Iron Hand and Big Foot, to find a roaring fire in their new outside firepit and a supper of buffalo meat, hot coffee and Dutch oven biscuits. After supper, the men sat around the fire on recently dragged into the area, limbed sitting logs, smoked their pipes and relaxed because they knew the next day would be an even harder one work-wise. Come daylight, the last of the buffalo meat, along with hot coffee was served as the men’s breakfast.

  Then Old Potts with a team of horses, began dragging the previously cut logs from the forest to the cabin site, while Big Foot cut in the notches at the logs’ ends for log-upon-log wall placement. Three more days of hard work timber felling, cutting, removing limbs, notching and sectioning the logs, and the men had a pile of roughed-out, green timber ready for constructing their new cabin.

  All the next day, with Iron Hand and his great strength and height hefting up and setting the ends of the logs into the pre-cut notches, the walls began taking shape. Soon the walls were raised high enough so that even Iron Hand with his great height, could walk around inside the cabin to be, without having to do so in a stooped-over position for fear of banging his head on the low-hanging ceiling rafters. Then up went the roof’s stringers and finally the rest of the smaller logs lining the roof top. Following that, the roof was covered with cut sagebrush filling the cracks between the logs, followed by two feet of dirt placed over the top with brute force-hauled and filled panniers, so no one could start a fire on their roof if the trappers were inside its walls and under attack by Indians.

  For the next week, Big Foot, who was a bit of a carpenter in addition to being a blacksmith in his previous life, made tables, sitting chairs for the inside and outside of their cabin, and finally cut the logs needed for a heavy front door and shutters for the window openings in the walls of the cabin. When Big Foot did, he made the front and only entryway to the cabin ‘single-man’ narrow. Big Foot figured in the hostile country they were in, if anyone ever attacked their cabin and the men inside, they would have to come through the front door single file. If that were the case, he also figured those so entering with killing on their minds, would make easier targets for any of those trapped inside the cabin and fighting for their lives... He also devised a special step just inside the front door that everyone entering the cabin would know about and have to ‘step-long’ to get over.

  Once again, Big Foot figured that if anyone attacked their cabin and came storming inside, they would not be familiar with his step-long addition and end up stumbling and falling on their faces in the confusion of any battle. Little did the other trappers complaining about the long step needed upon entering their cabin truly realize just how handy such a ‘long-step’ device would someday become in the event of a surprise attack. As Big Foot carried on with his backcountry carpentry work, Iron Hand and Old Potts carefully cut out the firing holes along the sides and ends of their 20 by 25-foot cabin for use in case they were ever attacked by those they did not want inside or those who did not want the trappers in their country.

  Following the culmination of those works, all four men built a mud and stick fireplace and chimney at the end of their cabin f
or the heat it would provide and to facilitate indoor cooking when the winter winds howled outside. In building their fireplace and chimney, the men dug out a part of their spring for the mud it supplied and in so doing, made a larger pool to facilitate watering their horses. Lastly, Iron Hand and Big Foot cut down a number of dead pine and fir trees, as Old Potts and Crooked Hand, using several teams of horses, hauled the dry timber down to their cabin and stacked it nearby for their close-in winter’s firewood supply when the snow had become too deep for easy firewood access.

  Satisfied with their work efforts, the men hauled into their mostly finished cabin all their pack saddles, packs, traps and provisions for safe keeping. Then when Old Potts and Crooked Hand went deer hunting for their ‘frontier windows’, Iron Hand and Big Foot built a hell-for-stout horse corral next to their cabin, so they could keep a peeled eye out for any horse-stealing Indians who just happened to be wandering by. In order to curtail any such ‘horse-thieving’, the corral had been built right next to the trappers’ cabin for the added protection that closeness afforded. As an added bonus, the wall of the cabin facing the horse corral sported four shooting slots just so positioned to preclude anyone wanting to steal a horse from doing so without ‘having one hell of a tough hide’...

  When Old Potts and Crooked Hand came back with several packhorses hauling five just-killed mule deer or what were soon to be known and utilized as ‘frontier-windows’, all four men lent a hand in butchering out the animals. Then Old Potts and Crooked Hand began scraping the loose meat and fat from the deer hides and removing the brains from the skulls of the animals. This they did so the hides could eventually be frontier tanned. Once the deer hides were tanned and scraped very thinly, that allowed their open window areas to be covered with such specially processed hides to keep out most of the cold and yet let in some dim light for those cabin occupants during the daylight hours.

  Then Big Foot worked his carpentering skills once again into four log and post bed frames with wooden pegs and ropes for mattress supports for their buffalo robe and bearskin sleeping furs. Following that, he made and pegged several log shelves inside the cabin to hold foodstuffs up off the floor and away from ‘the little people’ as he called them. Then more pegs were driven into the inside walls of the cabin to hold their cast-iron pots, water pails and three-legged frying pans. Finally the trappers were done with their domestic chores and now the much-anticipated preliminary trapping preparations could begin.

  First, all their traps were smoked over a wood fire to get rid of the man smell, and an outside meat smoking and drying rack was built right next to the cabin to preclude bears and magpies from sampling the meat being processed without being discovered in the ‘meat-thieving’ process. Next, Iron Hand hauled in a mess of cottonwood from along the nearby Poplar River to be used as smoking wood for drying the meat on the racks. Following that, Iron Hand took a packhorse into the adjacent timbered hills and brought back a mess of mountain mahogany, which made for an excellent smoking wood for the buffalo, moose and deer meat soon to be harvested and processed.

  Then it was out onto the prairie on a buffalo hunt where four cow buffalo were killed, butchered and the meat hauled back to their new cabin. There the majority of the meat was cut into thin strips, some was salted and peppered for later use, some was set aside for their meals and the rest slow smoked for winter jerky for sustenance when the men were out on the beaver or wolf trapping trail.

  Throughout the entire cabin building episode and the subsequent buffalo hunt, nary a single Gros Ventre Indian was observed. There were plenty of old, unshod horse tracks showing they were in country but none had been observed, nor had they been discovered during the trappers’ many preparations from cabin building to scouting out the best beaver trapping waters...

  For the next three days, buffalo meat was smoked, extra wood was hauled for the outside firepit and a small mountain of musket balls were cast for their ‘lead-eating’ .50 caliber Hawken rifles. Additionally, the men began tanning the hides from the four cow buffalo recently killed, for making into heavier winter wear, new moccasins, and rifle and pistol scabbards and holsters for the extra weapons carried on their packhorses as Old Potts had suggested in case a number of hostile Gros Ventre became a life or death concern...

  Early the following morning, the four trappers ventured forth in order to scout out the best beaver waters to trap once those animals’ pelts were in their prime. The men had once again decided that Iron Hand and Old Potts would be the ones doing the actual trapping, while the other two trappers remained horsed in order to offer protection to the men setting and tending the traps against unforeseen or surprise Indian or grizzly bear attacks. For the past several weeks, no Indians had been observed and the men were beginning to mentally let their guards down when they were out and about. However, being in the country of the dreaded Gros Ventre, they still stayed pretty observant and made sure their two pack animals brought along on each scouting trip carried the extra rifles and pistols for a spirited self-defense if and when the occasion demanded it.

  However, they religiously followed that extra gun tactic because those hostile Indians reportedly met by other trappers usually followed the same methods of attack when attacking inferior numbers of trappers out in the open. That was, once the trappers being attacked had fired their single shots from their rifles or pistols, they had to quickly reload in order to protect themselves from being instantly overrun. The attackers, knowing the required sequence of ‘single-shot shooting’ and then quickly reloading, would then instantly attack and overwhelm the trappers while they were still in the process of frantically reloading their weapons. That tactic practiced by the Indians usually reduced the number of dead they suffered, and allowed the hated trappers to be overrun, killed and all of their goods and horses taken. Hence Old Potts’s tactic of carrying extra rifles and pistols on their pack animals so the men would not be so vulnerable when attacked was strictly adhered to. Or at least that was the thought that they would be able to give a better surprise accounting of themselves with the extra firepower they carried close at hand on their pack animals.

  Three weeks later, Old Potts decided it was time to begin trapping for the many beaver the men had been observing on all of their scouting trips along the Poplar River and its many other waterways. He did so because every morning there was a skim of ice on their water bucket, the aspen leaves had turned yellow and orange universally, geese were observed flying south in larger and larger numbers, and the prairie grasses had begun turning many colors of yellow and brown and were drying up. In short, fall and the time to begin trapping for many species of furbearers was upon those who made it their business of trapping for a living.

  In the excitement and anticipation of the next day’s endeavors, the men slept little and were up way before dawn. Hot coffee with plenty of sugar, Dutch oven biscuits and staked buffalo steaks headed up the breakfast menu and soon the men were more than raring to go. Horses were saddled, pack animals readied, traps loaded into the panniers, and all their weapons were loaded with a fresh charge of powder and in the case of their pistols, were loaded with buck and ball for any kind of ‘in close work’!

  With those preparations behind them, the men set off for the nearby Poplar River and their chosen beaver trapping area for the start of the season. With three men standing guard, Iron Hand entered the fall-cooling waters and set his first beaver trap of the season. Seven hours later, Iron Hand tiredly set his last of 40 beaver traps next to an opening he had made in a beaver’s dam, allowing the pond’s water to exit and flow freely. Knowing the beaver would be there shortly after sensing the loss of water in its pond to fix the break in the dam, Iron Hand figured that trap would yield a beaver for sure by the next day. Then backtracking their trap line past their previous trap sets, the men discovered that 15 of the previously set traps already had large, dead beaver in them!

  Finding dead beaver already in their traps the men found somewhat unusual, because beaver were n
ormally nocturnal in their habits. However, those beaver were quickly but carefully skinned on the spot by expert skinner Big Foot and the hides dumped into several panniers being carried by the men’s two packhorses. Those traps were then re-scented with castoreum (a pungent fluid removed from a beaver’s caster glands) and set once again in the same spot to be checked the following day. Keeping three of the larger beaver carcasses for their supper that evening, the men retreated back to their cabin via another route, so a well-used trail of shod horse tracks would not be a dead giveaway that white men trappers were in the area and lead any cold trackers with evil intent on their minds and in their hearts directly into those trappers’ campsite.

  That evening after their first successful day of trapping, fleshing out their catches and hooping the same, supper made from fresh beaver meat was then specially prepared by Iron Hand and Big Foot. After supper, the men retreated to their homemade chairs around their outside fire site previously constructed by Big Foot, smoked their pipes and drank a cup of rum to celebrate their first day’s successes. Realizing the next day would be another busy one, especially with 40 traps set out in such heavily populated beaver and muskrat-infested waters, the men retired to bed early after bringing in their grazing livestock, hobbling and placing them into their corral for safekeeping.

  Iron Hand was glad to stretch his huge frame out on his bed and drew his bearskin sleeping furs up around his neck. It had been a long day, immersed in the cooling fall waters throughout, setting beaver traps and retrieving dead animals that had been caught the day before. In fact, his feet and lower legs from his knees on down had not warmed up as of yet because of all the cold water immersion and felt just like ice to the touch. Soon, the loud snoring from Old Potts filled the cabin but sleep came easily to Iron Hand in spite of his noisy sleeping partner, icy legs and cold feet. Iron Hand soon found himself not of the waking world.