by Terry Grosz
Once inside their cabin, the two men filled in Big Foot and Old Potts as to the day’s adventures. Then spying a cast-iron pot cooking away something smelling wonderful in the fireplace coals, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand filled their bowls with hot buffalo stew, as the other two trappers went to work on the latest batch of semi-frozen beaver hides, fleshing and hooping the same.
Finished with their supper, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand went back out into the storm, gathered up the four dead Indians and hauled them off a short distance from their cabin into a small grove of aspen trees. There they left the cooling carcasses in that small stand of trees, figuring they would make the final disposition of the same the next day. Then the trappers realized they were once again faced with what to do with the bodies in order that the rest of their band of Gros Ventre, once they realized their four warriors were missing, went looking for them.
Dawn the following morning showed a clear blue sky, temperatures at or near freezing and the four men just finishing their breakfast of roasted buffalo steaks and Dutch oven biscuits. “Well, Iron Hand, how do we hide these four dead Indians so we ain’t found out?” asked Old Potts, as he was having trouble mouthing a piping hot biscuit, fresh from the Dutch oven.
“Well, I have been thinking about that and I am stumped. Trying the old buffalo trick probably wouldn’t work this time. We would be leaving too many of our shod horse tracks in this latest snow. Tracks that would be easily read and then followed quickly back to our cabin. Maybe we could dump one of those bodies into the Poplar River and let him drift off before freeze up and the rest scattered off out across the prairie away from our cabin and let the gray wolves and grizzly bears have at them. After all, many of the grizzly bears are still out and about gorging themselves on just about anything they can find to eat in preparation for their next five months of hibernation without eating. I would imagine any grizzly bear that would come across any Indian body we dumped out on the plains, would be very happy with just such a meal. Other than that, I am just not sure what to do in order to remain undiscovered. However, Crooked Hand and I need to get that done and fast in case any Gros Ventre just happens to come wandering by our cabin and gets nosy. I figure we can take care of that chore this morning. We can load the bodies on their horses and take them with us when we go to check our traps. Along the way, we can scatter out three of their bodies in gullies and the like and leave them to the critters out on the plains to eat. The fourth one will be slipped into the river stark naked, so the birds can have at him as he drifts towards the Missouri River. By the time the body gets to that point, he should be more than picked clean by the crows, ravens and magpies. Then the crawdads can have at whatever is left,” concluded Iron Hand.
Since there were no objections from the rest of the trappers, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand dressed for the winter cold, left their cabin and saddled up their horses for the day’s work of running their trap line and Indian body disposal. Finished with saddling up their stock animals, all four trappers headed for the small grove of trees away from their cabin trailing the four Indians’ horses onto which they were to load the bodies for disposal.
Approaching the grove of trees where the dead Indians had been placed the evening before, the four trappers got one hell of a surprise. The snow in the area holding the dead was smeared blood red in every direction, and all the men could find of the four dead Indians was one heavily chewed upon pelvis and two badly chewed-all-to-hell skulls! That was all that was left! The rest of the Indians’ bodies had been cleaned up and eaten cleaner than all get-out! Looking all around, the trappers discovered the tracks of one large grizzly and those from three smaller grizzly bears. From all the signs left behind, a sow grizzly with three two-year-old cubs had discovered the bodies sometime during the night and in their extreme hunger just before hibernation, had consumed everything of the four dead Indians except three pieces of their skeletons and a few badly chewed long leg bones...
“Well,” said Old Potts with a grin, “those bears sure made it a darn sight easier when it comes to getting rid of all those four bodies. That plus the fact, come deep winter time, most bands of Indians stay close to their tepees unless they need to get out and hunt some buffalo for food. That in mind, maybe they will not be out looking so hard for their lost kin until springtime. By then, the wolves will have chewed up the rest of these body parts left behind and what they don’t in the way of the little pieces, the gray jays will tote off, so no one, even them good at cold tracking ‘war-hoops’, will be able to find the rest of their kin.”
Pleased over the previous night’s grisly events, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand headed off to continue checking their trap line, as Old Potts and Big Foot still had a passel of fresh beaver skins from the day before to tend to in fleshing out and hooping for the drying to take place inside their warm cabin.
Come noontime, Iron Hand had been breaking thin ice when out in the water, as he checked all of his beaver traps. Each time he brought in a dead beaver for Crooked Hand to skin out, he would stomp around in the snow trying to warm up his soaked feet and wet legs. As Crooked Hand deftly skinned out the beaver carcasses, he would throw their bodies up onto the nearby shore for the wolves and remaining grizzly bears yet out on the prowl and not in hibernation, to consume. By so doing, that reduced the carcass weight the packhorses would have to tote back to their distant cabin. If they did not do so, the trappers would have to find a spot to toss the beavers’ carcasses near their camp and that would bring in unwanted predators. So the carcasses were left shoreside for the critters to pack off and consume out along adjacent the marshes where they had been trapped.
Long come the afternoon near the end of running their trap line and in a very dense stand of willows, Iron Hand dismounted and began walking out into the shallow pond water to retrieve another dead beaver floating at the end of the trap chain. Splashing through the water towards the dead beaver, Iron Hand heard VERY CLOSE IN THE ADJACENT STAND OF WILLOWS, A LOUD “OOOOH-OOOOOHHH-UMPH! UMPH!”
Before he could react to the terrifying sounds, there was a very loud and close at hand crashing of a heavy-bodied ‘something’ smashing through the willows, and THAT ‘SOMETHING’ WAS COMING RIGHT TOWARDS IRON HAND! Dropping the dead beaver he had been holding, Iron Hand went for his pistol in case he had to defend himself, only to have the ‘something’ come smashing out from the willow thicket some ten feet away! The next second, Iron Hand found himself facing a monster-sized bull moose, deep in rut in a head down, full charge!
Trying to run and shoot all at the same time at the sex-crazed and testosterone-fueled full of fury, bull moose, Iron Hand was able to take two steps before he felt the antlers of the huge moose smash into his backside, lift him upward and toss him some 20 feet away into the deeper water of the pond! Stunned from the terrific impact dealt out by a 1,000-pound moose in full charge, Iron Hand just lay in the water motionless trying to get his wits and wind about him!
Crooked Hand on the other hand, who was supposed to be providing protection for Iron Hand ‘against all comers’, was in the middle of a damn good and violent rodeo with his horse and the two packhorses once they had seen and smelled the enraged moose! One thing Crooked Hand learned right then and there was that all horses were deathly afraid of a moose! Especially when it came to a bull moose in rut looking for something to ‘mount’, like anything ‘moose-looking’-sized like that of a horse... So as a result, when the moose burst from the cover of the willows in a full blown charge upon hearing and thinking Iron Hand was another competitor bull moose, the horses seeing such a threat to their ‘manhood’ began doing their best to get the ‘hell out of Dodge’! And if that meant tossing everything they were carrying on their backs to hell and gone, they were now in the process of doing just that! That included all packs and riders unfortunate enough to be ‘in country’ and that meant one unfortunate Crooked Hand in the process of being violently unhorsed into the ‘wild blue yonder’ as well!
Bucked off forthwith, Crooked Ha
nd landed hard on the back of his shoulders! When he did, a frightened out of his mind packhorse stomped the hell out of him as it tried running away from the huge, noisy, smelly and dangerous, close at hand moose in rut!
Meantime, back in the middle of the beaver pond, Iron Hand had finally regained his wind and upon rising shakily out of from the water, was instantly lifted up off his feet with a ‘face’ full of moose antlers and hurled once again airborne and into a nearby patch of willows! That time, Iron Hand did not move when he landed. When the moose had hit him in his second charge, one antler tip had hit Iron Hand squarely in the center of his forehead and the ‘lights went out’! Fortunately, Iron Hand had landed flat on his back, otherwise he would have drowned right then and there in the pond’s deeper waters.
Meanwhile back at the ‘rodeo’, Crooked Hand was trying to stand up, grab his rifle and come to the aid of his ‘high-flying’ friend. Instead, he found himself puking up his breakfast once he stood up, after having his stomach being violently stepped upon by his 1,000-pound packhorse! Getting rid of two buffalo steaks and four Dutch oven biscuits took a bit of a doing and when Crooked Hand had finished feeding ‘the little people’, he had another problem. HERE CAME THAT DAMN SEX-CRAZED, RED-EYED MOOSE RIGHT AT HIM, THINKING HE WAS FACING ANOTHER OPEN CHALLENGE TO HIS ‘MOOSE-HOOD’!
Fortunately for Crooked Hand, Iron Hand was beginning to come around after being knocked silly, and seeing his partner in terrible trouble, drew his pistol, swung it at the head of the now charging and enraged bull moose in full tilt, and pulled the trigger. “POOOFF” went the now thoroughly wetted pistol, as its black powder charge failed to ignite!
Then it was Crooked Hand’s turn to see how high he could be tossed on a set of moose antlers being ‘used’ by an enraged critter going full tilt. As it turned out, Crooked Hand, being a damn-sight smaller than Iron Hand, made it almost to the ‘clouds’ in tossed height before he fell back to the ground with a hard, BONE-RATTLING CRUNCH!
Then the moose, having had his ‘druthers’, began ambling off back into the willow patch looking for the female moose he had been so closely trailing and courting before the trappers had the audacity to ‘rudely’ interrupt his amorous hunt for the close at hand female in heat. However, that was the last ‘lady in heat’ he ever chased... BOOOM! went Crooked Hand’s Hawken, as a .50 caliber lead ball ripped through the moose’s neck, just below the juncture of his head! With that, the moose dropped into three feet of water and remained stock still except for the ripples flowing away from his now stilled body...
That was after Iron Hand, whose head was ringing like a church bell on a Sunday and with his insides trying to figure what day it was, had made it to shore, retrieved Crooked Hand’s dropped rifle and had put an end to their moose and his little ‘having a bad day’ escapade...
Reaching down, Iron Hand helped Crooked Hand to his knees, as the man continued puking up the remains of his ‘horse-stomped-in-the-guts’ breakfast. That was when Iron Hand told him that would be the last time he would make him Dutch oven biscuits for breakfast if that was what he was going to do with them...
Upon hearing those words, Crooked Hand, finding the humor in Iron Hand’s statement, tried to laugh and that only brought on more puking, only this time the eruption of his vomit even squirted through Crooked Hand’s nose in the process because he was puking so hard...
Finally, the two trappers ‘gathered up their skirts’ and took stock of their situation. Here they both hurt like hell, had a dead 1,000-pound moose lying out in the beaver pond in three feet of water and nary a horse in sight! Finally, after a few more moments recovering, the two men got enough ‘wind in their sails’ to realize they were still among the living. With that, Crooked Hand staggered off after his lost horses, and Iron Hand, now thoroughly soaking wet from being made a ‘plaything in the marsh for a moose’, staggered off in three feet of icy cold water to put his sheath knife to the belly of a moose, whose best parts were shortly to be destined for the trappers’ supper...
Half-an-hour later, Crooked Hand returned with their horses and taking a rope, helped Iron Hand drag his freshly gutted moose out from the beaver pond. Leaving the field-dressed moose where he lay after being dragged up on the ground at the edge of the beaver pond, the two trappers finished checking out the rest of their trap line. Upon finishing, they returned to the moose, now covered with what seemed to be a hundred of the ever-hungry magpies, ran the birds off the trappers’ supper to be, and began butchering. What a sight the two trappers presented. One was soaking wet and could hardly walk and the other, covered in his own puke, could only stagger around after his run-in with a moose at the end of his charge subsequent to him having his horse stepping all over the softest part of his carcass...
One hour later of moose-butchering, the two bedraggled and stove-up trappers packed the meat upon their horses, called it quits for the day and headed for their cabin. Both packhorses were groaning under a huge load of moose meat, so the trappers took their time crossing the plains and heading for their secluded cabin hidden in the pines. Upon their arrival, both men were greeted by their partners, who were soon amazed over the story to be told of the two trap-line trappers and their tales of adventure. In fact, the ‘storytelling’ started when Big Foot and Old Potts had to physically help both Iron Hand and Crooked Hand down from their saddles. That was because both men had since their ‘moose dance in the marsh’ physically stiffened up from their ‘run-in’ with the ‘supper’ their packhorses were groaning under, and could not safely dismount under their own power...
Suffice to say it took more than two cups of their fiery high proof rum and an hour sitting in front of a hot fireplace fire to get the two ‘moose hunters’ loosened up in body and tongue in order to hear their whole story on how that evening’s great tasting ‘supper’ came to be.
But when it came to supper that evening, both ‘moose hunters’ had managed to find their appetites. One because he had not eaten all day, in reality, after puking up his breakfast after the moose’s and packhorses’s impact with his carcass, and the other one over being antler-tossed not once but twice for good measure... By bedtime, both ‘moose-men’ had more than enough of their high proof rum under their belts that the pain from their lumps and bruises was no longer an issue. In fact, if the Gros Ventre had attacked their cabin that night, both ‘moose-men’, so loaded with rum, would have died happily in their beds without a concern in the world...
The next day, Old Potts and Big Foot took a turn running their trap line, while Iron Hand and Crooked Hand stayed back recuperating from their previous day’s adventure. In so doing, they found themselves doing all of the fleshing and hooping of the beaver skins trapped the day before. As for the rest of their day, they happily made ‘revenge-jerky’ from one ill-fated, sex-crazed moose over their smoking and drying racks.
The following morning, both Crooked Hand and Iron Hand felt good enough to go back to running their trap line as Old Potts had originally planned. Both men were still so stiff and sore, that it took them some time to get up into their saddles but by noon, they had wrung out the kinks in their sore bodies and were moving right along from one trap-set to the next. However, Iron Hand’s ‘sixth sense’, which had deserted him prior to the previous day’s moose attack, was acting up as he ran the traps and removed the dead beaver for Crooked Hand to skin. As such and from experience over such innermost feelings, he kept a jaundiced eye on any and all willows in case the first moose had a mean-assed brother of the same temperament.
By late afternoon, storm clouds had once again gathered in the northwest and a cold and ominous wind was softly blowing and was heavy with foreboding moisture. Finally heading home with both panniers loaded with 31 skinned-out beaver hides, the best day to date numbers-wise, the men noticed that the clouds now seemed to be hanging unusually lower than normal when such a storm blew out from the northwest. Additionally, those clouds were an ugly blue-black in nature and occasional thunder could be heard coming f
rom them off in a distance. As it turned out, a rare snow and thunderstorm was in the wind, and the men soon found themselves dangerously exposed and out in the middle of the open prairie as the storm roared in their direction! It did not take long for the men to realize that being out in the middle of the prairie during a lightning storm was not the best place to be while on horseback. With that, the men hustled their horses off in the direction of a set of nearby timbered hills with deep gullies in which to seek shelter from the coming tempest!
Then all of a sudden, there were four or five very close lightning strikes less than a mile or so distant to the northwest! Kicking up the pace of their horses, Iron Hand realized his ‘sixth sense’ of danger was almost raging inside him, and so much so that he began looking all around for any sign of hostile Indians. Seeing none, the men now began experiencing what is called ‘thunder-snow’ as small balls of snow pellets began heavily pelting them and their pack string. That was when Iron Hand noticed a strange noise. A strange rumbling sound like faraway thunder was coming from the northwest. It was almost like the constant sound that distant low rumbling thunder would be making. Still out on the prairie with lightning strikes being seen all around them, the men continued lying low in their saddles and spurring their mounts for the distant timbered hills and what they hoped would be sheltering cover.
Then it happened! One of the packhorses broke loose from its hard-jerking lead rope and bolted away in terror from the sights and sounds of the now violent storm lying almost low overhead of the fleeing trappers. Then, BAM! Both men found themselves riding madly bucking horses, as a lightning bolt hit so close to them that they could smell the acrid odor of ozone hanging heavy in the air, feel the concussion from the close at hand strike, and feel the long hairs of their beards standing straight out from their faces from all the static electricity in the air! Finally getting their madly bucking horses back under control, Iron Hand looked back and saw where the lightning strike had just occurred. Their packhorse that had broken its lead rope and had bolted away in fright now lay back behind them on the prairie, as a steaming and smoking mess! That packhorse had just been struck by lightning and killed deader than a stone...
