by Terry Grosz
The next morning, Big Foot took his knife and dug out the troublesome quill from Iron Hand’s toe with a lot of howling and squirming by the rather large fellow in the process. Then Big Foot doused it with a dash of rum on the injured appendage and then took a swig himself, after having to timidly operate on a man twice his size, possessing the killing power and strength of an ox if one was to rile him! Then the men cleaned out the porcupine droppings left inside the cabin and threw back the deer hide window coverings so the place could air out. Following that, Old Potts dug up their cache placed behind the cabin when they had left to go to Fort Union earlier in the spring and retrieved the items previously cached. As he did, the other men unloaded all of their packs, putting their supplies inside their cabin for safer keeping and made it homey once again, notwithstanding the residual strong porcupine smell left behind after its uninvited summer’s use.
As Big Foot hobbled all their livestock and then let them out to pasture, Crooked Hand and Old Potts went deer hunting up onto the timbered hillside behind their cabin and an hour or so later, a single rifle shot was heard. An hour later, Crooked Hand and Old Potts returned, dragging a fat and barren mule deer doe back into camp. Hung from their meat pole moments later, she was soon dressed and cooling out in preparation for the many good venison-laced meals to come.
As Iron Hand hobbled about camp on his sore foot, he still tended to his duties as the camp cook. Into a roaring campfire went all of his previously used cast-iron frying pans, Dutch ovens and bean pots to burn off the old built-up residue from cooking times past. A short time later after the cast had ‘burned off’ and cooled down sufficiently, Iron Hand greased all the cooking surfaces from his stoneware crock of bear grease and put the cooking ware back inside their cabin for later use. However, he kept out a six-quart cast-iron bean pot and soon it was filled with a mess of dried beans and rice, spices, hot pepper flakes and cold water from their spring. Then the large pot was hung off to one end of their campfire on cooking irons so it could slow cook. About an hour into slowly cooking away, Iron Hand cut off the rib meat heavy with fat from the hanging deer carcass, ‘chunked’ it up and tossed it into the bean pot to cook as well. Then as an afterthought because the men had been ‘a-horse’ for a number of days and all were having trouble with their lack of bowel movements, tossed in an extra handful of hot pepper flakes designed to make their morning ‘clean-outs’ just a tad easier...
As he did, he could hear the ringing of axes above their cabin as the other three trappers began dropping dead trees and cutting them into logs with their crosscut saws so the horses could drag them down to their cabin for their winter log pile. Keeping busy since he was no use with the woodcutting detail being as sore-footed as he was, Iron Hand made himself useful by boning out the mule deer doe, cutting most of the meat into thin strips for making jerky, peppering the hell out of it to keep the flies and yellow jackets away, and hanging it upon their meat smoking rack. Then with the addition of a small but smoky fire, he left the meat to dry out and smoke away.
Following those butchering duties, Iron Hand got out two of his Dutch ovens and prepared to make biscuits for the men’s dinner. Stirring the previously filled bean pot and satisfied with its slow-cooking process with the beans and rice now mostly cooked all the way through, it was then seated onto some coals for finishing. Then Iron Hand made up the dough for his brand of much-favored sugared, Dutch oven biscuits. Lastly, he got out their weathered old coffee pot, filled it with cold spring water and set it over the center of their fire on cooking rods to boil. Once he could hear the water was in a rolling boil, Iron Hand slipped the coffee pot over to where it was boiling with less vigor, added six handfuls of coffee grounds, since his fellow trappers liked their brew stronger than an angry mule’s kick, and let it simmer away on the cooler side of the fire on higher-racked cooking irons.
A shout from the hillside near their cabin and the sounds of horses struggling as they pulled a number of logs downhill, was Iron Hand’s signal he had better have supper ready and lots of it... Into his last Dutch oven that had been soaking away for the last hour loaded with dried fruit, went several handfuls of sugar, a heavy sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg, and then his cobbler dough was laid over the now fire-heated thickened filling. That was then set over a mess of raked-out coals from their firepit with a shovel full of coals sprinkled over the Dutch oven’s heavy cast-iron lid just retrieved from the open fire and left to bake.
As the men stacked the logs just dragged into their winter woodpile area, unhooked their horses and watered the same, Iron Hand let everyone know that supper was ready when they were. Old Potts, Crooked Hand and Big Foot, after a hard day of logging, did not need any further urging, as they washed up in their spring and then hustled over to their outdoor cooking fire and sat down on their sitting logs. Hobbling around the firepit, Iron Hand made sure everyone got a large bowl of his special spiced-up bean, rice and deer meat stew mixture, a hot cup of coffee, and two Iron Hand-sized biscuits hot from a Dutch oven for starters. With his crew plated-up, Iron Hand served himself and sat down with his friends to the ‘noisy silence’ that comes from a group of hungry men slopping down and eating what they loved, in a place they loved to be living... When supper was done and everyone had eaten his fill, Old Potts said, “Iron Hand, you outdid yourself. Them victuals were ‘plate-lickin’ good’.”
The next morning and days following were a repeat of the days before, as the four trappers prepared for the winter to come and the industry that had to follow when one was trapping beaver out on the frontier. Coffee, Dutch oven biscuits and staked slabs of venison greeted the men as their main morning meals. Following that, the horses were once again harnessed for the logging that was to follow, as the winter woodcutters went off to work once again. However, with Iron Hand still hobbling around although not as badly as he had the days right after his porcupine ‘accident’, he still commenced with his preparation and cooking duties once again, so as to keep the hardworking trio of his trapper friends fueled up and ready to meet the day and what it offered.
On one of those occasions, out came a six-quart Dutch oven, which was loaded with dried rice, dried raisins, two Iron Hand-sized handfuls of brown sugar cones, filled with cold spring water and set off to one side to long-soak. Then grabbing a shovel, off Iron Hand hobbled onto a nearby rocky hillside, where he spent the next hour looking over his shoulder for any Gros Ventre who might happen along and be sneaking up on him, as he dug out from the rocky ground under a stand of purple flowers, a mess of small in size but tasty and pungent, wild onions. Toting his rifle, the shovel and a leather pouch full of onions back to camp, Iron Hand then checked his soaking pot of dried rice and raisins. They were plumping up perfectly, so the pot was brought to the firepit and set off to one side of the hottest part of the flame to begin slow cooking.
Walking over to their spring, Iron Hand then peeled and washed off the wild onions and returned to his firepit once again. There he checked his previously set aside dried beans soaking in a potful of water and found them to be plumping up as well. Into that bean pot went another handful of red pepper flakes, salt, black pepper, chunks of the last of the deer meat from the day before’s kill, and triple handfuls of fresh wild onions. That potful of beans and venison was then set over a mess of coals to slow cook alongside the rice and raisin mixture cooking away in another Dutch oven. Soon, their campsite smelled sweetly of the raisins, melted cones of dark brown sugar and rice mixture, as well as the luxurious smell of cooking venison, beans and onions in the clean air surrounding the prairies...
As Iron Hand’s menu of the day cooked away, his partners continued dragging into their winter log pile more dead logs of pine and Douglas fir. But the work carried on without any noontime breaks, because trapping season would soon be fast upon them and they still had to set aside their winter supplies of emergency hay for their horses. Plus they had to gather into their camp needed winter stocks of buffalo meat for smoking and jerking. Those, so th
ey would have the needed provisions to carry them through the hard winter months when moving about and hunting would become problematic because of the harsh winters in their neck of the woods on the Northern Plains.
As expected, when the ‘loggers’ arrived at their cabin come suppertime, they were famished. Awaiting them was a ‘lumberjack’ heavy meal of beans heavily loaded with chunks of tender venison, all flavored with the pungent taste of wild onion and spiced with more hot pepper flakes. Accompanying that repast were Iron Hand’s style of Dutch oven, sugar-sweetened biscuits and hot trapper’s coffee that was stout enough to float a mule’s shoe! Then to satisfy everyone’s sweet tooth was Iron Hand’s concoction of viscous gooey-sweet, cooked rice and raisins, heavily sweetened with ample amounts of dark brown sugar from their sugar cones, nutmeg and cinnamon...
With enough wood now cut and piled to last throughout the worst of the winter months, all the men, now that Iron Hand’s foot had healed up sufficiently enough for him to stomp about with the rest of his crew, turned to cutting armloads of high quality hay from the stream and river bottoms, all to be stacked and dried near the men’s horse corrals for when the winter snows made caring for their horses out on the open prairie problematic. Following that hot and mosquito-infested work, the men finally found the time to partake in what they loved doing the best, besides eating and drinking that is, namely making the final necessary preparations for partaking of the coming trapping season for beaver, muskrat and river otter...
The following morning after a fast meal of just Dutch oven biscuits and coffee, the men saddled up four packhorses, readied their firearms for hunting and if needed, self-defense, then headed out onto the prairie reaches along the Poplar River. As a matter of precaution and planning, the four men rode the river’s watered areas checking out the coming season’s beaver trapping opportunities first. But as they did, they also rode northward in the direction taken by the earlier traveling band of Indians they had followed into the area when they first came back to their cabin after a summer’s absence. They did so in order to make sure once they began trapping, they would not inadvertently stumble onto the campsite of the dreaded Gros Ventre with the deadly consequences on both sides that would more than likely follow...
After traveling north along the Poplar River drainage for about 12 miles and not finding any evidence of an Indian encampment but lots of beaver sign, the men returned to an area of the prairie closer to their campsite. There not terribly concerned about the closeness of any Indians hearing their shooting since they had just scouted out the area, the men got into a small herd of buffalo, killing four fat cows.
Riding up to one of the dead cows, the four men dismounted and keeping their rifles near at hand, watched as Old Potts slit open the side of the buffalo just below the last rib and cut out a large slab of steaming hot buffalo liver. Then the four men gathered around with their knives, cut and smeared the gall bladder juices over the liver, cut off large chunks of the still-quivering organ, and gorged themselves on the bloody, still hot, semi-bitter, mineral-rich tasting liver! Before that frontier feast and celebration of the first buffalo kill of the year was over, the men had consumed most of the animal’s raw liver, body-starved as they were for the minerals it contained! Then the work began, as the men removed the most-favored hump ribs, boned out the best portions of each of the four animals they had killed, loaded their groaning-under-the-weight packhorses and then headed for their cabin. Once there, as the men prepared the meat for smoking on their meat racks or for their meals, they gorged on the fresh, raw and still bloody chunks of the rich warm meat, like they had not eaten anything for months on end...
The next few days were repeats of their first day when it came to hunting and killing buffalo. Soon, the men had meat racks groaning under the weight of their bounty, as the warm smoking fires below worked their magic, turning heavy raw meat into a lighter jerked staple. As fast as the meat was properly jerked or dried, the men stored away such valuable foodstuffs in previously tanned deerskin bags and hung them from the ceiling rafters of their cabin to keep the bugs and vermin from getting into such valuable stores and ruining them.
Finishing with their vital buffalo meat-gathering chores, the men turned their attention to the harvesting of the local mule deer population, in order to have enough skins collected and tanned to cover their packs of beaver plus when they transported the same to Fort Union come late spring of the coming year. These deerskin procurements were most important because the beaver plus were tightly packed within the tanned deerskin bundles to protect them during transport from the elements and getting dirty. For the next three weeks, the men hunted mule deer, jerked the meat from the animals, and brain and urine-tanned their skins as covering for their more valuable, soon to be harvested, beaver plus.
As their trapping season moved nearer the cooler fall months, the men began feeling the urgency at hand. They still had to gather in more mountain mahogany meat-smoking wood, dig more wild onions, dry and bag the same for adding variety to some of their meals during the winter months, cutting and splitting up smaller chunk wood for their outdoor firepits and indoor fireplace, mending their clothing for winter wear, smoking their beaver traps to rid them of the man smell, and casting up a small mountain of pistol and rifle balls for hunting and any self-defense needs that would be required.
Then there was another concern facing the men. Lately, they had observed more and more Indian hunting parties roaming the prairies, as they too were hunting buffalo in order to gather and put up their favorite winter meat stores. In so doing, it made it harder for the men to go about their normal chores as they readied themselves for the long and arduous work associated with the beaver trapping to come, for fear of discovery. Come the time for beaver trapping to begin and with the Indians still roaming about or not, the trappers had their trapping hand forced if they wanted to survive economically as trappers.
Around their outside campfire one night, Old Potts said, “I think now is the time for us to begin trapping once again. The beaver should be coming into prime with the days getting shorter, colder water and weather now having an effect on those critters. I think for the short term, until we get buried with beaver plus and need to leave some of us back at the cabin for that processing work, we need to all work together on the trapping end of things. That way if discovered, we have more firepower and the Gros Ventre would be less likely to take on the four of us, over just the two of us out and about trapping. So, once again, I suggest all of us form a single trapping party, we load our packhorses heavy with extra rifles and pistols and the best shooters of the group, namely Iron Hand and Crooked Hand, remained ‘horsed’ in case danger from attack comes, while our trapping is underway. If we do it that-a-way, we will be more secure in what we do best, should be able to catch the beaver as we see fit, and all of us come home each night with all of our ‘topknots’,” said Old Potts, as he picked up a long stick from the ground and randomly stirred up the coals in their outside firepit.
Hearing no disagreement from his fellow trappers as he looked around at their faces for any comment or disagreement, he said, “Alright. That is what we will do for the start of our trapping season. I will do the trap setting and the three of you can do the watching out for my miserable carcass while I am in the water. Then when I bring a beaver, mink or muskrat ashore, Crooked Hand, being our best and most careful skinner, can work his magic with his skinning knife. That-a-way, that will give me time to warm up, we can get the skinning done in the field and keep our hair all at the same time. Now, I suggest we all get some shut-eye, for tomorrow will be a long day because if we set all 40 of our beaver traps, that will take some doing,” remarked Old Potts. “Any other thoughts concerning what I just said?” he asked as he rose to head for his sleeping furs. Hearing none, he walked off in his usual shuffling gait and into the cabin. He was followed shortly thereafter by the rest of the trapping crew after they had put out the pipes they had been smoking.
Yeah, little did O
ld Potts know that tomorrow would be a long day in the marsh.
Come pre-dawn the following morning, found everyone a-horse with saddle bags stuffed with jerky, possibles bags topped off, and leading two packhorses loaded with jangling beaver traps and extra rifles and pistols attached in such a manner to the animals for easy retrieval if attacked or any other need for their use was to arise.
With Old Potts leading the string of trappers out from their camp since he was to be the lead trapper and decider when it came to trap placement, he was followed closely by Crooked Hand, who was an excellent shooter and the group’s main skinner. Next in line trailing the packhorses came Big Foot, who was trailed by Iron Hand, who was the most accurate shooter in the bunch. The reason Old Potts had placed Iron Hand at the end was because in any surprise attacks, the Gros Ventre, when historically given the option and choice of their mode of attack, usually attacked trappers from the rear of their pack strings. This they did because coming in from behind usually caused the greatest amount of confusion within the ranks of those being attacked. Also, the greatest amount of damage could be done in so doing, with the least amount of loss of life or limb to the attackers.
Out from their secluded campsite the trappers streamed, moving in and around small herds of buffalo and elk (Author’s Note: Elk were originally plains animals. That was until they were hunted to the point that they fled into the mountains and remain there to this day.), as they headed for the Poplar River, its marshes, backwaters and numerous beaver dams and ponds. About an hour later found Old Potts knee deep in the water and mud of a beaver pond driving in the trap’s deep water stake. As he did, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand sat ‘horsed’ and alert to their surroundings, as Big Foot tended to the pack string and the handing of beaver traps to Old Potts as needed. The four trappers, with time-honored and practiced movements, made good headway in their trap site selection and placement. As they moved forward, the trappers saw that the waters being selected as trap sites were alive with not only signs of lots of beaver but numerous large adults swimming around as well. The start of their day had all the looks of another good trapping season, thought Iron Hand, with a smile of appreciation for the goodness of the day and the beauty he was enjoying in his wild surroundings.
