by Terry Grosz
Throughout that day, Iron Hand was surprised over just how cold wading in the waters and deep mud of the beaver ponds had become almost overnight. However, the traps were full of dead beaver and soon the exhausting work of trap setting and beaver removal overcame his concerns about the cold or the Indian parents out looking for their two lost young men who did not return home the evening before.
That was the two trappers’ first mistake! Rounding a finger of aspens en route to their next beaver trap, Iron Hand luckily spotted ten Indian riders moving out across the prairie about half-a-mile away! They were spread out in a long line abreast, apparently looking down at the ground as if looking for any kind of suspect tracks that were telling a tale as to the two boys’ disappearance. Quickly dropping low over his saddle, he leaned back and motioned for Crooked Hand to do the same, which he immediately did. Then Iron Hand guided his horse into a nearby stand of aspens, quickly slipped out from his saddle and walked his horse deeper into the gloomy and darkened interior of the stand of trees for the cover offered. Crooked Hand had quickly followed suit and soon, the two men stood by their pack animals looking out from the covering stand of aspens to see if they had been discovered by the band of obviously searching Indians.
Minutes later, the Indian riders disappeared into the adjacent timbered foothills in the direction where Crooked Hand and Iron Hand had intercepted and shot the two young Indians out from their saddles for stealing their horses. For the next hour, the two men saw no further movement out on the prairie, other than several small herds of antelope moving about and feeding nearby. Then off in a distance in the direction the Indians had ridden, the two trappers heard a flurry of shooting and then silence. Fortunately, that flurry of shooting had come from the rough direction where the two young men had been killed and not from the direction of their cabin.
Somewhat later as observed from the cover of their aspen grove, the trappers saw ten Indian riders moving into view once again onto the prairie. Only that time, being dragged behind one of the Indians’ horses on a long rope appeared to be a brown, flopping kind of rug-like object of some sort. As the riders finally disappeared in the direction of where their suspected village lay, Iron Hand finally figured out what the ‘brown rug-like’ thing being dragged behind one of the Indians’ horses really was.
“Crooked Hand, I think those Indians discovered where those two boys were killed and like I had hoped, they smelled the grizzly bear and figured as I had. After some looking around, they must have figured that damn old bear had done in their kids because of the ‘leavings’ of their clothing or bone scraps. That would explain all the shooting we heard earlier. Finding the ‘leavings’ near the bear den, they must have figured that somehow the critter had done in their kin. When they did, they must have taken out their revenge on what they figured must have been that ‘kid-eating’ bear. Then when they came out after the shooting had died down, one of the Indians appeared to dragging a brown rug-like thing behind his horse, as they headed back to the north to where we suspected that band of Gros Ventre are lodged. I would bet that brown rug-like thing must have been the hide from that damn poor innocent ole grizzly bear that got blamed for killing those two boys,” said a hoping for that fact to be true, Iron Hand.
“I don’t know. But just to be on the safe side, I say we stay here this evening and wait and see if they come back looking and poking around some more. If they don’t, then we can run the rest of our trap line tomorrow morning and then skedaddle for the cabin. Besides, there appears to be another storm coming down from the northwest. If we wait for that to pass, maybe it will further hide our tracks and that would be good,” said Crooked Hand slowly, as if he was really thinking their current situation over very carefully.
That evening, Crooked Hand and Iron Hand spent a cold night in their little grove of aspens. A small fire was eventually built late at night and meat from one of the beaver the men had caught earlier furnished a repast of sorts. The next morning, the storm coming from out of the northwest was upon the two trappers and with it came a light snow. Not being dressed for the colder weather as of yet, the two men finished running their trap line and just loaded their two packhorses’ panniers with whole carcass beavers in order to finish what they were doing and reducing their time of being out in the open so much. Then with both packhorses loaded down with heavy dead beaver carcasses, the men finished checking and setting their traps. Then they headed for their cabin by a different route, so as to avoid making a well-used, shod-horse trail leading right back to the site of their cabin.
By the time they got back to their cabin, they were almost blue in color from being exposed to the cold for such a long period of time! Without their heavy winter capotes and clothing, they damn near froze to death in the early arriving snowstorm while riding out in the open on their cold as hell horses. As for Iron Hand’s legs and feet, they were beyond feeling after wading in all the water and pond mud, checking traps, removing dead beaver and setting the traps anew. In fact he was so cold, when they arrived back at their cabin, he had to be helped from his horse because he had stiffened up from the long and cold horse ride back to their cabin and could not stand and only just barely hobble! Additionally, his wetted buckskin pants had now frozen to his icy legs…
Helped inside their cabin, Iron Hand was set down next to their roaring inside fire in the fireplace, given a steaming cup of coffee laced with a generous helping of rum and both Old Potts and Big Foot knelt on each side, trying to rub the life back into his icy legs... In the meantime Crooked Hand, who had not been immersed in the water most of the day, unsaddled all the horses, fed them up and placed them inside their corral for the protection that offered. Then dragging the dead beaver out from the panniers, he toted them over to the front of their cabin and stacked them into a large pile outside their front door for easy access. Once finished, he went inside and after warming up, Old Potts, Crooked Hand and Big Foot removed the beaver from the outside pile, took them inside their cabin, skinned them out and continued doing so until all the critters had been skinned, fleshed out and the fresh hides hooped with willow limbs for drying.
Finished with the above chore, large chunks of the tender parts from the beaver carcasses were boned out and roasted over their fireplace fire. Staked beaver meat, biscuits and steaming cups of coffee were the trappers’ supper that evening. By then, Iron Hand figured he would live and partook of large amounts of tasty and fatty cooked chunks of beaver and Dutch oven biscuits along with the rest of the men. Later that evening to avoid any problems with still roaming grizzly and black bears that had not yet gone into hibernation, Old Potts, Crooked Hand and Big Foot removed all the freshly skinned beaver carcasses from in front of their cabin and hauled them off into an adjacent grove of now almost leafless aspens. As for Iron Hand, he spent that time busily rubbing his now stinging like mad and finally warming up legs. He did so as a result of him almost freezing them solid because of their long ride back on their horses in the snowstorm and from being wetted from the waist down from all the wading in the beaver ponds and cold mud while tending the traps. That evening, with the men trying to sleep inside their cabin, they were awakened numerous times over the fighting in the nearby aspen grove between a pack of wolves feasting on the beaver carcasses and what had to have been at least two grizzly bears contesting with the wolves for the fresh beaver meat as well...
The next morning, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand ventured forth once again to run their trap line before the waters froze solid, making trapping very difficult when having to chop through and setting their traps under the ice. Only this time, both men were dressed in their winter’s best clothing for the cold horse ride and water immersions when checking the traps. That ‘freezing cold’ issue was solved by bringing along an extra packhorse carrying a complete change of winter clothing for Iron Hand after all the traps had been checked, beaver removed and then re-set or removed for the winter because of the greater thickness of the now forming daily sheets of ice over the bea
ver pond waters.
As if that wasnt enough, there was always Crooked Hand’s comforting words for Iron Hand advising him that, “The beaver pond mud he was walking in was so sticky that it ‘could heal up the crack of dawn or mend a broken heart,’ so don’t be worrying over just being a little cold…”
As for Old Potts and Big Foot, they still had a small mountain of beaver skins from the day before to flesh out and hoop before their partners returned that evening with their additional catches. That meant not only long hours working in the dim light from the fireplace and beeswax candles in their cabin as they carefully fleshed out the skins, but repeated cold horseback trips to the adjacent Poplar River’s willow patches, to cut and bring back to the cabin additional limber willow limbs to be used for hooping the skins so they could dry more easily and not sour.
That night unexpectedly the winter winds howled around the trappers’ cabin like there was no tomorrow. When the men awoke the following morning, they discovered a foot of freshly fallen snow now covering the landscape and an outside temperature they estimated to be hovering around 20 degrees below zero! Realizing that an oncoming heavy freeze up was soon to be a major problem with trap retrieval, Iron Hand, Crooked Hand and Big Foot hurriedly dressed for the weather, saddled up their stock and headed out to their trap line in order to remove the remainder of their traps left by the slides for the winter, because thick ice would soon make beaver, muskrat and river otter trapping all but impossible. When they left the cabin site that morning, they left Old Potts behind to make sure if their home site was discovered by any Gros Ventre, there would be someone to watch over their remaining horses, packs of furs and their remaining provisions.
Arriving at their trap line, the trappers discovered a thick layer of ice already covering the watered areas and in the intense cold, getting thicker by the moment. That being the case, Iron Hand spent the rest of the day, alternating with Big Foot, in using a hand ax to break the ice out to the remainder of the traps not removed from the day before, as well as all the dead beaver trapped underneath and removed the same. As they did, Crooked Hand remained on his horse watching over the pack animals and the defenseless men as they moved around in the waters, breaking the ice, removing their traps and previously caught beaver. Soon the three packhorses were loaded to the gills with recovered traps and beaver carcasses still in the round into their panniers.
Finally recovering all of their traps and previously caught beaver, the men changed out from their wet clothing into their dry clothes they had brought along and then headed for their cabin and the work that lay ahead in the skinning, fleshing and hooping of the now frozen beaver just caught. As luck would have it, the men stumbled upon a small herd of buffalo on their way home and killed two cows before the herd stampeded off into the vastness of the prairie’s white wilderness.
Being that the packhorses were already heavily loaded with all the beaver traps and 29 beaver carcasses, the men were forced to butcher out the buffalo where they fell and using their riding stock, loaded them down with hind leg quarters and hump rib sections for transport back to their cabin. The remaining portions of the buffalo were left for the big prairie wolves, already heard howling just a short distance away, once they had scented the fresh blood from the carcasses.
By now, the men were near frozen as the winds had picked up, reducing the temperature even further. In fact, when they had opened up the buffalo, the men had thrust their near freezing hands into the animals’ intestines to warm them up so they could make good and safe use of their knives in the butchering out process that followed. Finished with the loading of the buffalo meat upon their riding horses, the men began trudging off towards their cabin amidst the savage sounds of the wolves tearing at the buffalo remains they had left behind just moments earlier.
Two hours later, the three trappers staggered into their cabin site in an almost frozen condition, as the temperature now approached 30 degrees below zero and the winds had picked up in front of a new storm now rapidly approaching from out of the northwest. Old Potts, seeing the poor condition of his fellow trappers, assisted the near frozen men into their warm cabin, broke out the hot coffee and rum, and helped them to the seating benches near their fireplace. Satisfied he had done all he could do for the moment for his friends, Old Potts then dressed for the cold and tended to the horses still standing out in the cabin’s clearing. He first unloaded all the now frozen buffalo meat and stacked it near the front door of the cabin. Then he began unloading the panniers of their now frozen-through beaver carcasses as well, placing them near the cabin’s entrance as well. Then all the beaver traps were unloaded and placed in their small cache house near their cabin along with most of the bridles, riding and pack saddles for the protection that shelter offered.
By now, the rest of his trappers had warmed up sufficiently so that they were now back out and helping in the tending to the rest of the unloading of the horses and feeding them armloads of hay previously collected from the river bottoms during the summer months. Once the horses were fed, watered and housed in their sheltered-by-the-cabin corral, the trappers hauled the now frozen beaver carcasses inside so they could thaw, be skinned, fleshed and hooped. As those chores were tended to, Iron Hand, with a hand ax, butchered out a full hindquarter from one of the buffalo cows and brought that stack of frozen meat into their cabin as well. Then with the aid of Big Foot, the rest of the buffalo quarters and rib sections were hoisted up onto their nearby meat pole, so it would be out of reach of hungry predators. When the men had finished with their meat pole duties, they hauled in several more armloads of wood for their fireplace. As they carried in their last armloads of wood for the evening, Iron Hand noticed that the meat pole had now attracted numerous feathered visitors. Looking on, it now seemed that on every exposed piece of meat sat a number of chickadee and gray jays helping themselves to some good buffalo and more importantly, the fat, which would help them in surviving the intense cold. With that, Iron Hand just grinned, walked into the warmness of their cabin and closed the door behind him. As he did, the icy blasts from the oncoming storm arrived in the Poplar River country with a howling vengeance. The fall trapping season for beaver was now a thing of the past, because the thickness of the ice on the now iced-over beaver ponds precluded any further and realistic easy trapping.
However, work for the Poplar River trappers was far from over regardless of the winter’s icy winds and the snows that were now steadily assailing the area. Inside the warm and snug cabin, plans were made for the trappers, weather permitting, to go forth the next day, kill several buffalo and set their wolf traps around the carcasses.
They realized that wolves were some of the smartest predators on the frontier and extremely trap wise. But they also knew that during severe cold weather events, the wolves had to find food easily and lots of it. That meant they hated to expend any more energy than they had to in order to survive. Hence, the wolf traps being set around an inviting freshly killed buffalo carcass for those wolves hungry enough to walk across a ring of hidden traps. The trappers realized that when hunger struck a wolf, many times caution would be thrown to the wind in favor of a full belly, hence a ring of wolf traps being set around an inviting fresh-killed buffalo carcass...
That evening as the new storm’s winds howled around their secure cabin, the men dried out their wetted winter clothing derived from their recent beaver trapping trip, feasted on slabs of roasted buffalo meat, Dutch oven biscuits and numerous tin cups of hot coffee holding just a touch of rum for what ailed the cold in their bones. After such a heavy supper, the men relaxed, smoked their pipes and discussed tomorrow’s wolf trapping expedition. Later into the evening, tired from the day’s labors and the kind of tiredness that comes from working outside in the extreme cold, found the trappers snug in their sleeping furs, as the storm’s winds rattled their tanned deer hide coverings pulled tightly over the cabin’s window frames to help in keeping the warmth in and the cold out...
Early the next morning,
Iron Hand awoke and having consumed numerous cups of hot coffee the evening before, had to ‘see a man about a horse’. Not only that but his ‘sixth sense’ of impending uneasiness was stirring around so much in his belly, along with an overly filled bladder, that he found further sleep problematic. Pulling on his winter clothing and slipping a loaded pistol under his sash as he always did when initially facing the day while on the many-times dangerous frontier, out the cabin door he cautiously went like he had many days previously.
Pausing just outside the cabin’s doorstep, he breathed in deeply the frosty cold air and looked skyward in order to ‘read’ the day’s weather. The storm clouds from the night before were now long gone, only about six inches of new snow had fallen and the sky was clear blue, windless and cold. Looking all around one more time as his living on the frontier had taught him to do if he wanted to live to see another day, Iron Hand took two steps and THEN QUICKLY DROPPED TO HIS KNEES AND GRABBED HIS PISTOL FROM ITS SASH! AS HE DID, ALL THE WHILE HE EXPECTED THE SLAMMING OF A MUSKET BALL INTO HIS CHEST AT ANY MOMENT! HE HAD DROPPED TO HIS KNEES AS AN INSTINCTIVE PROTECTIVE REACTION TO REDUCE HIS BEING A TARGET, BECAUSE WHEN HE SWUNG HIS EYES LOOKING ALL AROUND THEIR CABIN AS A PRECAUTION, THEY RANDOMLY TOOK IN THE ADJACENT HORSE CORRAL.
WHEN HIS EYES HAD SWUNG BY THE HORSE CORRAL, HE WAS AMAZED TO SEE THAT IT WAS EMPTY AND THE GATE WAS WIDE OPEN! EVERY ONE OF THEIR 18 RIDING AND PACKHORSES WERE GONE! HENCE THE QUICK DROP TO HIS KNEES EXPECTING WHOEVER HAD TAKEN THEIR HORSES WAS CLOSE AT HAND AND READY TO SHOOT ANYONE EXITING THE CABIN UPON DISCOVERING THEIR GRIEVOUS LOSS OF THEIR LIVE-GIVING HORSES...
For the next few seconds, Iron Hand’s eyes quickly swept the entire area around their cabin looking for any sign of danger. Seeing no signs of immediate danger, he quickly rose to his feet as his frontier-practiced eyes kept looking all around. As he did, he yelled out for his fellow trappers and then ran over to the now empty horse corral. Stopping just outside the gated entrance, Iron Hand’s eyes quickly scanned the ground by the gate. There in the snow he counted six sets of winter moccasin tracks from Indians and a number of the trappers’ shod horses’ tracks leaving the corral and moving away from the cabin and down towards the Poplar River...!
