All around was wildlife. There were hawks high above them, ravens and jays in the trees. Chipmunks darted from under rocks and squirrels chattered from the tree tops. Elk and deer prints were plentiful.
Nate saw no reason to be alarmed. With so much game there must be few predators in the area. Once, at the bottom of the ridge, he spied a bear track, but it was that of a black bear and not a grizzly.
They rode to the opening, a relatively narrow gap between the mountains, no more than fifty feet wide. Pines grew in profusion on both sides of a broad stream that flowed out of the gap and angled abruptly to the left, to the west. The stream flowed along the base of the peaks for hundreds of yards, then disappeared in deep forest. From the ridge the stream had not been visible because of the high grass and weeds that grew along each bank and the overhanging branches of the many trees bordering the slowly flowing water.
“This is right pretty,” Milo said.
Nate nodded in agreement. The countryside was picturesque. If the valley wasn’t so close to Blackfoot territory, it would be an ideal spot to build a cabin and raise a family. He goaded his stallion through the gap, sticking to the east bank of the stream, listening to the gurgling water and the soft wind whispering in the branches.
“Say, look there!” Tom exclaimed, pointing.
At that moment Nate saw it too: a large beaver dam constructed from reeds, saplings, sticks, and branches all woven into a compact mass and caulked with mud. Past the dam, in an oval pond, was the beaver lodge, a dome of similar construction well over seven feet high and thirty feet wide, average size. There were no beaver in evidence, but it was still early. Mainly active at night, beaver usually made their appearance in the early evening.
“That’s a good sign,” Milo said. “Where there’s one lodge there might be a lot more.”
Similar thoughts inspired Nate. They had barely entered the valley and already found a lodge. It had been his experience that the farther up a valley a trapper went, the more lodges and beaver he would find.
And so they did. They passed dam after dam, lodge after lodge, and twice saw beaver swimming. The animals paid no attention to them, which in itself was promising because it meant the beaver had had few dealings if any with hunters or trappers and would be easier to catch.
The valley stretched on for mile after mile, widening out as they advanced, winding between magnificent peaks to the east and the west. At its widest the valley covered five to six miles. Occasionally it narrowed to only two miles or less. Small herds of elk and black tailed deer were frequently spotted. At various points they came on tributaries of the main stream, creeks branching off to the right or the left, and they saw beaver dams and lodges up those too.
Milo laughed lightly. “I think I’ve died and gone to trappers’ heaven.”
“I’ve never seen so many beaver in one valley before,” Tom said. “How about you, Nate?”
“Me neither,” Nate admitted.
Tom looked at Red Moon. “I’ve got to hand it to you, old man. You were right. You knew what you were talking about.”
“We will catch many beaver,” the Crow predicted.
They hadn’t gone more than a third of the way into the valley when Nate decided to call a halt. The sun perched low on the western mountains and would soon drop from view, plunging the valley into deep shadows and eventual darkness. He studied those jagged peaks, realizing they cut off the sunlight much earlier than would normally be the case. He estimated night fell in the valley a good half hour before it did, say, at his cabin.
Nate picked a spot where a meadow bordered the main stream as their campsite. While Tom got a fire going and Red Moon gathered dead wood, Nate and Milo stripped the horses and took them to the stream to drink. Samson stayed near Nate.
“This valley is better than I’d dare dream,” Milo mentioned, beaming as he surveyed the expanse still before them. “If all goes well, I’ll return to Pennsylvania with enough money to put down on a sizable farm. Maggie will be so happy. I gave her a ring before I left for these mountains. Hope she hasn’t grown tired of waiting for me.”
“I wish the two of you the best.”
They tethered the horses in the meadow, then strolled to the fire, where a pot of coffee was already boiling. Red Moon had taken a seat and was chewing on a piece of jerked meat.
“I can hardly wait to start trapping,” Tom said as he poured coffee into Nate’s cup.
“We have a few things to do before we trap,” Nate told him. “We should go to the end of the valley and see if there are a lot of beaver farther up. Then we can pick our first camp and begin to set traps.”
“First camp?” Milo repeated.
“This valley must be twenty-five to thirty miles long,” Nate said. “If we were to set up a permanent camp near the center, whoever went out to check the traps couldn’t possibly make it back by dark and would have to bed down in the brush. It’s too far to cover from end to end at one time. So I propose trapping one section of the stream at a time and working our way down the valley until we’re done. We can move our camp farther down as we go along so each of us won’t have as far to travel when we check the trap lines.”
“Makes sense to me,” Milo said.
“Me too,” Tom added.
Red Moon, who was bearing more wood to the fire, halted and said, “There is more to this valley.”
“What do you mean?” Milo responded.
“The valley forks far up. There is another part as long as this one.”
“Does it have as many beaver?” Milo asked.
“More,” the Crow answered, and deposited his load of wood.
Tom laughed and slapped his thigh in delight. “This is too good to be true. We don’t have enough pack animals for all the pelts we’ll collect.”
“When will we reach the fork?” Nate wanted to know.
“Well after the sun is straight overhead we should be there,” Red Moon informed him.
Because they had not shot any game, they had to make do with jerky and biscuits Milo made from the flour in their provisions. Hot coffee capped off their meal. Then they settled around the fire and discussed their trapping plans.
“Should we take turns standing guard?” Tom inquired at one point.
“There is no need,” Red Moon said.
“What about the Blackfeet?” Tom mentioned. “You keep telling us that we’re close to their country.”
“The Blackfeet do not come into this valley.”
Nate, about to take a sip, stopped and studied the Crow’s impassive features. “Why not?”
“For the same reason my people no longer come here,” Red Moon said.
Milo snickered. “Are you saying the Blackfeet are also afraid of this thing that lurks in the dark?” He shook his head in disbelief. “The Blackfeet don’t know the meaning of fear.”
“They do not come here,” Red Moon reiterated. Swallowing more coffee, Nate gazed into the inky night. Like Milo, he was skeptical. The Blackfeet deserved their reputation for being indomitable warriors. They fought everyone and everything. Even grizzlies didn’t intimidate them. So why would they shun this valley when it was a hunter’s paradise?
“Now don’t start with that nonsense again,” Tom grumbled. “We haven’t seen anything unusual since we got here. And I don’t recollect any of us seeing so much as a strange track.”
“Once the creature knows we are here, it will come,” Red Moon stated. He removed a piece of jerky from his pack and took a bite.
“There is no damned creature,” Tom insisted. “And I don’t want to hear you talk of it again.”
“As you wish.”
A nervous whinny suddenly issued from one of the packhorses, and a moment later several others had chimed in with loud whinnies of their own.
“What the hell?” Tom blurted.
Nate grabbed his Hawken, rose, and hurried toward the stock. Perhaps because of the fireside conversation, his every nerve was on edge. On his left was Samson,
not displaying any agitation whatsoever. Red Moon and Milo were on the right. Nate reached the tethered animals and saw them staring intently to the northeast with their ears pricked.
“There is something out there,” Milo whispered.
But what? Nate wondered, his thumb on the hammer of his rifle. They couldn’t afford to lose any of their animals. They only had one riding horse apiece, and the eight packhorses would be sorely needed to transport the furs.
Then, from perhaps half a mile away, a piercing shriek rent the cool air, a shriek resembling that of a terrified woman in agonizing torment. The horses fidgeted anxiously, a few tugging on their ropes.
Milo lowered his rifle and snorted. “It’s just a panther. The stock must have picked up its scent.”
“What if it tries to get one of our horses?” Tom asked from behind them.
“Perhaps we should post guards after all,” Nate suggested. “I’ll take the first watch if no one has any objections.”
No one did. They walked back to the fire. Nate finished his coffee while standing and gazing at the horses. The flickering firelight played over their sleek forms. Some had already gone back to grazing. A few had lain down. None appeared concerned about the big cat, which meant they no longer smelled the panther and it must be prowling in another direction.
“Maybe that’s it,” Tom said. “Maybe there’s a real whopper of a panther in these parts, a man-killer. Maybe it’s responsible for killing that Crow brave and scaring everyone off.”
“The thing is not a panther,” Red Moon stated firmly.
“If you say so,” Tom said sarcastically. “But if anything shows up, and I don’t care if it’s one of them Frankenstein monsters or one of those vampyres, I’m going to give it a little surprise.” As he finished speaking he reached out and patted his rifle, propped on his saddle beside him.
“There are no such things. All of that is make-believe,” Milo said while chewing on a biscuit.
For another thirty minutes they talked. Then the Pennsylvanians and the Crow turned in and Nate started his watch. The Hawken cradled in his left arm, he strolled into the meadow and walked around the horses, Samson sticking with him all the time. The horses were bedded down and quiet.
In the near and far distance arose typical wilderness sounds: the hoots of owls, the howls of wolves, the yips of coyotes, and occasionally the snarls and growls of predators. Stars filled the heavens, a dazzling celestial spectacle that took the breath away.
Nate munched on jerky and took a seat close enough to the fire to be warm, but with his back to it so his night vision wouldn’t be impaired by the bright flames. The hours passed uneventfully. When the time came, he awakened Milo and gratefully crawled under his blankets to get some sleep. His last thoughts before drifting to sleep were of the legendary creature. They had been in the valley for hours and it hadn’t shown up. Red Moon must be wrong. The Crow was letting the old tales get to him. There was nothing to worry about.
Nothing at all.
Chapter Eleven
The next several days were jammed with activity.
On their second day in the valley they traveled to where the stream forked, debated a bit, and finally decided to go up the right fork first simply because they spied a huge beaver lodge up it, bigger than any of them had ever seen or heard of, and the sight drew them like a magnet. They rode until they could ride no farther, until they found themselves at the base of a steep mountain and saw where the stream came down off that mountain from a high country lake Red Moon said was up near the summit. The water was runoff from the snow that perpetually crowned the surrounding peaks.
Eagerly, they established their first camp. The gear was stripped off the packhorses. All four of them pitched in and constructed a sturdy lean-to that would adequately shelter them from the elements. Their food supply, stored in parfleches and packs, was hung by ropes from high tree limbs to discourage bears and other varmints that might wander by while they were off trapping. Their traps and tools were stored in a corner of the lean-to, but only until the next day, when they began trapping in earnest.
They started out when the sun was still below the horizon, working in pairs. Nate and Red Moon crossed the stream and worked along the west side, exploring up each tributary they discovered. Milo and Tom did likewise on the east side.
Since Red Moon knew little about how to properly set a trap, Nate did most of the work that morning. His traps were all Newhouses, manufactured by Sewell Newhouse of Oneida, New York, from whom they got their nickname. Newhouse sold every type of equipment a trapper needed, and even published a useful manual on the trade that many a beginning trapper carried with him into the vast Rockies.
Laying a trap line was cold, hard work. They hiked from dam to dam. At each, Nate would search for a runway or other likely spot to set his trap. Then he would place the Newhouse flat on the ground, stand on the leaf springs until the jaws dropped open, and adjust the trigger on the disk until the proper tension held the disk in place.
Next the trap was carefully carried into the frigid water and positioned on the bottom so the surface of the water was no more than a hand-width above the disk. This was done because beaver, being short legged, had to step right on the disk to spring the trap. If the trap was placed any lower, they might swim right over it.
A stout length of wood was then inserted through the ring at the end of the chain and pounded into the bank using the blunt end of a hatchet. Pulling on the chain verified the beaver would be unable to yank it loose.
The last step in setting a trap concerned the bait. Usually contained in small wooden boxes that were frequently sold at the annual rendezvous, the bait consisted of the musky secretion beavers used to mark their territory, and was collected from the glands of dead ones before they were skinned. A thin stick was dipped into the box and then the other end was jabbed into the bank above where the trap had been placed. Once a passing beaver smelled the scent, it would come to investigate, step into the trap, and be caught in rigid steel jaws. Inevitably it drowned, unless the beaver chewed its own foot off to escape, which happened quite often if the traps weren’t checked regularly.
Nate took until well past noon to set his twelve traps, and then returned to camp. The two Pennsylvanians had finished much earlier and were already there.
“How did it go?” Tom asked.
“We’ll know this evening when we check our lines,” Nate replied.
“This evening?” Tom repeated. “But we’ve always checked our traps in the morning.”
“Only once a day?” Nate inquired.
“Sure. What’s wrong with that? Many trappers only check their line once a day.”
“And they’re the ones who lose a lot of beaver. When you only check once a day, it gives any animal you’ve caught more time to chew its leg off. By checking twice you seldom have one get away on you,” Nate said. “Shakespeare himself advised me to check twice and I’ve always done so.”
Milo had been listening attentively. “So that’s why we’ve lost so many. Okay, Nate. From here on out we check twice each day.”
“That’s a lot of work,” Tom grumbled.
“Which would you rather be?” Milo retorted. “Rich or lazy?”
Tom grinned. “Rich, of course. But I hate going into that icy water. It pains my legs something fierce.”
“Quite a few trappers have the same complaint,” Nate noted. “If you sit by a fire for a while as soon as you’re done checking the line, your legs won’t hurt half as much.”
“I know,” Tom said, and shrugged. “You know how it is. We don’t always do what is best for us even when we know better.”
Red Moon took his bow and quiver from his gear and went off to hunt, leaving his rifle behind. Everyone knew why. Using a gun often spooked game from an area and they wanted to keep the game close so they wouldn’t have to spend as much time securing their fresh meat. Over an hour later he came back with a large doe draped over his shoulders.
The sun was close to the western horizon when they went off to check their lines. Nate didn’t expect to find many beaver in his traps since the line had been in place for such a short time. To his delight, though, he found three.
At each sprung trap he had to wade into the water and haul the forty-pound carcass onto the bank. After removing the dead animal, he reset the trap in a different spot. Since Red Moon accompanied him, they lugged all three back to camp instead of skinning them on the spot as he would have done had he been alone.
Milo and Tom had not yet returned. Nate placed the three beaver near the fire, obtained his curved skinning knife from his pack, and set to work removing the hides. Many a pelt had been ruined by a man who cut rashly and pierced the soft fur, so he took his time. The better the condition of the pelt, the more money he would make for it.
He had been done for quite some time and darkness was descending when Milo and Tom came back. Five beaver had been snared in their traps and they had removed the hides beside the stream.
Milo glanced at Nate’s skins and beamed. “Eight already! I tell you, this venture will pay off handsomely.”
Over the next two days his words were borne out. They caught a grand total of seventy-one beaver, and were kept busy skinning when not checking their lines. They were so busy there was barely time to eat.
By the morning of the fourth day they were all fatigued but elated at their good fortune. Chewing on a flapjack, Milo looked at them and chuckled.
“If we keep going at this rate, we’ll have the valley trapped out in a month.”
“The sooner, the better,” Tom said.
Nate inwardly agreed and was pleased. Between all the beaver along the two upper forks, the dozens of tributaries, and the lower body of the stream, they should each take back between four and five hundred pelts. Not a bad haul at all considering that most trappers took in three or four hundred pelts during an entire year. There were exceptions, of course. Jed Smith had caught close to seven hundred one year. But it was Nate’s mentor, Shakespeare McNair, who held the all-time record for a twelve-month haul: eight hundred and twenty-seven pelts.
Wilderness: Mountain Devil/Blackfoot Massacre (A Wilderness Western Book 5) Page 8
