Colter's Winter

by Greg Strandberg

  For the past few days the men had been going downriver, stopping here and there so one or two could get out and search those branches and offshoots. Most of the time it was Colter and Joe, the former because he had the most experience in these parts, the latter because Forest wanted it that way. It was becoming all the clearer to Colter that Forest was the boss of Joe, and that Forest didn’t much like work either. He sure liked to complain, though.

  “They’re rascally varmints, that’s for sure!” Forest laughed from his spot at the head of the boat. He slapped his hand down on his thigh for good measure, imitating the whack a beaver might give a piece of wood, or a good stretch of water if it was angry enough or working hard enough. FWAP!

  “John,” I’ll tell ya,” Joe said, looking up at Colter with an enthusiastic look on his face, like a young boy that had a story he just had to tell, “we was down trappin’ around the Niobrara and one fella had his whole right hand gone.”

  “Chewed off by the biggest damn beaver he’d ever seen,” Forest added from the front of the boat. He slapped that hand down on his thigh again for good measure. FWAP!

  Joe chuckled at that, and muttered under his breath as the men settled down and cast their eyes to the riverbanks once again. Colter thought he heard him mumble “damn things, worth a lot of trouble for what they’re worth.”

  Colter chuckled to himself. He never could understand why the rodents were so prized. Their furs made for top-heavy, ungainly hats, though in posh places like London and Paris they served as the epitome of elegance. The mountain man chuckled again. If only those folks knew the proud creature they flaunted so much.

  The beaver of the Upper Missouri and its Rocky Mountain tributaries was truly a sight to behold. Colter never would forget the first few he’d seen when they’d been heading up into the wilds, nor the amazing structures the creatures built up on the sides of rivers, and often over large parts as well. The critters were like a rat, though larger and with different tails. The tails were a tool more than anything, used for paddling, steering like a rudder, and slapping and patting down mud for their dams. It was used to warn as well, and many times the men of the expedition had been thwarted in their attempts to catch the animals because of a well-sounded ‘FWAP!’

  The hind legs of the beast were webbed, the better to swim with, while the front paws were clawed and perfect for clutching sticks. Usually the animals would clutch them to their chests while paddling furiously with their back legs to move through the water. Sometimes when the going was tough they’d tuck the bundle under their chins and put all four legs to work.

  The creatures were perfect at gnawing on wood, and that was because of their teeth. They only had enamel on the outside, something that allowed the edges to achieve razor sharpness. And the jaws were even more powerful than the traps used to catch them. Thank goodness the animals only cowered in fear when cornered, and didn’t put up any fight – one bite and a hand could well be crushed for good. Or gone, as Joe claimed.

  Their dams truly were a marvel of engineering, and one Colter would truly never fully understand. That didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate them, however, and he’d done so, hours at a time it seemed, when the creatures went about their task. The fact that they typically built their dams in the dark, after the sun had gone down and even in the wee hours of the morning, often without any moonlight, was also something to behold…when you could see it. The creatures didn’t take too well to torches, and the slightest hint of a flame would send them underwater mighty quick.

  As near enough as he could tell, the beaver built the dams first by erecting a system of poles, each one anchored to the bottom of the river, stuck into the mud as far as possible. That’s what Colter supposed, for he had no way of knowing and certainly wasn’t going to dive down to check. From there he suspected that branches were taken down and anchored to those poles, slowly at first but then in greater number as a latticework of twigs, sticks and river debris was built up. The weave had to be tight, for there could be no seepage of water. Clumps of grass took care of that, and they in turn were covered over with clumps of mud. At that point the little critters had quite the watertight design.

  It was clear the things were smart, too, and changed their designs based on conditions. For instance, Colter had seen straight dams built across calm streams, but curved dams across those that had a swifter current or rapids to contend with. Some of the dams had even been hundreds of feet in length, the work of a generation, perhaps a few. And there were even dams more ancient than that, with their bottoms now petrified into almost solid stone by the looks of it, the true work of decades or even centuries. The effect on the surrounding land was clear. Canals sprouted out from the larger dams, with waterways crisscrossing and bisecting a whole range of wetlands, wetlands that wouldn’t exist without the industrious creatures.

  By the time winter came the animals were set. The vast canal network branching out from the larger dams filled a section of woods and enabled the beaver to move to and fro easily, gathering the bark they needed to make it through the winter. The precious food would be ferried back to the dam and placed underwater around it, something that made it easily accessible when the rivers froze over. After all, each dam had a hidden passage that led far away from it, and which afforded the protection from the elements the animals needed.

  The beaver’s work didn’t end when the freeze set in, however. On the contrary, the dams had to be maintained, the burrows and canals excavated of debris; trees needed to be gnawed to the right size, food stores had to be gathered; areas of damage were to be identified, and extra sticks for repairs had to be collected. It was a lot of work, and Colter had seen hours of it during the expedition. Forest and Joe hadn’t though, and he frequently caught the pair eyeing the larger dams, looks of amazement on their faces.

  The two had trapped extensively further down the Missouri, but that stretch was a lot different than this primitive and wild land they were entering. Here it was a land right out of time, a place untouched by man, or at least the kind of man that always had money in his eye.

  The beaver saw those dollar signs as well, and viewed them with trepidation and later fear. The creatures slapped their large tails down on the water whenever there was a hint of trouble. Colter often wondered if some mental message was sent as well, to those of its kin further upriver, a warning of sorts on what was to come.

  “How ‘bout there?” Forest asked, pointing forward past Colter and knocking him from his reverie. The mountain man looked to where the trapper was pointing, a small offshoot of the river that looked to extend into a series of smaller streamlets further on.

  He nodded. “Steer us over – Joe and I will have a look.”

  17 – Dams

  Colter and Joe split up after leaving Forest in the boat. Joe took the first set of offshoots while Colter travelled further. His path was a large streamlet, one that actually grew smaller as he went on. Everything told him to turn back, that it was a dead run…but something was tugging at him too. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he couldn’t ignore it either. He pressed on.

  He figured he’d gone a couple hundred yards before coming to a rise. It rose steadily, though trees appeared in the distance, as if a gap was between them and the mountain man. Colter knew right away that there was a gap, probably from a larger stream or even another smaller tributary of the Yellowstone. He continued up and up, rising higher in elevation, until he was at the top, level with the tree branches twenty or more feet off the ground. And what was before him took his breath away.

  It was a beaver dam, but then it couldn’t accurately be called a ‘beaver dam.’ It was more of a beaver area than anything, and the lay of the land proved it. There were several fallen trees, trees that looked to have been healthy. They were cut, Colter knew with one quick glance, cut by the razor sharp teeth of the beaver. They’d done it to dam up the river, and it’d worked, wondrously so. Water had spilled up and around the fallen tree, creating the wetland areas
over dry that the animals loved so much. They could paddle around, grass and twigs just below their feet. They took those and built larger mounds, some homes, but most just further river impediments, stoppages and spillways. Oh yes, were there spillways! The water ran down the river, around the trees that’d been felled, and then over rocks and off of drops. Waterfalls were created, not one or two, but dozens. It was a water wonderland where before there’d just been another quiet offshoot stretch of the river passing through a towering stand of trees.

  More than that, however, there were acres and acres of fallen and collected wood. Much was driftwood collected by the industrious animals, and it was stacked high in places, as much as ten or fifteen feet, the mountain man guessed. He was reminded of large sawmill areas he’d seen on riverbanks near the cities, with logs collected and castoff wood sitting in piles as far as the eye could see. That’s what these beavers had done, they’d created a huge area that said clearly to all, ‘beavers here, keep out.’

  Colter scanned it and marked it well – this was a spot for beaver, and most likely a few families. It was a community, he thought, and one that hadn’t seen the insatiable appetites of all things fur that the Europeans and upper-class Americans so desired. Colter scoffed. And it’ll stay that way, he thought.

  He picked up his rifle and secured his traps. He couldn’t say why, exactly – he’d never been romantic about the creatures before. It was just something about that area, the magnitude of it, the sheer accomplishment of it. Looking at what he judged to be the first tree to have fallen, Colter figured it’d been there for a century, at least. So overgrown with moss and covered with debris was it that it now seemed just another featureless-feature on the river’s shores. And featureless it would stay. Oh, he knew he couldn’t stop the inevitable push of the white man, but that push wouldn’t come today, and hopefully not for several days hence.

  Colter was thinking those thoughts, the chains on his traps rattling slightly, when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and froze. Turning his head he saw more movement, a beaver coming out. But this was no ordinary beaver, this was the king of all beaver as far as Colter was concerned. The creature came out on top of one of the mounds, one that Colter hadn’t noticed before but which he now saw was probably the most important, the lynchpin holding the whole thing together. And God, the sheer size of the thing! It had to be two feet tall and nearly as much wide, a good three times the size of an average beaver! A quick mental calculation allowed Colter to come to the conclusion that the critter’s pelt would be worth $8, a full $6 more than the typical $2 paid out.

  Except that the pelt would be tinged with gray and silver, for this animal was old. It stared at Colter, chattered its teeth a bit and even beat down its tail. Colter wasn’t certain if the beast was mocking him or thanking him, but if he had to guess, he’d choose the latter. He’d always had a way with animals, at least if he wasn’t killing them, and this one seemed to sense it.

  “You’re welcome, chief,” Colter said. He nodded at the thing and then turned his back and moved on.

  Down the bank he went, back now toward the larger Yellowstone. It wouldn’t be long and he’d–

  “Colter!”

  Colter stopped and turned, and saw that Joe was up ahead. He raised up his rifle in a half-wave and started forward.

  “Anything that a way?” he asked when they’d covered the distance.

  Colter shook his head, then looked over his shoulder. He thought of the giant beaver, the ‘Chief’ of the Yellowstone. He thought for a moment before turning back.

  “This branch just runs off into nothing,” he said.

  Joe nodded. “Lots of ‘em like that around here. C’mon – Forest has the canoe up ahead and figures we can check a few more before the sun gets low.

  Colter nodded, and the two men headed back to the river.

  18 – Trapping

  For the next week the men moved up the Yellowstone, and at a pace a snail could beat. They went little more than a few miles a day, for they had to set their traps. That involved all three men charting off a course and going out, laying traps along streams and offshoots of the Yellowstone, and sometimes even on its banks. They’d been lucky so far, catching a fair amount, but nothing compared to what they expected to take once they reached the winter camp…wherever it lay. Colter was still a bit mum on that, but then he kept on saying that they had to focus on the task at hand.

  Trapping was a tough business, and it was only getting tougher as the days got shorter, colder. The animals didn’t make it any easier, of course. The trick was in making sure the beaver didn’t drag the trap away to gnaw their way out of, or worse, get it down into a deep section of water where it and the animal sunk, neither to ever be retrieved again. It’d happened to both he and George on more than one occasion when they’d first started up the river, but they’d quickly found the answer. It lay in getting the animal to spring the trap not with their front legs, but with those powerful back webbed paws of theirs. To do that the trap had to be placed in the water. The best spots were just below a beaver slide, attached to a ring on one end of a chain that was attached to a small pole. Once the animal got its back paws in the trap would be sprung and the animal would kick and fight and cause the trap to fall further into the water, drowning the animal so it wouldn’t have to suffer, and also so it couldn’t escape. After that it was just a matter of going back to the trap and pulling up on the pole chain to retrieve the trap and quarry.

  Of course a metal trap by itself wasn’t too appealing to the beaver, and that’s why it had to be baited. George had been one of the first to figure out that a stick smeared with castor oil was all it took. Simply lay that over the trip-pan and the animals couldn’t resist, especially if the oil had come from another beaver, females being the best. Sometimes that was even better than the water method, just putting a raised stick over a trap. Often the animals would rear up on their hind legs to reach the stick, stepping forward slowly. When they took one step too many there was no fighting or gnawing that was going to save that skin. Often the creatures would still be alive when the trapper came back, however, and that meant a swift bop on the head with the butt of a rifle or a large rock. Then the skinning could begin, the trap would be cleaned, and the process could start again, either in the same spot or somewhere further on. It was trapping – money and a way of life all rolled up into one.

  If the men weren’t thinking of beaver they were thinking of food and shelter. The weather was getting colder as the days grew shorter, and game was already making itself scarce. And just like the captains, Colter noticed, both Forest and Joe seemed to hate fish. For some reason they felt going hungry was better than contending with the small bones. But then they probably weren’t used to eating much anyways.

  The men’s diets consisted of about the same types of foods that were eaten by the Indians. They subsisted on the game they found and the fish they caught. Most of that game had come from Colter’s Kentucky Rifle so far, and it was easy enough – a good buck would give them a week or more of meat. Roots and berries also supplemented their fare. Then there was always pemmican, which was the lean meat from deer, dried over a fire or left out in the sun until it became hard. At that point it was pounded nearly into dust before being mixed with an equal amount of fat. Berries were sometimes beaten into powder and added, and the resulting mixture was stored in the men’s pouches for later consumption, usually when out checking the traps. The cold weather bit, but so did the hunger pangs. Pemmican might not sound like the most appetizing dish, but when game was scarce and the rivers and streams were all frozen, it came in quite handy.

  The rivers would freeze soon, the smaller branches and offshoots. Then the mighty Yellowstone would see ice on her banks, clinging at first but then advancing further and further toward midstream. By the coldest time of the year there’d just be a thin stream showing, the rest of the water moving swiftly below the ice sheet all around.

  Winter would be coming so
on.

  19 – Landfall

  Several days later the sun was out, but the air was cold – winter would soon be arriving, and it was just the middle of October. The thought wasn’t sitting well with Joseph Dixon as he dipped his oar into the dark blue waters of the Yellowstone River again, but then nothing was sitting well with him. He shifted this way and that on his rudimentary bench at the front of the canoe, but no matter which way he sat, it did no good. So he shifted again, and again, and…

  “Goddamn it, Joe – stop all that hoppin’ around up there!”

  Joe frowned and turned to look over his shoulder. “I can’t help it,” he said to Forest, right behind him in the middle of the canoe, “my arse is killing me!”

  “Ah…hell!” Forest said, smacking his oar down in the water for emphasis. “That damn ass of yours has been slowin’ us down for two days now!”

  “I can’t help it!” Joe said, twirling around this time, his oar coming out of the water and creating a large wave of droplets all the while. He quickly winced in pain, and his next utterance was much more quiet. “I’ve got the piles.”

  “Every ripple in this river knows that, the way you’ve been scooting that ass of yours from one side of the boat to the other!”

  “Alright, alright!” Colter said from behind Forest in his position at the rear of the boat. “John’s got hemorrhoids, there’s nothing we can do about it.” He remembered well the time Captain Lewis had gotten a bad bout of piles on their way to the coast. Then Sacagawea had prepared a poultice from the Hamamelis virginiana tree, commonly called witch hazel, and he’d been right as rain the next day. Colter didn’t know if there was any witch hazel around these parts, but there was only one way to find out.