The high country, p.17
The High Country, page 17
It was not that long a ride to Lester’s cabin, but he decided it would be better to bleed the deer right away, then there would be no hurry to get back. So he tied his rope around the deer’s antlers and threw the other end of the rope over a handy tree limb before wrapping it around the saddle horn. He and Thunder had done this many times before, so the bay pulled the deer’s carcass up off the ground and remained still until Luke could unwind enough rope to attach to a tree. Then Luke made quick work of slitting the deer’s hide and gutting him. When the carcass had bled out, he led his packhorse under the tree beside the deer and holding the rope with one hand, laid the deer across the back of the packhorse. Then he situated the carcass atop his traps and looped the end of the rope that wasn’t tied to the antlers around the horse’s belly a couple of times. He decided it wasn’t too much for the packhorse, since it wasn’t too great a distance to Lester’s, even though it was uphill.
“I expect Lester and Carrie will be tickled to see that extra meat,” he announced to his horses. Lester was able to provide food for Carrie and himself, but Luke suspected the aging man was not as proficient with a bow as he claimed. He imagined that the two of them survived on a typical diet of small game like rabbits, squirrels, and raccoons that Lester could catch in a trap or get a close shot at with his bow. And from the looks of the bony couple, the small game was no longer that plentiful near their camp. He tried to imagine what Jug might have typically remarked and said it aloud. “If we don’t fatten ’em up with some good meat pretty soon, a good breeze is liable to blow ’em off this mountain one day.” He chuckled when he formed a picture of his late partner. Such a small man to leave such a big empty space when he left, he thought.
Chapter 14
Willow walked out of the cabin to greet him when he rode into Lester’s camp. “I’m so glad to see you,” she exclaimed when she saw the deer. “I heard the shot. I was afraid for you.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t close enough to use my bow, and I figured I’d better take the opportunity to make some more meat for Carrie and Lester. We’ve been eatin’ up all of their elk.”
“Did you find all your traps?” she asked.
“All twelve of ’em,” he said, “and I brought back seven plews to dry.” She asked if the fur was worth saving, and he explained that it was prime. “And I know where I’ll be setting my traps next,” he said. He handed one of the pelts to her so she could examine it.
“You’re right,” she said, somewhat surprised when she examined the fur. “It’s hard to tell the difference in this one and a beaver just caught last night.” She ran her finger over the skin to see if there was a feeling of roughness that usually happens when the fur has begun to separate from the skin. “But you don’t know if this beaver was caught last night or a week ago,” she said with an impish grin.
He laughed. “They’re all like that,” he said, “and don’t make any smart remarks about the way they’re stretched to dry.”
She made a playful pretense of inspecting his stitching of the pelt on the willow hoop. “Is okay, I guess, but it’s good thing I sew your shirts. Maybe you better take me with you from now on.”
Lester walked out to join them and grinned broadly when he saw the deer. “We heard a shot a while back. I’m sure glad to see that was you. It sounded like that long rifle you carry.”
“Yep, that was me,” Luke replied. “I figured we owed you some fresh meat, so I risked one shot.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Lester said. “Looks like you already got him ready to butcher, too. We can just hang him on that tree over yonder. That’s where I do my butcherin’.” He glanced at Willow, still holding the beaver pelt. Then, as Willow hurried back inside to help Carrie prepare supper, Lester remarked, “I see you brought back some more pelts to dry.” Like Willow, he asked if the plews were salvageable, and Luke told him they were and handed him one to inspect. “Sure seems all right to me,” Lester said. “I’m kinda surprised they’d hold up that long.”
Carrie spared Luke another discussion on how long a beaver’s pelt would hold up after it was dead when she looked out the door and seeing what they were about to do, she yelled, “Willow said you shot a deer. I better hold up on supper till you get done with that.”
Luke unwrapped the rope from around his packhorse’s belly, leaving the end of the rope tied to the deer’s antlers in place. Then he and Lester carried the deer over to the tree Lester had indicated and hung it from a large limb. “I can go ahead and start skinnin’ him if you want to take care of your horses,” Lester offered.
“My horses will appreciate that,” Luke said. “I won’t take but a few minutes.” He led his horses away to unsaddle them and pile everything in the small shed on the back of Lester’s cabin. When he went back to the deer, he made a suggestion. “As cold as it is, it wouldn’t hurt to let him hang after we get the skin off and then butcher him after supper.”
“You’re right about that,” Lester said, “and I expect the women would appreciate it.”
“You ain’t got any grizzly bears around here, have you?” Luke asked.
“Not that I know of,” Lester answered, so they skinned the deer, then went in the cabin for supper and left the deer hanging.
The men were right in thinking the wives would prefer to eat the meal when it was ready to eat. They were pleased that the butchering would wait till after supper. “Willow said you shot that deer so you could leave it for Lester and me,” Carrie said to Luke. “I want you to know we appreciate it.”
“That’s a fact,” Lester chimed in. “It’ll save me from havin’ to go huntin’ right away.”
“She said you were able to save all the pelts you found in your traps, too,” Carrie said. “I know that was good news for you. I’m surprised that they were all still good.”
Carrie was not as interested in the condition of the beaver fur as she was about whether or not Luke and Willow planned to return to their old camp. She found it very comforting to have them staying with Lester and her. This was especially true after she had witnessed the way Luke handled the situation with the three Blackfoot warriors. She wished he and Willow could stay with them until the trapping season was over and they went back to the Rendezvous together. It had been too much a shock to her when her sense of independent peace was shattered by the sudden appearance of the fierce-looking Blackfoot men. When she talked with Lester about her fears, he tried to explain that Luke had to camp close to the beaver lodges and their camp was too far away from them. He tried to reassure her that it was highly unlikely they would have another visit from anyone else because of the isolation of their camp. The Blackfoot warriors had followed their tracks to the cabin, and that was the only reason the men had found them. She understood his logic, but she saw the Indians’ visit as a sign to warn them that soon there would be more Indians and trappers finding their secret valley. “You know you are welcome to stay here with us,” she told Luke, anyway, just in case Lester was wrong.
“I ’preciate it, Carrie,” Luke responded and then repeated everything Lester had explained to her as the reason it wouldn’t work out for him and his trapping. “I reckon Willow and I will have to look after our camp down in the valley where the beaver are.”
Carrie smiled and nodded her understanding. “That’s the last of the fresh elk,” she announced then, changing the subject. “Gonna have to eat fresh deer meat now.”
“Maybe that’ll last you a little while,” Luke said. “Then maybe I’ll run up on another careless deer.” He and Lester went out the door then to butcher the deer.
* * *
Luke and Willow were up early the next morning, preparing to leave. Carrie was up soon after to help Willow make breakfast for them. While the women cooked some fresh venison, Luke saddled his and Willow’s horses and loaded his traps on the packhorse again. When they had eaten breakfast and rode out of the clearing where Lester’s cabin stood, they led one of the Blackfoot ponies behind them. This was at Lester’s request. He had already retired his two old horses for two younger ones that Luke had acquired, and he kept two of the Blackfoot ponies to use as packhorses. He asked Luke to take the other Blackfoot horse because he didn’t want to have to take care of more than two riding horses and two packhorses. It made little difference to Luke. The extra horses he had acquired seemed to have adopted him and the cave, and had naturally formed a herd.
After they said good-bye to Lester and Carrie, they headed back down into the valley to the river. To avoid leaving their tracks on the path to Lester’s cabin where it met the trail over the pass, Luke again cut diagonally across to intercept the main trail farther down the slope. When they struck the river, they followed it back to their old camp. Everything was as he had left it the day before. He took Willow up the stream to show her the place he planned to rebuild their camp. She agreed with his choice, so they unloaded the horses there, and he started the work of relocating the tipi the Blackfoot warriors had pulled down and reconstructing it on the new site. They were fortunate in that the Indians had done no serious damage to the hides or poles, so all he really had to do was move it to the new location. “I don’t know why we didn’t build it here to begin with,” he told Willow. “Because up here we’re level with the cave, instead of below it.”
He took only a minute or two to consider it worth the time and labor to dig the floor of the tipi down a couple of feet, as he and Jug usually did. The hard cold of winter was already past, so maybe it wasn’t necessary. Then he decided the extra two feet gave some protection in the event they were caught under attack while in the tipi. Besides, Luke was a fairly tall man and their tipi was not very tall, so the excavation of the floor gave him a little more room to move about. The dirt that he removed from the floor was useful as well when used to pack around the uphill side of the tipi to divert any rainwater draining down from the slope above. So he grabbed his shovel and went to work on it. He was anxious to get his base camp set up for Willow, because he wanted to set his traps after dark that night. And instead of his usual six traps, he had to set twelve now that Jug was gone. He was also going to have to go hunting again pretty soon since he had left the deer he had killed with Carrie and Lester. He and Willow had taken only enough of the fresh meat to cook for dinner and a little of the smoked meat for a couple of meals after that.
While Luke was working on the tipi, Willow took her hand axe down into the grove of aspen trees to gather firewood so that she could cook a hot meal for him at dinnertime. After she had a good fire going, Luke put his shovel aside and called Thunder to him. When the big bay gelding trotted up to him, Luke jumped on his back and rode down through the aspens to the river. Having reached the trail by the river, he turned Thunder to follow it to the north for a short distance before turning around to stare back at the aspens and the firs above them. Satisfied, he rode back up to the camp and slid off the horse to answer Willow’s questioning gaze. “Just what I thought, you can’t see any sign of smoke from our fire.”
“I wonder why you run away,” she said. “Don’t even saddle your horse first.”
“It’ll be even harder to see smoke when the fire’s inside the tipi,” he said.
By the time she had cooked the meat for dinner, he had finished sinking the floor of their tipi. After they ate, she helped him tie the buffalo skins around the tipi frame. And by early afternoon, the tipi was ready and they put their belongings inside. With that done he decided to ride down the river and take another look at the creek and the stream where he was planning to set his traps that night. Willow wanted to go with him just to know where he would be while he was away from the camp, so he saddled her horse, too, and she went with him.
“This valley seems so peaceful,” she said as they sat on their horses and looked down at the large beaver lodge in the middle of the creek Luke led her to see.
“Yep, it’s easy to see why Lester and Carrie wanted to stay here forever,” he replied.
“It’s hard to believe it can turn so violent and take the life of someone like Jug,” she said as she formed a mental picture of the cocky little man. When he was taken, it struck her the same as the death of a family member. She knew that it had struck Luke the same way and had compelled him to punish the man responsible.
“That’s a fact,” he said, “but it ain’t the valley. It’s the scum that washes into it.” He turned Thunder around. “Come on, let’s go. I wanna see what kinda shape the horses have got that cave in.”
When they rode back to the camp, Luke dismounted and lifted Willow down from her horse. He left his saddle on since it wouldn’t be very long before he would ride out again to set the traps. When he started to take Willow’s saddle off her horse she stopped him. “Leave my saddle on. I go with you.”
Surprised, he responded, “You wanna go with me? What for? You’ll be a lot more comfortable sittin’ here by the fire. And I’m gonna be a little longer tonight, since I’ve gotta set Jug’s traps, too.”
“I help you,” she said. “I set Jug’s traps. Maybe we get back sooner.”
“This is different tonight,” he said. “You went with Jug and me when we were checkin’ the traps just so you could show off with your fancy stitchin’ on those pelts. Tonight, we ain’t gonna do that. Maybe in the mornin’, but not tonight. Tonight, I’m gonna have to wade into the ponds and creeks and set the traps, and drive the stakes down in the bottom to keep the beaver from runnin’ off with ’em. And I’ve gotta set the bait sticks on the bank with some castoreum. There’s a lot to do to set a trap.”
“I can learn to set the trap, if you show me. Then you don’t be gone so long. I help you,” she said again.
He realized then that she would rather wade in the cold streams and set traps than to be left alone waiting for him to return. “All right,” he said then. “You can go with me tonight, and I’ll teach you how to set a trap, if you really want to do that.”
“I want to do that.” She was insistant. “I help you.”
“Okay, but if you decide you don’t wanna do it, you can quit whenever you please, all right?” She nodded agreement. “But you still have to fix supper while I go take a look at the horses in the cave.” She laughed and nodded her head.
* * *
They rode back to the creek that night after supper, taking one packhorse to carry the traps. Willow was wearing Jug’s old kit with his knife, hand axe, and bait bottle. They tied the horses a little distance from the banks of the creek. Then Luke impressed upon Willow the importance of not leaving her scent on the bank anywhere near the trap. “You have to do everything in the water. You understand?” She said she did, so he took one of the traps and said, “Come on with me, and I’ll show you what to do.” She waded in the creek behind him. “We’re gonna set this trap by the bank, yonder,” he said, and pointed to the spot. Then making as little disturbance of the water as possible, they waded to that spot. “You wanna set this trap so the pan is about four inches below the surface of the water and the jaws of your trap spread out beneath the surface.” He wanted her to understand why, so he said, “You see, when that beaver swims up to smell the bait, he’ll put his paws on the pan and spring the trap.” She nodded solemnly to let him know she understood. So he worked with his knife to cut into the bank to make a solid place to set the trap at the right depth below the surface. She watched carefully, and when he was satisfied with the setting, she took a good look at it. He then showed her how to extend the full length of the chain attached to the trap out into the deeper part of the creek and drive the stake attached into the bottom. He showed her a twig he had broken off a bush, which he now tied to a string attached to the stake and released it to float on the water. “That’ll show you where your stake is and your beaver, too, if your trap’s missin’ in the mornin’.”
She nodded and said. “Good, I think I can do that. Where you want me to set trap?”
“Wait just a minute,” he replied. “We ain’t done yet. We gotta bait that trap, so the beaver will come to it.” They waded back over to the trap, and he pulled out a small limb he had cut and stuck in his belt. There were a few leaves left on the tip of it and he sharpened the other end of it with his knife so he could drive it in the bank just enough to let the leaves hang over the trap. Then he took out his bait bottle and poured some castoreum on the leaves. “That oughta do it,” he said. “We got one trap set. We ain’t got but eleven to go.” They waded back to the place where they first entered the water to leave the creek. “You still want to set traps?” he asked, seeing that she was already shivering. “You know that wound ain’t healed up all the way yet. Maybe you ought to give it a little more time before you start trappin’.”
“No, I can do it,” she insisted. “I’m just a little bit cold. I want to help you. Where do you want me to put my trap?”
He pointed to a spot on the other side of the creek. “That looks like a good place. I’ll cut you some bait sticks while you snatch off some of those leaves to tie to the string on the stake.”
When she was ready with everything he told her she needed, he said, “I’m gonna set my next trap down on the other side of the lodge, so I’ll walk a ways up the creek before I go in the water and wade back to it.” So they both went back into the cold water to set their traps. He was on the opposite side of the beaver lodge from her, but he was not too far to watch her progress as she set her first trap. It did not surprise him that she set the trap perfectly, just as he had tried to teach her. Looks like she does it a lot faster than Jug used to do it, he thought. Come to think of it, she does about everything faster than me and Jug.
She asked him to come and give her first trap a close inspection before she set the next one. “Looks good to me,” he told her. “I couldn’t a’ done any better. After tonight, you can set all the traps, and I’ll stay back in camp by the fire,” he joked.
