It is the latter part of December, just before sunset. The snow, which had fallen in successive storms since the first of the month, now lay deep on the ground. Making their way in Indian file through the forest are four persons, in whom we recognize Uncle Isaac, Joe Griffin, Charlie, and John. They are each of them harnessed to a singular sort of a vehicle, called in hunters’ phrase “toboggin,” by long thongs of deer-skin, which are put across the breast, and secured to the neck by another strap to prevent their slipping down, like the breastplate of a horse. The vehicle consists of a cedar board, eight feet long and eighteen inches wide, quarter of an inch thick, made perfectly smooth, and the forward end bent up like the nose of a sled, some bars put across to strengthen it, to which to fasten the load. This formed the lightest sled imaginable, being so long, in proportion to its width, as to receive but littleobstruction from the snow. The forward part, bent up, glided easily over the drifts or logs, and it was withal so thin, that it bent, and accommodated itself to the inequalities of the surface. Upon the sledges they carry their rifles, powder, balls, and buckshot, steel-traps, blankets, and a small kettle, pork, bread, and parched corn, a large file, whetstone, axe, and other necessaries, including a frow (a large knife) for splitting shingles. They wear moccasons and snow-shoes; in their belts a knife and hatchet. Each man also has a horn of tinder, flint, steel, and brimstone matches.
The boys were, evidently weary with their unaccustomed work, and Charlie cast many a furtive glance towards the setting sun, the light of which shone red through the trees. It was also evident that even Joe was not unaffected by fatigue; but upon the seasoned frame of Uncle Isaac the journey apparently made no impression.
“There ought to be a brook somewhere about here,” said he. “Ah! I see the place. It’s just beyond that hemlock, though the water itself is all covered with ice and snow. We’ll camp there. We ought to have camped two hours ago, but I wanted to reach this spot.”
This was the first experience of real camp andhunter’s life the boys had ever known. To be sure they had camped out in summer, on Smutty Nose and in other places; but now it was bitter cold, and the snow two feet deep. They were also tired. Uncle Isaac, taking counsel only of his own toughened sinews, had not made sufficient allowance for the little practice they had ever known in snow-shoe walking. Their shoulders ached with the cutting of the straps, and their feet from the pressure of the snow-shoes. Their loads, light at first, grew heavier every mile.
As they looked around upon the trees covered with snow, their loads white with frost, realized that they were in a wilderness, no house within thirty miles, they began to feel that the hunting, to which they had looked forward with such rapturous anticipations, had its rough as well as its romantic side. The place where they had halted was in a heavy growth of hard wood, largely mixed with hemlock, which, in the gathering twilight of the short winter day, with their long branches, gave a peculiar black and gloomy appearance to the spot in the eyes of Charlie and John; but not so with the others.
“What a glorious place for a camp!” said Joe, going up to a large hemlock, which had beenturned up by the wind the year before, which made, with its great roots matted together and filled with frozen earth, an impenetrable barrier against the north-west wind, blowing keen and cold; “and here is something to warm us,” taking his axe from the sled, and attacking with vigorous blows a large beech, that stood with its dead, dry branches extended to the wintry sky.
Uncle Isaac and the boys now took off their snow-shoes, and with them scraped off the snow around the stump to the ground; then, cutting some crotched poles, set them up in the snow, trod it around to keep them steady, then putting other poles into the crotches, rested their ends on the top of the stump, thus forming rafters, and over them threw brush, till they made it all tight, leaving a hole in the centre for the smoke to go out; then covered the floor thickly with hemlock branches, and flung their blankets on it. By this time Joe had the tree cut up. They first carried the large logs into the camp, then brought along the smaller limbs and dry twigs, adding them to the pile.
Meanwhile Uncle Isaac and John collected a whole armful of birch bark from the trees, and kindled it. In a moment the fire, catching thegreat mass of dry wood, streamed through the hole in the top of the camp, and glancing upon the dark masses of hemlocks, lit up the faces of the group, as they stood around the fire, with a ruddy glow, and changed the whole character of the scene as by enchantment.
The next morning they broke camp, and travelled till noon, camped, and rested during the remainder of the day. Next morning, being refreshed by rest, and well seasoned to their work, they started before daylight, and travelled through a dense forest till Saturday noon, when they came to a place where fires had destroyed the growth of trees many years before, and the land was overrun with bushes, alternating with clear spots. Its northern edge was broken into gentle hills and vales.
While eating dinner, they espied some deer on the side of one of the hills, browsing among the young growth that had come up after the fire, and scraping away the snow with their feet to get at the dead grass.
A fresh breeze was blowing and roaring in the tree tops, which would conceal the noise of their approach. It was evident that the deer did not see them, as they had not yet emerged from thewood, and had instantly lain down on seeing the deer. The wind was also blowing directly from the animals, so that they could not scent them.
There were clumps of bushes, thickly matted, with large open spaces between them. Those nearest to the deer were within gunshot; but the difficulty lay in crossing the open spaces, as they would have to do so in sight of the herd. But Uncle Isaac said if Charlie and John would remain where they were, he and Joe would surprise them.
He then cut a parcel of pine boughs, and tied them all around Joe’s head, Joe in turn doing the same for him; so that when they got down on the snow, which was hard enough to bear them, they, at a distance, resembled a bush. Then they crawled along, watching the deer, remaining motionless when they saw them looking towards them; but when they turned from them to feed, crawled on till they reached a clump of bushes. Charlie and John watched them with breathless attention as they entered the last clump of bushes. It seemed to them an age after they disappeared from sight; still they heard nothing. The deer now began to manifest distrust. The leader raised his head and snuffed the air. The greater part of them began to move their tails violently, and leftoff feeding. At that moment the report of the rifles was heard, the leader fell down in his tracks, and another, after two or three leaps, fell on his knees, when Joe, rushing to his side, drew his knife across his throat.
They were now highly elated, as they had provisions enough for a long time. Hanging the carcasses in trees, to prevent the wolves from getting them, they pressed on, in order to reach a suitable place to camp before night.
Long before dark, they arrived at a place pronounced by Uncle Isaac to be just the thing: it was a great precipice of rock, that rose, for the most part, perpendicular to the height of twelve or fifteen feet, but in one place jutted over very much, forming quite a cave at its base, filled with stones of no great size, that had fallen from the precipice, and lay buried beneath the snow. They cut a lot of dry and green limbs and bushes, and threw into this cavity, and then set them on fire, which melted all the snow, and warmed the whole cliff. Then they rolled out the scattering rocks, and had a floor on one side, and a roof overhead of stone. They now cut some long poles, and leaned them against the precipice, leaving a hole for the smoke, and covered them with brush.There was a crack in the ledge, into which Uncle Isaac drove a stake, and affixed a crotch to it, to hang the kettles on. As the morrow was the Sabbath, an extra quantity of wood was to be prepared; the camp being so high and large, they put a good portion of it inside.
While Uncle Isaac and Joe were doing this, and making all snug, the boys unloaded one of the sledges, and went back after the deer.
It was a glorious camp: the rock retained the heat received from the fire; they had plenty of venison, and now rested, and laid plans for the future. That night, at twelve o’clock, began a most furious snow storm; but little did they heed it in their snug camp, with plenty to eat, and a rousing fire. The snow drifting over the camp made it all the warmer.
The storm continued two days, clearing off with a high wind, and they remained in camp three days.
Just afternoon on the following Saturday, Uncle Isaac informed them that they were in the vicinity of the river, upon a feeder of which they expected to find the beavers. Joe told them there was an old logging camp near by: they found the walls of the old camp (which was built of very largelogs) as good as ever; but the roof had fallen in. The deacon’s seat, as it is called (made of a plank hewed from a stick of timber, and which is always placed beside the fire in logging camps), being well preserved with grease and smoke, still remained. It was but a light labor for so many skilful hands to repair the roof, scrape out part of the snow, and cover the remainder with brush.
After supper, during which Joe had been uncommonly silent, he sat upon the deacon’s seat, his arms folded upon his breast, and looking intently into the fire.
This was so contrary to his usual custom (as he was always the life of the camp-fire, with his merry laugh), that they all gazed upon him with astonishment, and Uncle Isaac was just about to ask if he was sick, when he broke the silence by saying, “This camp seems very natural to me; but it calls up many different feelings: every inch of this ground is familiar to me, though I haven’t been on it, till I came here summer before last with the surveyors, for ten years. I was just turned of seventeen, a great, strapping boy, like John here, when Richard Clay, who was foreman of the scout that was going into the woods, persuaded my father to let me go with them. Father was veryloath to consent; he said I was too young for such work; that I was a great, overgrown boy, and, though large and smart, had not got my strength, and it might strain and hurt me for life; that he had known many such instances. But Richard hung on, saying he would see that I did not overdo. The gang was made up of our neighbors, and young men, with all of whom I was acquainted, and I was crazy to go. Dick offered me high wages; father was poor, and wanted the money; I coaxed mother, and got her on my side; finally we prevailed, and wrung it out of father, and I went. Well, as you may suppose, taking care of me didn’t amount to a great deal. Dick wanted to get all the logs cut he could, and I wanted no favors, and it was just who could do the most; but I was naturally tough, though I had grown fast; for we were very poor when I was a boy, and I had lived hard; my bones were made of Indian corn, which I shall always think is the best stuff to make bones of.”
“That’s so,” said Uncle Isaac, by way of parenthesis.
Without heeding the interruption, Joe went on. “Well, as I was saying, we were poor: father was clearing up his farm; I had a natural turn to anaxe, and had been used to falling and chopping ever since I was fifteen years old, and, boy as I was, could hold play with most men. Uncle Isaac, you knew Sam Apthorp?”
“O, yes, very well; and a fine young man he was.”
“Well,” continued Joe, “the Apthorps were our neighbors. John Apthorp, Sam’s father, began his clearing at the same time with mine; they cut their first tree the same day. Sam was several years older than I, and a powerful, smart fellow. He took a great liking to me, and taught me about hunting, trapping, and many other things, for he was a master hunter; and as for me, I almost worshipped him: it was for the sake of being with him that made me so anxious to go. Sam and I, Dick Clay, and another by the name of Rogers, came up here in August to build a camp, cut hay, and look out the timber. O, what a happy time that was to me, though it was the worst and hardest work I ever did before or since! It was all new to me, and wild. That swale below where we shot the deer hadn’t any bushes on it then, for it was all covered with grass as high as your shoulder; there is a brook runs through it, and the beaver had dammed and flowed it, killing all the trees, Isuppose, a thousand years before; and then the Indians, or somebody else, had broken the dam, killed the beaver, let the water out, and the grass had come in; you can see the old dam there yet. Well, we came up to cut this hay: it was hot—scorching hot—not a breath of wind; for it was all surrounded with woods except a little gap, where the brook ran into the river, and that was filled with alders, and sich like. The black flies and mosquitos were awful: the only way we could live was to grease ourselves; but that only lasted a little while, for the hot sun, and the heat of our bodies sweating, would soon take it off, and then they would come worse than ever. We came up in a bateau, cut the hay, and stacked it up for our oxen the next winter. O, how natural everything here looks! There is not a log I helped cut and roll up but has a memory belonging to it. This seat we are sitting on Sam and I hewed out; we cut the sapling within three feet of the door, and there are our names, which he cut on it one Sabbath morning; right in that corner we slept side by side for two long winters; many a rousing meal we’ve eat, and many a merry evening we’ve spent around the fire; many’s the deer we’ve shot and the beavers we’ve trapped together here. PoorSam! He had found a bear’s den, and we’d made a plan for all hands to leave off work early in the afternoon, and go and take them. All the evening before we were sitting round the fire, I on that seat and Sam in that corner, stretched out on the brush, with his boots off, and his feet to the fire. We were all laughing and talking, telling how we would get them, and what we would do with them; and Sam said he would carry a cub home, learn it to dance, and go to Boston with it, as he had read about their doing in the old country, and make his everlasting fortune out of it. Sam Chesley, our old cook, was rubbing his hands, and telling, in high life, what steaks he’d fry, and how he would cook it; and we agreed to cast lots for the skin, on expectation, before we had got the bears, or even seen them. We little thought, in our happiness, what was in store for us. The next day, about ten o’clock, Sam and I fell a large pine; it had more top than such pines commonly have; it came down between two big hemlocks, breaking their branches, and clearing the way as it went. A large limb, that we didn’t see, lodged in the thick top of the hemlock; and as Sam went under it, to cut off the top log, the second blow he struck, down came the limb, as swift and silent as thelightning, and struck him on the head and shoulders, crushing him dead to the ground! He never spoke or moved; when I got to him he was dead. It was only a week before we were to break camp, and go home. Sam and I had often, during the last month, talked of the good times we would have when we got home,—and then to bury him, without a prayer or sermon, in the wilderness! We had nothing to make a coffin, and so we took two barrels that we had emptied of pork, and put his head and shoulders in one, and the lower part of his body in the other, and then fastened them together, and buried him in his clothes, beneath that great blazed pine that stands on the bank. It was the first real sorrow I ever had. I had never seen or thought anything of death before, and this almost broke me down. I was through here, as I told you, visited the grave, and saw the camp, though I didn’t go into it; but it didn’t make me feel as it does to sit here on this very bench where I have sat with him, and see his name cut on it, and the very place where we used to sleep—” And hiding his face in his hand, he burst into tears. There was not a dry eye in the group.
“We didn’t stay but a week after this,” continuedJoe; “we couldn’t work with any heart, any of us; we never molested the bears, and were glad to get away from the spot; nothing went right; we lamed one of the oxen, one man cut himself real bad, and we had sad news to carry home; for they never heard a word till we came in the spring.”
The next day being Sunday, they remained in camp.
Monday morning it was splendid walking on the crust; they made a long day’s march, travelling till dark. Making a fire at the root of a tree, they flung some brush on the snow, and laid down in their blankets in the open air to sleep. Continuing to follow the bank of the little stream, they started some moose about ten o’clock in the day; the crust would bear them, but not the moose, who broke through at every step, staining the snow with their blood. In those days moose were more abundant in Maine than any other part of New England. Pursuing them till sundown, they succeeded in capturing one, and camped on the trail. In the morning, resuming the pursuit, they soon came in sight of the herd, but such is the power of this animal, that, notwithstanding the advantage which snow-shoes gave the men, it was the middle of the afternoon before they came up with them, and succeeded in killing four more. Relinquishingthe pursuit, which now promised to lead them in a different direction from that in which they wished to go, they dressed the moose, hung him on the trees out of the reach of wolves, and wrapping themselves in the skins, laid down on the snow to sleep.
“Joe,” said Uncle Isaac, “how far do you judge we are from the spot the young man told you of?”
“I reckon about a mile.”
“Well, I hunted over some of this ground twenty years ago, with the Indians, off to the east’rd, and then again to the north’rd of us, where there are many ponds, some of them having outlets one into the other. Suppose, while we are cooking some breakfast, you put on your snow-shoes and take a look, and, if you think best, we’ll make a permanent camp somewhere hereabouts; and as we’ve got to live in it a good while, we’ll make it well.”
In a short time Joe returned, saying, “I found the place, and there are beavers enough.”
They immediately set about building their camp, and determined to make it as home-like and comfortable as possible. It was made of logs, from which all the knots and bunches were trimmed, and the crevices between them stuffed with moss from the trees.
Since they had come on the snow with sledges, they were enabled to bring a great deal more weight than if they had set out before the snow came, as, in addition to the sledges, they also carried light packs, and moreover intended to build canoes, and return in the spring by the river.
Uncle Isaac, thoroughly versed in wood-craft, and always thoughtful, had brought an auger, draw-shave, and a small saw on his sledge.
They split out cedar shingles, with the frow, four feet long, fastening them to the rafters and purlins, with poles held down with wooden pins and withes. Upon these they put brush to break the dash of the rain, and prevent the rain and snow from being driven by force of the wind under the shingles, as they intended it for a permanent camp, in which to leave furs and provisions during their absence on trapping and hunting excursions. They made a solid door of cedar plank, hung on wooden hinges, a deacon’s seat, and a rack around the sides, covered with hemlock and cedar brush, for bedsteads.
“We ought to have a stool or two,” said Uncle Isaac; “we want something we can move round; we can’t move the deacon’s seat, and we can’t move the fire.”
He cut down a spruce that had long straight limbs and cut some chunks from the top three feet long, leaving a sufficient number of limbs on each side for legs; he split the pieces in halves, and smoothed the split side with a draw-shave.
“There,” said he, setting it up before the wondering boys, “there’s a backwoodsman’s stool: them are legs won’t want any gluing, and if anybody wants a cushion, they can put some moss on it.”
While Uncle Isaac was at work on the stools, Charlie, Joe, and John were splitting out boards to make a table.
“The first stormy day that comes,” said Uncle Isaac, “I’ll make some bark dishes, and the rest of you can make some spoons, and we’ll have some shelves; it’s just as well to be comfortable. There’s just one thing we do want desperately; that is, a fireplace, to keep the fire from spreading all over the camp, taking up so much room, and also a chimney, instead of a hole in the roof.”
“We can build a fireplace of green logs,” said Joe.
“Yes, but it will burn out in a short time.”
“I wonder if we couldn’t find some rocks or clay somewhere; or is everything froze fast?”
“I don’t believe but by cutting a little ice, wecould find stones, and clay too, in the river. It don’t freeze hard here in the woods, as it does out in the clear.”
The snow had come that year before the ground froze, and under the bank of the stream they found clay and flat stones, of which they built a fireplace, and the chimney of sticks of wood and clay.
“There’s no end to wants,” said Uncle Isaac; “now I want some birch-bark dishes.”
“You’ll have to give that up,” said John, “for the bark won’t run.”
“Won’t it? I’ll make it run.”
He warmed a birch tree with hot water, and made the bark run as well as in the spring.
“Now get me some spruce roots, Charlie, and in evenings and rainy days we’ll make the dishes.”
As they expected to hunt and trap over a large extent of ground, they travelled about ten miles farther on, and built a rough shanty in among several ponds and small streams, where they expected to find beavers, and placed in it some provisions; then they took the back track, seven or eight miles from the permanent camp, and built another on the bank of the river, where they expected to find otter and mink. They dignified the middle one with the name of the home camp; that among the lakesthey called the shanty, and the other the river camp.
“We ought to have come up and done all this before snow came,” said Uncle Isaac; “but now we must do the best we can; perhaps we shall blunder into good luck; people do sometimes. There would have been a hundred beavers where there is one, if it had not been for the French and English.”
“Why so?” asked Joe.
“Because, when the French held Canada, they put the Indians up to breaking the dams and destroying the beaver, to spite the English; and now the English have got Canada, they do the same, to spite us. An Indian, of his own accord, won’t destroy game, any more than a farmer would destroy his seed-corn: when they break into a beaver house, they always throw back the young ones, and part of the old, to breed; but a white man takes the whole, because he’s afraid, if he don’t, the next white trapper will.”
Beavers are industrious and provident, not, like other animals that live by the chase and the slaughter of other creatures, subject to a lack of food; they are protected in their houses from violence, and are so prolific, that, notwithstanding the mercilesswarfare waged upon them, by which they had been driven from the sea-coasts even at that early day, they were still abundant in those wilds whither our adventurers had followed them. The beaver is about three feet in length, averaging in weight sixty pounds; its tail is a foot in length, flat, and covered with scales; the feet and legs flat and short, with a membrane between the toes; it has very strong and large cutting teeth, the upper ones two and a half inches long, and the lower ones three inches: with these teeth they will cut down a tree eight inches through; and if a tree stands in just the right place, and they want it very much, they won’t hesitate to cut it if it is a foot through. When the beavers are two years old, they build houses, and set up for themselves, as they don’t like to live on their parents. They breathe air, and therefore cannot live a long time under water; neither can they live without having constant access to the water; they are, therefore, compelled to build in water so deep that it will not freeze at the bottom; the entrance is under water: by diving beneath the ice, they can get at the lily-roots on the bottom of the pond, and also obtain access to holes in the bank, which they provide for retreat in the event of being disturbed in their houses.They feed on the wood and bark of trees, which they cut down and sink in front of their houses, in order to obtain it in the winter.
Their houses are built of branches of trees, mud, and stones, from two to six or eight feet in thickness, and, when frozen hard, bid defiance to all attacks, save those of man. They have an elevated platform in them, above the surface of the water, on which they sleep. They break the ice every night, opposite their holes in the bank, for a breathing-hole, thus keeping it open, that in pleasant days they may go into the woods. They often build in a pond, but generally prefer to dam a brook, and make their own pond; then, when they want wood to repair their houses or dams, or for provision in winter, they can make a raft up stream and, getting on to it, float down with the stream, steering with their paws.
After completing their camp, and making all their arrangements, they approached the spot, and perceived that the animals had dammed a large brook. In the midst of the pond thus formed, surrounded by snow and ice, which covered them nearly to their tops, were twelve large beaver houses. All was still as death: the sun shone clear on the snow-covered houses, beneath which,in a half-torpid state, the beavers were reposing, most effectually sheltered from the cold and from beasts of prey. Safe beneath the ice was their winter supply of food: all they had to do when hungry was to go a few feet, and obtain it.
The party walked carefully over the ice, and Uncle Isaac pointed out to the boys the breathing-holes in it.
“Well,” he said, by way of summing up, “I reckon there are not less than a hundred beavers under this snow and ice, and likely to be more than less.”
“A hundred beavers!” cried John, in amazement.
“Yes; there’s ten in a house, old and young, I’ll warrant—not less than ten: I’ve seen twenty-five taken out of one house. They’re not ours yet, my boy!” slapping John on the shoulder.
“Be they good to eat?” asked Charlie.
“Nothing better, especially the tails. I call a singed beaver a dish to set before a king.”
“Why do they singe them?”
“You see, a beaver in the winter is as fat as a hog, and the fat lies on the outside; you want the skin, just as you do the rind of pork; so, if you can afford to singe the fur all off, and lose that, he will be just like a scalded hog. I’m in hopes we shall get enough to be able to singe at least one.”
In the course of the day they discovered three other beaver settlements, two of them in ponds made by damming up a brook, and the other in a large natural pond. They also discovered otter-slides and fishing-holes, where the otters fished a great quantity of muskrat, dens and tracks of minks along the river banks and brooks.
“Now,” said Uncle Isaac, “let us look for bears. I’ve seen signs, more or less, for the last two or three miles.”
“What are the signs, Uncle Isaac?” asked Charlie. “I don’t see any.”
Uncle Isaac smiled, and pointed to a clump of oaks and beeches on the side of the brook, the top limbs of which were all bent in, and many of them broken off.
“What do you suppose bent and broke all these limbs?”
“Why, the wind, or the snow, I suppose.”
“But neither the wind or the snow would bend them in; it would bend them down; but these are turned up, and bent in.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Charlie. “What did?”
“Why, the bears.”
“The bears! What for?”
“Why, the bears live on acorns and beech-nuts; they go a-nutting, as well as boys, climb up into the top of a tree, just like a cat, and, when they’ve got as high as the limbs will bear, they sit down in the crotch of a large limb, reach out their paws, and pull the smaller limbs in, and eat off the beech-nuts and acorns; they will pull in and break off a limb as big as my arm. There have been plenty of bears round here late this fall. There are lots of them asleep under these old windfalls, and in hollow trees, and we must find them, and mark the trees; then we can get them when we like.”
They had not proceeded far in their search when Joe exclaimed, “I’ve found one!”
He was standing at the foot of an enormous elm, which, being hollow, had broken off about twenty feet from the ground.
“How do you know there is a bear there?” asked Charlie. “I don’t see any.”
At this all laughed, when Uncle Isaac pointed out to Charlie a regular line of grooves and scratches, extending from the bottom to the top of the tree, left by the bear’s claws, where it had gone up and down; he also told him that the bear went into his den in November, and remained asleep, without eating or coming out, till spring,and that it was a she bear, because they always lived by themselves, and in trees, if hollow, or windfalls, if they could find them, to keep their young from the wolves and the males; that if there was a bear there, she probably had cubs, perhaps four, but at least two; perhaps eight, for if she had two litters in one year, she would make a den close by for the first cubs; both litters follow her the next summer, and the next winter all live together. They generally weigh from three to four hundred.
They found many more dens under windfalls, and the roots of trees, and sides of rocks, for the bear is so well protected by his thick coat as to be nearly insensible to cold, and will content himself very well, with a little brush for a bed, under the side of a root that has been turned up, or a rock, though the female will seek out a hollow tree. They discovered the dens either by scratches on the stubs, or by noticing where the breath of the bear had stained and melted the snow.
Having marked all the places, in order to find them again, they returned to the home camp.
After supper they sat around the fire consulting as to future movements. Bears were very abundant in those days.
In 1783 no fewer than ten thousand five hundred bear-skins were sent to England from the northern ports of America.
In 1805, eleven years subsequent to the date of our story, the number had reached twenty-five thousand.
“It is going to be a great deal of work,” said Uncle Isaac, “to get these beavers now. The ice is thick in the pond, the houses are seven or eight feet thick, and frozen as hard as a stone. It will be hard work to break them up—a great deal of ice to cut, and frozen dirt. If we dull our tools, we’ve nothing but a file to sharpen them with. I think we’d better make a lot of dead-falls and box-traps, and set them for minks and sables, cut holes in the ice, and set steel-traps for the beaver andotters; and while we are tending them, go into the muskrats, coons, and bears, till the weather begins to get warmer; then the sun will thaw the south side of their houses, and the ice in the ponds, and we can get what beavers are left with half the work. What do you think, Joseph?”
“I think just as you do; but we must have fish to bait the otter traps. I have got hooks and lines in my pack. We can also make nets of willow bark, and set them under the ice.”
“Yes, and we can set for foxes. If we could get a silver-gray, it would be worth a lot of money.”
“I thought of that, and have brought some honey. That will tole them. A fox loves honey as well as a bear; so does a coon, and a coon is out every thawy day. I count heavy on bears. A bear’s pelt is worth forty shillings; and we may find a yard of deer. Just as soon as we begin to have carcasses of beaver and fish round, it will draw the foxes, and we can trap and shoot them on the bait.”
Uncle Isaac now brought out his pack, and began to remove some of the contents, laying them one by one on the table, while the boys looked on with great curiosity. The first thing he took out was a bunch of the largest sized mackerel hooks.
“What in the world did you bring them clear up here for?” asked John. “There are no mackerel here.”
“They are to make a wolf-trap.”
“How do you make it?”
“O, you’ll see.”
He next took two slim, pointed steel rods, nearly three feet long, from the outside of his pack, where they were fastened, as they were too long to go inside.
“What are those?” asked Charlie.
“Muskrat spears,” said Joe. “That will be fun alive for you boys.”
The next articles were three little bottles filled with some liquid.
“What are these?”
“That’s telling,” said Uncle Isaac, laying another vial on the table.
John removed the cork, and smelt of it. “That’s aniseseed. What’s it for?”
“To tole foxes and fishes.”
“What’s this?”—taking up another.
“That’s telling.”
“O, how it smells!—like rotten fish. What is it for?”
“To tole minks.”
“And this?”—taking up another.
“To tole beavers.”
“What is in this little bag?”
“If you must know, Mr. Inquisitive, it is some earth that I got from the place where Joe Bradish kept some foxes, and that they laid on all summer. I’m in hopes to get a silver or cross fox, with it.”
“Uncle Isaac, do give me some of that honey!—just the least little bit of a taste!”
“Well, I’ll give you all just a taste; but I want it to tole foxes and coons.”
He gave them all a little on the point of his knife.
As they were going to devote much of their time to hunting bears, it was a matter of course that the habits and methods of taking that animal should, to a great extent, afford matter for conversation around the camp fire.
“A bear,” said Uncle Isaac, drawing up his knees, clasping his hands over them, and resting his chin upon them, as his habit was when he was about to tell a story, “is a singular critter.”
John threw some fresh fuel on the fire, and squatting down on the ground, with both arms on the deacon’s seat, and his mouth wide open, satwith his eyes riveted on the old hunter’s face, drinking in every word, while Charlie and Joe Griffin disposed themselves in attitudes of attention.
“I don’t,” continued Uncle Isaac, “bear any malice against a bear, as I do against a wolf, though they have done me a deal of mischief in my day, because they are not a bloodthirsty animal. A wolf will bite the throats of a whole flock of sheep, just to suck their blood.”
“Why, Uncle Isaac,” said Joe, “didn’t a bear kill little Sally Richards only last summer? and all they found of her was just her clothes, feet, and shoes? He had eaten all the rest of her up, and was gnawing her skull when they found and shot him; and wasn’t she my own cousin?—pretty little bright creature as ever lived! I’m sure I should think that was being bloodthirsty.”
“That was a she bear, and had cubs following her; andthenthey are savage; but at other times a bear will let you alone if you will let him alone. They will always turn out for a man. A woman might pick blueberries all day in a pasture with a bear, and if she let him alone he would let her alone. But if they have young ones, or are starving, or you pen them up, then look out! I’veheard the Indians say that in the fall, when they are fat and getting sleepy, you may put a stick in their mouths and lead them anywhere; and my mother has picked cranberries in a swamp with six bears, because she wanted the berries before they eat ’em all up, and they never meddled with her. Then they are such comical critters! Why, you can learn a bear anything. When I was a boy, I used to have a cub ’most every winter; and when, by the next fall, they began to be troublesome, and father would shoot them, I cried as if my heart would break.
“There was one,” said he, stirred by the recollections of his youth, unclasping his hands, rising up, turning round, then sitting down again, “that I loved better than all the rest. I used to call him Cæsar, after an old black slave who belonged to one of our neighbors. Father was a great hunter, and so were all the old folks, for they would have starved to death, when they first came, if it had not been for their rifles, and powder was so scarce they could not afford to waste shots. Well, one fall the frost cut off all the acorns, berries, and cranberries, so there was not a berry to be found. The bears were starving. They came down clear from Canada, and swarmed all along the salt waterafter clams, lobster, flounders, and raccoons. O, I never knew the strength of a bear till then! Captain Rhines was a young man, and mate of a vessel then. My father, and a good many of the neighbors, had sent out fowls, and butter, and cheese, as a venture by him, and got molasses for it. Mr. Rhines, as he was then, had brought it down from Salem with his things, landed it at our point, rolled it up on the beach out of the tide’s way, and left it till the owners could haul it off. It staid there a day or two. One morning father and Uncle Sam Edwards went to haul it up, when they found the head of every barrel smashed in, just as if it had been done with an axe. The bears, which, as I told you, were as thick as hops, had done it with their paws, and upset, eat, and wasted the whole of it. As they were going home, lamenting their hard luck, they met a bear—drunk! John Carver had put up a story-and-a-half log house the day before, and they had left a pailful of new rum, sweetened with molasses, sitting on some boards in the garret. This bear had smelt it, climbed up, and drank it all up. How he got down I don’t know; but it operated so quick he couldn’t get off, and there he was, all stuck over with molasses, where he had been with the rest ofthem down to the shore. He had got it all over his ears and breast, and the chips, where they had hewed the frame, all stuck to him, and he was the queerest sight you ever saw! He couldn’t walk, but would sit up and look at us, and then roll over on one side, then get back again, and looked so comical, that notwithstanding their sorrow for their loss, they all burst out laughing; and Uncle Sam Edwards, who was a jolly, funny creetur himself, carried on so with him, and made such queer observations, that father laughed till he had to lie down on the ground. None of them had a gun, but they took the stakes out of the sleds, which they had brought to haul the molasses on, and pounded him on the head till they killed him. Uncle Sam, who himself drank a good deal more than was good for him, said, when he gave him the last blow, ‘You see now what stealing and hard drinking will bring a bear to.’ After skinning him, they had a long consultation as to whether he was fit to eat. Father said he didn’t want to eat anything that died drunk; but Uncle Sam said he didn’t die of liquor, for they had killed and bled him, and as for himself, he would eat him; so said John Carver; but father said he wouldn’t; so they gave father the skin, and they took the meat.Father carried the skin home, and mother washed and combed out the fur, and in the cold nights that winter she used to put it on my bed, and it is in our house yet.
Uncle Isaac’s Bear Story.—Page 253.
Uncle Isaac’s Bear Story.—Page 253.
“A bear is a master strong creature. To see what a rock they would turn over that fall to get a lobster! It was great fun to see the bears catch coons; they would go round till they saw two or three coons in a tree; one bear would climb the tree, and the coons, seeing him, would run clear up to the top, where the limbs were small, and wouldn’t bear the weight of the bear; but the bear would follow as far as he could go, then shake off the coons, and the ones below would catch them; they would dig them out of holes, or crush up a log if it was rotten. They are bewitched after anything sweet, especially honey, and if they find a hive they will surely rob it.
“Old Mr. John Elwell, Sam’s father, had a hive of bees: they swarmed, and took for the woods, and got on a tree; he followed them and hived them. There were two maple trees, that grew within three feet of each other; so he put a plank between them, and set a hive on it, meaning to carry them home in the fall, when it was cold and the bees got stiff.
“One night he was going after his cows, and thought he would take a look at the bees. He found the hive on the ground all stove to pieces; every drop of honey licked clean out of it. The bears had got well stung, for the bark was torn off the trees all around where they had bitten them in their rage and anger. But a bear is so covered with fur, that only a small part of him is exposed to the sting of the bees; and no matter how much anguish it causes them, they will have the honey.
“They plagued us terribly that fall; you couldn’t get a wild grape, nor a choke-cherry, for them, and it kept us at work all the fall watching the cattle and corn, and setting spring-guns and dead-falls. There was one old she bear that father swore vengeance against. We had the sheep for safety in a log sheep-house in the yard, but she climbed over the fence, tore off the roof, and carried away the old ram. She had two white stripes on each side of her nose, and was well known; she had been hunted again and again, and once had been wounded by a spring-gun and tracked by the blood; but she could not be overtaken, nor could her den be found. We had six hogs that year, that lived in the pasture, and every day at lowwater went a clamming. We had put them up for fear of the bears. One old sow was in a pen by herself, fatting. We were going to kill her in a week. We had just fed the cattle, and set down to supper, when we heard a terrible squealing, all the hogs squealing as if to see which could squeal the loudest, and the rooster crowing. We ran out. There was that old white-nosed bear, with the sow hugged up in her fore paws, walking off on her hind legs, just as easy as a man would walk with a baby. Father ran back, caught the gun out of the bracket, but before he could load, the bear was in the woods. It had got to be dark, and the old sow’s cries could no more be heard. He raised the neighbors. They took firebrands and searched the woods; but the ground was froze too hard to find the trail, and so the bear got off with her booty. You may well think father was greatly enraged, not only at the loss of his property, but he was greatly vexed that so distinguished a hunter as he was should be thus insulted by a bear. He did nothing else but scour the woods for that bear, and as nearly all the neighbors had some cause of complaint against her, he had assistance enough, but all in vain. He had set a steel bear-trap, dead-falls, and spring-guns for her, but shewas too knowing to be caught. She sprung the steel-trap, which he had baited and covered up in chaff, by going all round the bait and trap in a circle, and thumping on the ground with her fore feet, coming nearer and nearer till she jarred it off.
“On the last of that winter there came a great thaw, and took off all the snow on the open ground. It was so warm the old bear came out, and begun her depredations. Father went and borrowed three steel bear-traps, set one in the middle, and baited it, and the others round it, and put no bait on them, covered them up in dirt, and put a long chain to them, with a grapple to it.
“The second night one of the outside traps was gone—chain, grappling, and all. The bear, too cunning to go into the trap where the bait was, had stepped into one of those that was covered up, while trying to jar the other off. Father sent me right off for John Elwell, while he loaded his gun and got ready. Uncle John came, and with him Black Cæsar. Cæsar was a master powerful man, and as spry as a cat. I cried and roared to go, but father refused, saying I might get hurt, and there was no knowing how far they might have to go, nor when they should get back; butCæsar, with whom I was a great favorite, said he would take care of me, and that he didn’t believe the bear could carry that chain and grappling a great way. Finally father yielded. There was no trouble in tracking the bear, for the grappling had torn up the ground where it had hitched into the cradle-knolls and bushes. Sometimes they lost the trail for a good while, when it was evident that the bear had taken up the grappling, when it got fast, and carried it; and father said she must be caught by her fore paws, as he knew by her track that she walked on her hind legs, sometimes half a mile—trap, grappling, and all. They followed her into the woods nearly two miles, Cæsar helping me over the windfalls, and sometimes taking me on his shoulder, till finally, at Millbrook, we lost her track altogether. In vain they searched the woods. There was no sign of bear or trap. Discouraged, they gave it up, and sat down on the bank of the brook.
“Uncle John said she had got the grappling caught trying to swim the river, and was drowned, and he hoped she was. They had all about come to that conclusion, when I, who was playing on the bank, was attracted by some beautiful white and yellow moss growing at the roots of a blackash, and going to get some, saw the grappling hooked over the main root of the ash. I instantly ran back, crying with fright, and feeling in fancy the bear’s claws on my throat. It was the most singular place for a den you ever saw. You might have gone within three feet of it, and never suspected its existence.
“The stream, which had formerly flowed under a high bank, had shifted its channel in some freshet, and the frost, working on the bank after the water was gone, had thrown down a great rock, which, catching one corner on the butt and the other on the roots of the big ash, was thus held up, while the earth beneath crumbled away. Under this shelf, with a very little work, the bear had made her den; and there she was, with her right fore leg in the trap, on a bed of pine boughs, with the grappling,—which she had not had time to bring in, we had followed her so closely,—caught in the roots at the mouth, which, had it not happened, we should never have found her. Father, with the greatest satisfaction, put two balls through her head, and then, taking hold of the chain, they dragged her out. When they found three cubs, you may well think I was delighted. I hugged, kissed, and patted them, and thought they werethe prettiest things I ever saw in my life. They were less than a foot long, had no teeth, and had not got their eyes open. O, how I begged to carry them all home! Father wouldn’t hear to it, but allowed me to have one, and take my choice. I took the one that had a white face, like the old one, and cried well when they knocked the others on the head. Cæsar carried the cub home for me, and in gratitude I called him after him. How I loved that cub! I got some cow’s milk, put it in a pan, and then put my finger in his mouth, and he would suck it, and thus suck up the milk. We carried him out to the barn, and tried to have him suck like a calf; but as soon as the cow smelt him, she was half crazy with fear, kicked, roared, broke her bow, and ran out of the barn. We never tried it again.
“He soon began to have teeth, and then would eat bread and potatoes, and most anything, but sugar and molasses was his great delight. He soon made friends with the dog and cat, and would play with them by the hour together.
“In the summer he would catch mice, frogs, and crickets, and get into mud-holes in the woods, and roll over till he was covered with mud; and when the wild berries, acorns, and hazel-nuts came, helived first rate. In the first part of the spring he would eat the young sprouts and tender leaves of the trees,—anything that was juicy,—and would rob birds’ nests. As mother used to make me churn, I learned him to stand on his hind legs and help me, which he would sometimes do for half an hour, at other times but a few minutes. He would haul me on the sled as long as he liked, but when he thought he’d done it enough, there was no such thing as making him do any more. If I tried to force him, he would take me up in his paws and set me on a log, or leave me and run up a tree. He was very quick to imitate, and seeing me one night carrying in the night’s wood, he took up a log in his paws, and, standing on his hind legs, walked in with it, and laid it by the fireplace. Ever after that he brought in all the night’s wood,—that is, all the logs,—but he wouldn’t touch the small wood, seeming to think that beneath him. He would take a log that three men couldn’t move, and walk off with it. Indeed, I believe a bear is stronger on his hind legs than in any other way, for they always stand up for a fight.
“It was no small help to have him carry in the great logs, three feet through, that I used to have to haul on a sled, and the backsticks and foresticks;but I hated to do chores as bad as any boy ever did, and used to try to coax him with bread and molasses, and even honey, to carry in the small wood, but it was no use. He would eat the bread and honey, but wouldn’t touch the wood.
“I believe, if we’d only thought of it, we might have taught that bear to chop wood; for a bear will handle his paws as well as a man his hands. You throw anything to a bear, and he’ll catch it; and there’s not one man to a hundred can strike a bear with an axe. He will knock it out of his hand with a force that will make his fingers tingle.
“But the greatest amusement was in the summer nights. In the daytime he would lay round and sleep; but as night came on, he grew playful and wide awake. He would chase the dog, and then the cats till they would run up into the red oak at the door, then follow them as far as the limbs would bear him, pull them in, and catch them or shake them off.
“We kept him three years, and then had to kill him. It was a sad day to me. It was the first real trouble I ever had, and I don’t know as I could have felt any worse if it had been a human being. When I found it was determined on, Iwent over to Uncle Reuben’s, and staid a week. I think all our folks felt almost as bad as I did.”
“But what on earth did you kill him for, Uncle Isaac?”
“Why, we had to. He was always mischievous; but as he grew older, he grew worse. He would dig up potatoes after they were planted in the spring, and also in the fall; and he would break down and waste three or four bushels of corn to get a few ears to eat, when it was in the milk. Did you ever see how a bear works in a cornfield?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, he gets in between the rows, spreads his fore paws, smashes down three or four hills, and then lies down on the heap and eats.
“He wouldn’t kill the hogs, but would chase them all over the pasture, and into the water, and two or three were drowned. You couldn’t put anything out of his reach, for there was no place he couldn’t climb to, a door in the house he couldn’t open, nor scarcely anything he couldn’t break. Though spry as a cat, he wouldn’t climb over a pair of bars, but would take them down, and leave them, go ranging round nights, and let the cattle into the fields. He would steal yarn,that was put out to whiten, to make a bed of. He was the means of our keeping bees. He came home one day in April with his nose all swelled up, and half blind. He had found a swarm of bees in a hollow tree, and tried to get at them; but the hole in the tree was so small that he couldn’t get his paw in, and the bees stung him till he was glad to retreat, finding he could get nothing. We tracked him in the snow that was still in the woods, cut the tree down, and brought it home. He used to plague us to death in sap time, drinking the sap and upsetting the trough, and we had to chain him up. But the crowning mischief, and that which cost him his life, was stealing butter.”
“Stealing butter!” said Charlie.
“Yes: father had long been sick of him, and threatened to kill him; but mother and I begged him off. My sister Mary was going to be married; mother was making and selling all the butter she could, to get her a little outfit: it was hot weather, and she put some butter she was going to send to market in a box, tied it up in a cloth, and lowered it down the well, to keep cool. In the morning I saddled the horse to go to market; mother went to the well to get the butter, but there was no butter there. As soon as she couldspeak, for grief and anger, she exclaimed, ‘That awful bear!’
”We went to his nest under the barn, and there was the box, licked as clean as a woman could wash it. The wicked brute hauled it up, bit the rope in two, and carried off the butter. That sealed his fate: mother said she wouldn’t intercede for him any more, and I couldn’t say a word, though I wanted to; and so ‘he died of butter.’
“I felt so bad that I never cared to have any pets after that.”
They now occupied every moment, from daylight and before, till in the evening, in hunting bears, digging out coons, stretching and scraping the skins, and trapping beaver and foxes.
The camp inside was hung around with skins, and outside the snow was covered with the bodies of the different animals, which attracted the wolves in troops, and the woods resounded with their howlings.
Uncle Isaac set a steel trap in a spring of water, and caught two silver-gray foxes. He now took four of the large mackerel-hooks, fastened them together, and wound them with twine, so as to form a grappling, fastened a strong cord, made of twisted deer sinews, to them, dipped them in grease, permitting it to cool after every dip, till the hooks were all covered in the great bunch of grease, fastened the rope to a tree, and kept watch. It was not long before a hungry wolf swallowed the ball of grease,and, the hooks sticking in his throat, he was caught. The steel traps, which were very scarce in that day, and were all imported, were used for beaver, otter, and two of them for foxes; the other animals were taken in dead-falls and box-traps.
As they had a frow, to split out boards, and a saw, they made many box-traps, putting them together with wooden pins, and in them caught great numbers of minks and muskrats; they also killed many deer and moose.
The traps for beaver were set in holes cut in the ice, and the bait was scented, and made attractive with the composition in Uncle Isaac’s vials. Another method was to dig a pit in the ground, make a road to it with stakes, then hang a board between the stakes, so nicely balanced, that, when the animal stepped upon it, it would turn, and let him into the pit. In order to attract the game, the bait was dragged along the ground, that it might leave its scent between the line of stakes, then placed beyond the pit, that the animal, in following up the scent, might step on the trap. The dead-falls were constructed by making an enclosure of stakes, open at one end, inside of which a piece of wood was laid on the ground crosswise, and fastened. They then fastened a heavy piece of hardwood to a stake with a peg, so that it would play up and down easily: this was called the killer, the end of which was held up by a thong of deer sinew, which went over another crotchet stake driven into the ground. Through this stake a hole was bored, to admit a spindle; the string which held up the killer was fastened by a flat piece of wood, one end of which went into a notch in the stake, the other into a notch in the end of the spindle, like the spindle of a common box-trap; another heavy piece of wood was then placed one end on the ground, between two stakes, to keep it from rolling, the other on the top of the killer, to give force to the fall. When the animal touched the spindle to which the bait was fastened, both the killer and the stick placed on to reënforce it came down, and caught him between the killer and the piece on the ground.
In default of an auger, it could all be made with an axe, by using double stakes and strings, or withes. These were made larger or smaller, according to the size of the animal to be caught; they were surrounded with stakes, and covered on top with brush, to keep the animal from robbing them behind, or on top. For beaver, they set them in the paths where they went to the woods,cut a piece of wood, flat on the upper side, four inches wide, and bevelling on the under side, so that it would rotate, canting it down on one edge, put that edge under the end of the spindle, and strewed over it twigs and chips of red willow and beaver root, rubbed with medicine, and when the beaver put his mouth or paw on the board it canted, and, lifting the end of the spindle, sprung the trap.
For raccoons, they set them at the ends of hollow logs, and in the little runs that led down to the ponds and brooks; and for the otter, at the places where they rubbed when they came out of the water, and near their sliding places. For raccoons, they baited with frogs, and chips of bears’ and beavers’ meat, with honey dropped on it; and for otters, with fish which they caught through holes in the ice.
As the winter wore away, thaws became more frequent, and the coons and beaver began to awake from their half-torpid state, they caught more and more, getting ten or twelve beavers a night.
They now separated, part of them living in the house camp, and part at the river camp and shanty, for the greater convenience of tending the traps, which were scattered along a range of many miles,all assembling at the home camp on the Lord’s day, when they had a meeting. As the season was now approaching when the ice would begin to break up, and the frequent rains had rendered the ice transparent, so they could see the beavers and muskrats under it, they determined to attack them in their houses. In the first place, they prepared and sharpened a great number of stakes, and, cutting through the ice, drove them into the bottom of the pond, around the houses, and around the holes in the bank, thus fastening the beavers in; then tearing down the houses with tools they had brought with them, they knocked the beavers on the head, and flung them out on the ice.
Beavers and muskrats will swim under the ice as long as they can hold their breath, then breathe it out against the ice: when it has absorbed oxygen from the water, they will take the bubble in again, and go on; the boys would follow them up, and, before they had time to take in the bubble, strike with their hatchets over them, and drive them away from their breath, when they would soon drown, and could be cut out.
They labored unremittingly, under the wildest excitement, stopping neither to eat nor drink till nearly sundown, when, bathed in perspiration,every house was in ruins, and the ice thickly strewn with dead beavers: they then desisted.
“We are all as hot as we can be,” said Uncle Isaac. “The first thing to be done is to put on our clothes, and make a fire to cool off by. We’ve got about four tons of beaver carcasses here: it would take all night to haul them to the camp; and if we leave them here, all the wolves in the woods will be on hand, and not a hide of them be left by morning. So I don’t see any other way than to build a camp, and stay here; and we can have our choice, either to take them into the camp, or sit up by turns, and watch them.”
“I say take them into the camp,” said Joe Griffin. “And here’s just the place to build it, on this old windfall.”
“Now, Charlie,” said Uncle Isaac, “while we are building a camp, you and John run to the home camp, and get the kettle, a birch dish, and some tea.”
The rude shelter, sufficient for these hardy men, was soon completed, the beaver brought inside, and a fire built. Uncle Isaac proposed, as they had met with such luck, that they should have a beaver singed for supper. “They could afford it,” he said, “though, of course, it spoilt the skin.”
This was unanimously agreed to, when, picking out one of the youngest and fattest, they cut off his tail, scalded and scraped off the scales, then, holding the rest over the fire, singed off all the hair, and scraped it clean with their knives. While Joe was turning the spit, and John making tea, Charlie noticed Uncle Isaac picking out some of the dryest of the wood, and piling it up a little distance from the camp, and putting beneath it a parcel of birch bark, as if he was going to light a fire.
“What are you going to do?” asked Charlie.
The old gentleman would give him no answer, only saying, with a knowing look, that he would see before morning.
The beaver, being roasted, was placed in the birch dish. Sitting round it, these hungry men, who had eaten nothing since long before the break of day, made fierce onslaught with their hunting-knives. For nearly half an hour no sound was heard but that of vigorous mastication, and the crackling of the fire. At length Joe, after looking round upon his companions and the great pile of game with a look of the most intense satisfaction, and speaking thick, with a rib of beaver between his teeth, broke the silence by saying “Haven’t we done it this time, Uncle Isaac?”
“Yes, Joseph,” replied the old hunter, speaking with great deliberation, and giving the name in full, a habit he had when much pleased, “we certainly have. I’ve been trapping in the woods winters, more or less, ever since I was a boy, with the Indians, and when the beavers were a great deal more plenty than they are now; but I never saw near so many taken at one time before.”
Some time during the night, John, who slept nearest to the door, was awakened by a concert of sounds so horrible that it caused him to jump right up on his feet, with a cry that awoke the rest, and, grasping Joe by the shoulder, exclaimed, “For Heaven’s sake, what is it?”
“It’s wolves,” said Uncle Isaac. “I was calculating on them: they scent the roast meat; the fire has burnt low, and that emboldens them. Throw on some wood, Joe; they must be taught to keep their distance, or there’ll be no sleep,” said he; and taking up a brand, he set fire to the pile outside, which lighting up the forest, the wolves withdrew, but still kept up their howling at a distance. It was now evident why Uncle Isaac had prepared the pile of wood out doors.
“We were careless,” said he, “to let the fire get so low, and might have paid dearly for it.”
“Why,” said John, “will they tackle men?”
“Yes, when there is a drove of them, and they are hungry: they are cowardly, cruel creeturs; I hate ’em,” said he, as they stood gazing on the gaunt forms flitting among the trees just beyond the line of fire-light, licking their dry jaws, and snapping their tusks. One old gray wolf, who seemed to be a leader, followed the track made by dragging the bodies of the beavers to the very edge of the shadow cast by the woods, so that his head and shoulders were distinctly visible.
“Only see the cruel varmint!” said Uncle Isaac; “see those jaws and tusks, and that great red tongue. We ought not to waste powder, but that fellow tempts a man too much: fire at him, John; aim for his eyes, and I’ll finish him if you don’t.”
John, needing no second admonition, fired on the instant, when the wolf, leaping forward, fell his whole length in the snow, and, rolling over a few times, stretched out, quivered, and became motionless.
“I mean to skin him in the morning,” said John.
“Then you must put him in the camp; for if he lies there, nothing will be left of him in the morning but bones.”
“Why, will the wolves eat each other?”
“Eat each other? Yes, just as quick as they’ll eat anything else. There’s no Christianity in ’em. They will dig up a dead body in a graveyard.”
“But how shall I get him?” said John, who, after this revelation, did not feel much like trusting himself far from the fire.
Uncle Isaac seized a brand, and, waving it in the air, the wolves retreated, and John took the dead wolf by the hind legs, and drew him to the fire.
After replenishing both fires with fuel, they lay down again, and were soon fast asleep, except John and Charlie, from whose eyes the events of the evening and the howling of the wolves had effectually banished sleep until near daybreak, when they too sank into a sound slumber.
They now broke into the other beaver houses, and, as the weather grew warmer, tapped the maples, procured sap to drink, and made sugar; and, as they could boil but little in their camp-kettle, they froze the sap. This took the water out, and reduced the quantity, leaving that which remained very sweet, and so much less in quantity to boil down.