"What"s the storehouse? There wasn"t anything of that kind last fall."
Hal was all eagerness.
"Just a bit of a log shack we put up to keep the meat and supplies in.
You"ll see it when you get outside. Now, everybody to wor-r-rk!" Pat flung the door open. A wall of snow faced them.
Alec produced a home-made wooden shovel and an old iron one. With these he and Pat soon cleared a s.p.a.ce in front of the cabin. Then the others, armed with snow-shoes and an old slab, went to work with a will and soon Smugglers" Hollow rang with the laughter and shouts of the merry crew.
It was not far to the spring, and the task of digging out and trampling down a path was not difficult. When they finished Walter and Hal turned for their first good look at the surroundings. It was a wilderness of white broken only by the thin column of smoke from the cabin chimney, and the figures of their comrades busy at the wood-pile and storehouse.
The cabin itself was nearly buried in snow, which was more than half-way to the low eaves. It had drifted quite over the little shack where Pat and Alec were at work. All tracks had been obliterated and for a few minutes it was difficult for them to get their bearings, so changed was the landscape. Then one by one they picked out the landmarks they had learned to know so well in the fall, but which now were so changed as to be hardly recognized.
They stood in silence, something very like awe stealing over them as the grim beauty, combined with pitiless strength, of the majestic scene impressed itself upon them.
"Just think of a man living here all alone for weeks at a time. That"s what I call nerve. I believe I"d go dippy in a week," murmured Hal hardly above a whisper as if he were afraid to trust his voice in the great solitude.
"And yet there is something fascinating about it. I can feel the call of it myself," replied Upton. "I suppose when one gets used to it it isn"t so bad. It"s--it"s--well, I suppose it"s what you would call elemental, and there is something heroic about this battling with the very hills and elements to wrest a living from them. h.e.l.lo! Pat"s calling us."
They hurried back to the cabin, where Pat promptly shoved a pail into the hands of each and ordered them back to the spring for water. When they returned Alec had begun preparations for supper.
"This evening," announced Pat, "Alec will finish his yarn about trapping and then we"ll plan for to-morrow. Will you fellows have baking-powder biscuit or corn bread for supper?"
"Corn bread!" was the unanimous shout.
"Corn bread it is then," declared Pat. "And how will yez have the murphies?"
"French fried!" cried Hal.
"Yez be hearing the orders av the gintle-min--corn bread and French fried praties, Misther Cook," said Pat, turning to Alec. "I"ll be mixing the corn bread whoile ye cut the spuds. The rest av yez can bring in wood and set the table, an" the wan who loafs most gets the least to eat."
At once there was a grand scramble to see who could do the most, in view of such a dire threat.
CHAPTER X
LIFE ON THE FUR TRAILS
Supper out of the way the boys made themselves comfortable and gave Alec the word to take up his yarn.
"To begin with," said Alec, throwing a log on the fire, "when a trapper is thinking of going into new country he generally prospects it first, same as a prospector for gold, only he looks it over for signs of fur instead of for minerals. Sometimes he does this in summer or early fall, and sometimes he does it in winter, planning for the next winter. Friend o" mine went up into Brunswick last winter, and looked over some country which never has been trapped to amount to anything and this year he"s up there with a line over one hundred miles long."
"Jerusalem! where did he stay nights when he was looking it over?" asked Hal.
"Wherever he happened to be," replied Alec.
"Didn"t he have no tent nor nothin"?" Sparrer was round eyed with wonder.
Alec shook his head. "Nothin" but a week"s supply of grub, his axe, rifle and blanket. That"s all any good woodsman needs."
"But was it as cold as it is now?" asked Hal.
"Colder, because that part of Brunswick is consid"rable farther north.
When night came he would just dig away the snow, build a fire and when the ground was het up move his fire back, lay some boughs down where the fire had been, make a little bough shelter over it, build a good big fire to reflect the heat, and turn in. Sometimes when there"s a big rock handy or an upturned tree we warm up a place a little way in front of that and then move the fire over against it and turn in without any shelter at all. More"n once I"ve slept in just a hole in the snow.
Tisn"t so bad when you"re used to it. Have to get up a few times in the night to put wood on the fire, but that ain"t nothin", is it, Pat?"
"Tis no more than a reminder av how good it is to shlape," returned Pat.
"When a man"s prospectin" for fur he not only looks for signs of the beasties but he looks the lay of the land over and gets the landmarks fixed in his mind," continued Alec. "He picks out a place for his main camp, locating it where he can get his supplies and stuff in and his furs out at the end o" the season without too much difficulty. If it is in lumbered country he picks out a place that can be reached by some old trail with a little clearing out so that a team can get in. More often, though, he locates on a river where he can get his stuff in by canoe, and can get out again the same way in the spring.
"At the same time he tries to choose a location that will be to his best advantage in working his trap lines. If he"s got a long line laid out he also picks out likely places for temporary camps, places handy to springs and fire-wood. Early in the fall he gets his stuff together and goes in to build his camps. Trappers mostly work in pairs, but sometimes one goes it alone like my friend up in Brunswick. He took his traps an"
stuff in in September, so"s to get his camps built and be ready for bus"ness as soon as fur got prime."
"Can one man build a log cabin without any help?" asked Walter.
"Sure," replied Pat, "if he"s reasonably husky, and most woodsmen are. A smart axeman can roll one up in four days, but of course it"s easier and quicker if there are two."
"The main camp is made stout and comfortable as possible, same as "tis here, only usually "tis no so big." Alec resumed the thread of his story. "The other camps are just big enough for a bunk an" to cache some supplies, and are one to two days" journey apart, accordin" to the country. In good weather a feller disna mind sleeping oot one night between camps if he must, though he disna aim to if he can help it. A few supplies are left in each camp, and fire-wood cut and left handy.
When this work is done it"s usually "bout time to be gettin" after the critters.
"A long line is usually planned on a sort of loop when the country will permit, so that the trapper may go out one way and return another. When two are trapping together, pardners like Pat and me, one works the line one way and one the other. Of course two can work a longer line than one can, and cover it the way it ought to be covered. I"ve put in more"n one winter alone, but ye ken it"s michty satisfying to hae speech wi" some one once in a while. When I"m alone it gets so that I talk to the varmints just to hear a human voice, even though it be my own."
"I shouldn"t think it would be safe for a man to be all alone for so long," Upton interrupted.
"Tisn"t altogether safe," replied Alec. "There was old Bill Bently.
Never was a better woodsman than old Bill. He used to trap way up north of here. Used to go it alone mostly, but one winter he took a pardner.
Lucky thing for Bill he did. They had a long line that year and Bill covered it one way and his pardner, Big Frank, covered it the other.
They would meet at the upper end and then again at the main camp. Well, one time Big Frank was a day late getting to the upper camp. A big bar had busted a swivel on a trap and gone off with the trap. Took Frank a whole day to catch up with him. When he got to the camp he expected to find Bill waiting for him, but nary a sign of Bill could he find.
"This wasn"t su"prisin" considerin" his own luck, but somehow it made Big Frank uneasy. He hit the trail "fore daylight the next morning and didna stop to look at traps, but just made tracks watching out for some sign of Bill. Long about noon he found him by a deadfall alongside of a bar. Of course the critter was dead, and Bill would have been if he had to lay there much longer. Seems in resetting the deadfall the lever with which he was raising the "fall" log broke, and somehow Bill got one leg under it and there he was caught in his own trap and with a broken leg to boot. Lucky for Bill it was early in the season, or he would have frozen to death long "fore Frank got there. As it was he was in pretty bad shape. If he"d been trapping alone it would have been the end of him.
"But I"m getting off my story of how we catch fur. Of course we have to have a number of sizes of traps. For muskrats we use No. 1; for mink No.
1 or No. 1-1/2. This is also big enough to hold fox, c.o.o.n and fisher, but No. 2 is better. For marten we use mostly No. 1, but if there are signs of fisher or lynx we use No. 1-1/2 so if one happens to get into a trap it will hold him. These critters are so strong that they would pull out of the smaller trap."
"It"s marten that you are after mostly, isn"t it? I understood you to say that," Upton interposed.
"We"re after anything we can get, but most of our sets are for marten,"
returned Alec. "In the fall we took a good many rats and will again in the spring, but at this time o" the year when everything is frozen "tis only around spring holes that we can get a rat now and then since the law will no let us trap them at their houses. I dinna ken what these lawmakers want to meddle with a poor man"s business for. So long as the rat is killed I dinna see what difference it makes where he"s killed or how. We used to get good fur when it was no against the law to trap at the houses."
"Walt, here"s a subject for a little missionary work. Alec is still an uncivilized savage in some things, especially when what he calls his rights to hunt and trap are concerned," Pat broke in.
Upton looked a bit puzzled. "I don"t quite get the point about the house trapping," said he.
"You"ve seen muskrat houses a-plenty, haven"t you?" asked Pat.
Walter nodded. "Well," continued Pat, "before this law was made trappers used to chop a hole in the side of a house and set a trap on the bed inside. Of course this drove the rats out, but they would soon be back, because there was nowhere else to go. By visiting the traps night and morning it was no trick at all to get all the rats. Now the law forbids this kind of trapping. Alec here doesn"t approve of the law. He thinks that there are rats enough and to spare and he can"t see that that kind of work is cutting his own nose off and killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Says you can clean all the rats out of a place and in time more will come to take their places, and I can"t make him see it any different."
"How about beaver?" asked Walter, turning to the Scotchman. "Nowhere near as plentiful as they used to be, are they?"
The trapper shook his head. "Been trapped pretty near out of this country. I"m for protecting the beaver, all right, but rats is different. Ye couldn"t trap out all the rats in a million years. There"s rats enough and there always will be."