Fur sign

Front matter

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II

/^LD Jack Kennedy rode through the north pasture and leaned from his saddle to inspect some strange marks. His mind flashed back nearly a half century into the past to a time when similar marks would have given rise to serious reflections.

“ Looks for all the world like the drag of an Indian litter,” he told the horse. “ But I reckon not.”

He followed the trail to a bare spot and dismounted to study the sign. The hoofprints of a horse showed between the marks of dragging poles.

“ Now there’s been some sort of a gypsy outfit trailing through here for a fact,” he said. “ That’s the first time I’ve seen the marks of a litter drag in many a moon — close onto forty years.”

He swimg to the saddle and followed the 22 trail out of sheer curiosity. It led to the little tent pitched at the forks of the Clearwater. The Airedale was off on a hunt and the two boys had no warning of his approach till a voice hailed them from outside.

They emerged from the tent to find a stranger sitting his horse in their dooryard. He seemed the incarnation of the great outdoars as Rawhide had pictured it. He wore a battered slouch hat, a leather vest, and overalls with the legs tucked into high-heeled riding boots. The drooping white mustache showed in marked relief against the weathered mahogany background of his face.

Rawhide had read that distances were far in the wilderness, that the traveler was ever hungry. Custom demanded that the wayfaring stranger should be fed. That was the courtesy of the open as Rawhide understood it.

“ Get down, stranger,” he said. “ Get down and eat. I’ll start cooking up a bite.”

The maze of sun wrinkles deepened round Kennedy’s keen old blue eyes but he repressed

the smile that struggled to break through.

“ Don’t bother, boys,” he said. “ I’ve fed. But I’ll step off and visit round for a spell. It appears likely we’re going to be neighbors for the winter. I’m feeding stock and ridin’ fence for Snyder and Brown. They was telling me a pair of trappers was going to work the Forks. My shack is up the North Fork about four mile.”

Rawhide essayed introductions.

“ My name is Rawhide,” he volunteered. “And my friend here goes by the name of Buckskin. We’re sure glad to have you drop in.”

The sun wrinkles deepened again at these fanciful titles but the old man answered gravely enough.

“And mine is Kennedy,” he informed. “ I’m right glad to have you folks for neighbors. We’ll have to visit back and forth.”

He sat on a down-log near the tent and fired up his pipe. Battler came into camp and sniffed the newcomer critically, then rested his jaws on the stranger’s knee and looked up into

his face as Kennedy scratched his head.

24:

“ How’s the luck ? ” Kennedy queried. “ I expect you’re catching fur a-plenty.”

“ Not any great quantity,” Rawhide confessed. “ Fur seems rather scarce.”

“ Why, man, this country is just all littered up with fur sign,” Kennedy objected. “ I’ve been noticing. Fur has been way down for the last few seasons and the Forks haven’t been trapped in two years. You ought to clean up a nice little stake this winter.”

“ Then why haven’t we made a catch in three rounds of the traj) line? ” Buckskin asked. “ Not one single pelt.”

Kennedy failed to answer this question direct. During his ride through the timbered flat he had discovered two traps set in hollow trees, another on the bare earth of the creek bank. He rambled on about a variety of subjects and drew the partners out to talk about themselves. Kennedy sensed what this venture meant to these two waifs without home or parents. He knew, too, that if left to their own devices they could not make enough to

keep grub in camp even in a land where fur 25 was plentiful. Those trap sets had branded them as raw novices. He could start them right if they would heed his suggestions. Kennedy rose and knocked the ashes from his pipe.

“ I’ll be sauntering on back,” he said. “ I’ve been pinching toes and stretching pelts for the best part of fifty years. If there’s anything I can tell you don’t hesitate to ask. Now if you find a few spare hours you might drop round and look my shack over some time to-morrow.”

Battler followed Kennedy’s horse a few hundred yards through the timber and stood looking after him. A few nights past he had also followed Reese Neil when he departed from camp, but on that occasion the Airedale had kept his distance from the man, plainly evidencing his dislike by his stiff, aloof manner and the half-raised hackle fur on the point of his shoulders.

“ You can always count on an Airedale’s judgment,” Rawhide asserted. “ He likes Kennedy fine but he didn’t care much for Reese Neil.”

“ Then he and I are agreed,” Buckskin commented. “ Neither did I,”

The boys showed up at Kennedy’s cabin soon after breakfast on the following day. This was conclusive evidence that they had accepted his proffer of friendly counsel as to the ways of the trap line.

“What about this fellow Neil?” Rawhide asked after a while. “ He wants to trap the leases and let us trap outside. That way we can any of us trap where we i)lease.”

“You can trap wherever you please right now,” Kennedy stated. “And Neil can’t work the leases because Snyder and Brown won’t let any one cut in on you boys unless you say the word. You’d be giving him the best end of the deal. I’d keep him off. He’s got plenty of country to trap without bothering you. Then you can tell him to take all the country below Brown’s line fence while you boys work from there up.”

Kennedy produced a thin, tapering board.

“ This is a rat board,” he said. “ If I’m going to show you the game we might as well 27 start at the first. You mustn’t slit fur open down the middle like you peel the hide from a cow. It’s got to be cased, pulled off like you’d pull off a sock wrong side out, and stretched on a casing board. You’ll need stretchers a-plenty, once you start knocking out fur. I’ve marked the measurements out on this pattern. That’s for big rats. You’ll have to make a sprinkling of boards a half inch smaller throughout.”

The pattern was made from quarter-inch stuff. It was twenty inches long and six inches across at the base, tapering almost imperceptibly to a width of five and a half inches at the point where the shoulders would come. From this point the board was sloped more abruptly to a blunt rounded end for the nose of the pelt. The patterns for opossum and skunk were shaped much the same, a trifle more peaked at the noses and the measurements larger throughout, the boards being thirty inches, long, eight across the base and six and a half at the shoulders. For small or medium pelts

these could be scaled down a half-inch for each 28 smaller hide. The stretcher for civet and mink was made in two parts; a pair of two-inch strips of thin board, each tapered very slightly on one side and rounded off at the nose. A hide cased on these could be stretched very long and almost the same width from tail to nose, a wedge inserted between the two halves of the pattern to take up the slack and to facilitate the removal of the board after the pelt had been cured.

“ Now you’ll want to amplify your outfit a little,” Kennedy said. “ It’s a dandy as far as it goes. But you want a hundred traps instead of ten. Then each of you can cover a separate route, once you’re lined out. Trapping is like anything else. You have to work hard at your job to make good. You’ll want a little stove in that tent. Outside cooking is all right in weather like this, or any time in a pinch, but it’s miserable business to crawl out in the morning in two foot of fresh snow and get breakfast with the water dripping down your neck and into the frying-pan, day after

day. Lots of your trapping will be creek or 29 marsh work, so you’ll both need hip boots. I guess that will cover the layout.”

“ But how can we get all that with only two dollars between the pair of us?” Rawhide asked. “ It just can’t be done.”

“ Sounds sort of staggering,” Kennedy admitted. “ But it won’t require much of an outlay. Those walnuts of yours ought nearly to cover the cost. You boys pounce onto collecting a few more bushels of nuts. I’ve got to make a trip to town for supplies and I’ll bring a wagon down to the Forks on the way and haul the nuts into market. A little later I’ll pitch a teepee down at your camp. Right now it’s handy to live up here while I’m working at Snyder’s hill fences. When the storms hit and the grass is snowed under, the stock will drift down below the Forks to the bottoms where we put up the hay. Then I’ll have to stay down there and feed. You better take up what traps you’ve got out. We’ll throw out a line when the time comes but the fur won’t be prime for another ten days.”

“ Every month with an R,” Rawhide said.

“ That’s what IVe heard; and this is October. Neil came up to see us last night after you left. He’s already caught two hundred pelts.”

“ Then that settles Neil’s case right off,” Kennedy stated. “ Fur don’t prime up in this country till some time in November. If Neil has collected two hundred pelts up to date he’s a sooner. No wonder he wants to trap the Forks. He’s cleaned the best fur out of his own territory before it was prime and now he wants to trap yours. A sooner is always a hog. Those pelts won’t bring a third what they would if caught two weeks later on. A good trapper never works his country too close but leaves plenty of fur-critters to raise another crop for next year. We’ll keep this man Neil off the leases. Seems like I’ve cut his trail somewheres before but I can’t just recollect. There’s all kinds of trappers, the most part of them shiftless, but a sooner’s the worst of the lot.”

Just ten days later the two boys sat in the tent and waited for Kennedy to come. The

air was crisp outside but the heat of the stove 31 kept the tent snug and warm. The stove was a simple contrivance of sheet steel with no floor, the bare earth forming the bottom of the fire box. It was so constructed that the heat was sucked back around the oven. The outfit stood complete and Rawhide sighed with satisfaction as he viewed it. A hundred traps hung on pegs driven into the trunk of the big elm. A solid homemade grub chest was generously stocked with food. There were two pairs of hip boots; two belt axes hung from the tent pole and the camp was well stocked with homemade furniture; a table with split poles for a top, three stools made by sawing cross-sections from a ten-inch log and nailing a square board on one end ; and a log edging on the ground in one corner of the tent to serve as a bunk, this filled with ten inches of hay on which to spread the bed roll. Fifty casing boards of all sizes and patterns were piled against a tree. A dozen boxes of shotgun shells and a thousand rounds of ammunition for the little rifle were stored in the grub chest, for Kennedy had impressed upon them that both must learn to 32 shoot and so live largely “ off the country ” by keeping the camp well supplied with meat. Their combined assets after marketing the walnuts had totalled but twenty-four dollars and the expenditures had exceeded this amount. They were indebted to Jack Kennedy to the sum of eight dollars.

When Kennedy rode up to camp he brought his own boots in a sack lashed on behind his saddle. In addition he had brought two more canvas grain bags.

“ I fashioned you a pair of trapping sacks,” he announced. “ Every trapper ought to tote a pack sack to carry his stuff so his hands won’t be eternally full of something or other. Each of you take ten traps and we’ll make a start. One of you bring that duck Rawhide killed last night.”

The canvas sacks had been cut down to a trifle less than half-length, leaving a two-inch strip of canvas on each side to serve as straps and fashioned into shoulder loops. The boys loaded up, slipped their arms through the loops

and followed Kennedy as he headed for the 33

North Fork and waded out into the stream. Within a few yards of the start Kennedy halted and indicated a point at the water line under an overhanging grassy bank studded with clumps of willows. There was a slight excavation at the water’s edge and the roots of slough grass and willows were exposed.

“ That’s where rats have been scratching,” he said. “ They come up here and scratch, sitting half in the water while they clip off a root or two. They’ve been feeding for ten feet either way from here, but that hollow shows more use than the rest. Here’s where we make the first set.”

He cut a smooth willow sapling an inch through at the butt and with the first branches cropping out midway of its length. He set the trap on a flat bed of mud under three inches of water, shoved the butt of the willow through the ring of the trap chain and pushed it well home in the bank a few inches under the water line. The branches trailed out in the current and were forced under water.

“ Now that acts as a slide pole,” he said.

“ It’s the most effective drown-set I know. The rat will make for deep water when the trap grips his foot. The ring slides down the pole till the branches snub it short. That keeps the rat from getting out on the bank and in five minutes he’s drowned. A muskrat will foot himself nine times out of ten if left where he can get up on the bank. And this slide pole blends in with the other willows dragging out in the stream and leaves no sign to help fur thieves locate your sets. Now you boys tiy and find rat sign and make sets yourselves.”

A thicket of willows grew on the opposite shore of the creek some fifty yards farther upstream. The water line was honeycombed with rat workings and the boys located the spot.

“ Good enough,” said Kennedy. “ Might as well make two sets along here. The sign shows a whole colony of rats are using this willow-brush patch.”

Rawhide cut a slide pole and was first to complete his set.

“ Only one thing wrong,” Kennedy said.

“ The rat will come to the trap from the water, not down the bank. Always turn your trap with the free jaw toward the side where your catch will come in. Your trap’s turned wrong side, with the dog toward the creek. If a rat stepped in from the side of the pinioned jaw it’s likely the dog would throw his foot clear of the trap as it flipped up when the spring was released.”

Kennedy peered down into the clear water of the stream and examined the bank. He pointed to the mouth of a hole that showed some eight inches under the water.

“ Likely that’s the mouth of the den,” he explained. “ Bank rats tunnel up from below water line. By prospecting those holes with a willow you can tell whether they go clear back or are only false leads.”

He cut a slender willow wand and inserted the end in the hole. The pliable rod followed the curves of the tunnel and was easily thrust into the bank for five feet.

“that’s the entrance,” Kennedy decided.

“ Buckskin, you smack a trap in that hole.”

After a little study it was easy to locate rat sign, even to tell with fair accuracy whether or not it was fresh. Each boy made another set within the next hundred yards. Then Kennedy pointed to a steep bank beneath the roots of a mighty elm. A fringe of lacy rootlets lapped the water and acted as a screen to conceal a long narrow shelf under the banl^.

“ There’s a little shelf runs along behind those roots,” Kennedy said. “A sure-fire rat set, and any other fur that swims down the creek is pretty apt to foUow through it. There’s about three inches of water laps over the shelf. Plant a trap back in there.”

Round the next bend a partly submerged down-log slanted out of the water.

“ Notice that rats have been using that log,” Kennedy pointed out. “A mink or a coon will walk out on it, too, for a rest. We’ll make a new kind of a set.”

He took Rawhide’s hand-ax and chopped a notch in the log a few inches below water line, motioning the boys back beyond reach of the

spray. This made a flat bed for the trap and 37 he wired the trap chain to an outcropping snag well under water.

There was a flat on the north shore of the stream. This pinched out to a narrow bench under the higher bank and a dimly defined trail threaded this shelf and rounded the roots of a giant cottonwood tree.

“ Most fur, even ’possum and such, follow the streams even though they seldom take to the water themselves,” Kennedy informed the boys. “ They’ll saunter along and at some points there’s natural obstacles that crowd them into passing over the same route, like ' right here. We’ll throw out a bait set now. Let’s have that duck.”

He placed a chunk of log parallel to one of the outcropping roots and roofed this lane over with slabs of bark from a down-log. The entrails of the duck were placed in the bait pen and the rear end solidly blocked. A section of three-inch stick was wedged across the mouth of the pen and the trap set just behind it so that the animal that entered must step over the

stick and place a foot on the trap pan. The 38 chain was wired to the tip end of a ten-foot pole. This would serve as a drag and yet have sufficient spring to prevent a trapped fur bearer from getting a solid pull in his struggles to free himself from the trap. Kennedy plucked the soft down from the breast of the duck and covered the trap to a depth of two inches. The stick at the fore end of the pen prevented the feathers from blowing away. He pulled the stiff wing feathers and scattered them near the spot.

“ The more feathers the better,” he stated. “ Even if a critter is up-wind and don’t scent the bait he may see the feathers floating about and it appears like something has made a kill down here under the bank. He’ll wander down to have a look and we’ll pinch his toes. There’s all kinds of bait sets, but for this country the feather set is by all odds the best. Duck or fish bait will draw any fur that ranges through here. The feathers make soft covering and won’t clog the trap like wood rot or trash often does.”

As they proceeded Kennedy explained that 39 a hollow down-log made an ideal bait pen if dragged to the edge of the stream. Fur bearers were prone to investigate hollow logs along their routes for dormant insects, nests of mice or for stray cottontails that might have sought shelter inside. A fish or a duck’s head back in the hollow and a few feathers floating around the mouth would be certain to challenge the interest of any meat-eater passing that way.

A windfall log spanned the creek at one point and this formed a natural crossing for the fur folk. Kennedy chopped a notch in which to bed the trap and covered it with thin strips of the fibrous inner bark of a dead cottonwood.

Some quarter of a mile above camp a huge log jam was piled at a bend in the creek. The mud flat at its edge was littered with tracks.

“ You want to make a bait set at every log jam on the creek,” Kennedy informed. “ Fur critters just can’t pass one up without investigating a bit. Notice how this flat is tracked up.”

He pointed to a track that appeared to be the print of a baby’s hand.

“ That’s a coon track, and a big one, too. This line of tracks looks a trifle similar, only more straggling, the toes spread well apart sort of star shaped and more like bird claws. That’s the trail of a ’possum. A smashing big skunk has been down for a drink. Notice his oblong pads, pinching off rounded at the heel, and his long claws overreaching in front. This track is exactly the same, only about one-third the size. That’s a civet. These trails that look like they might be made by frogs were left by muskrats out prowling round in the mud. See where their tails dragged now and then. Here’s mink track, but it’s old. Their toe prints show up like a cat animal’s, only spread farther apart. You want to learn every track in the hills and right here’s a good place to begin. Every kind of fur in the woods has visited this log jam in the last couple of weeks.”

The bait set at this point took the last of the traps.

“ That’ll be all for to-day,” Kennedy stated.

“ I’ve showed you some of the best kind of sets and now you’ll have to work things out for yourselves. You’ll catch fur to-night and to-morrow I’ll show you how to skin out and handle your catch. If a hide is worth trapping at all it deserves a good job of handling. Every scrap of fat must come off. If you leave it on it grease-burns the pelt. Even if they don’t heat, a bunch of fat hides won’t bring much over half on the market as what they would if they’d been clean-fleshed on the start.”

That night seemed overlong and both boys waked many times and wondered how soon the dawn would come. They were out with the first streak of light and elected to run the trap line before breakfasting.

Rawhide stooped to examine the first set. The light was dim but sufficient to enable him to determine that the trap was gone from its bed.

“ It’s gone,” he said. “ I can’t see it anywhere.”

Buckskin seized the slide pole and lifted the 42 submerged branches from the water. The trap chain hung straight down with a weight at the end of it. There would be many thrills in the life of each boy but few that could equal the tingle of joy that flooded their souls at lifting that first drowned muskrat from the Clearwater.

The trap was reset and they waded on to the willow thicket above. Rawhide’s set and the trap in the under-water hole each held a rat. The third was unspmng.

“ We’ve made a bigger catch than I’d expected even if we don’t get another rat,” Buckskin exulted. “ This is catching fur right! ”

There was no fur in the next few sets before reaching the watery shelf behind the lacy rootlets under the elm. This trap, too, was gone.

“Another rat,” Rawhide stated as he lifted the slide pole and caught the chain.

“That’s no rat!” Buckskin exclaimed. “ It’s got a bushy tail. It’s a squirrel.”

Rawhide nearly dropped his catch back into the stream as he discovered its species.

“Mink!” he said. “That’s what it is.

That hide is worth four or five rats. If this keeps up we’ll have all the fur in the country in the first day’s catch.”

The set on the partially submerged log was untouched and the bait trap under the roots of the big cottonwood was also undisturbed. Another rat had been added to the load in the pack sacks when they reached the down-log spanning the creek. A big opossum prowled back and forth on the log, his foot fast in the trap. One more rat was the yield of the two traps between that point and the log jam. Buckskin gripped his friend’s arm as they neared this last set.

“ What’s that? ” he demanded.

Some black thing moved on the bank where the bait pen had been constructed, at the edge of the log jam.

“ Skunk,” Rawhide announced. “ We’ve got him. He’s worth two dollars, that fellow, if he’s worth a cent.”

But the skunk was worth far more than that. He was a huge old boar, as black as a crow except for a forked spot of white on his head.

“A split-cap,” Buckskin said as they gazed at the prize. “A black skunk, sure enough ! ” A shot from the twenty-two finished the skunk. An hour later the boys were back in camp. A mink, a ’possum, a skunk and six rats were arranged in a row on a down-log and the boys waited for Kennedy to come and show them how to handle their catch.

Ill

T3 AWHIDE crouched in a blind fashioned in the tall grass that flanked the pond, waiting for the first morning light. The whir of unseen pinions sounded all about him, the soft wing whistles of slow-flying ducks and the hissing screech of speedsters hurtling by. A sheet of water stretched away for a hundred yards and a dozen decoys bobbed on the surface of the pond some little distance from his blind. He gripped the shotgun as a flock of redheads tumbled into the water beyond the decoys.

The sky turned rose in the east and he saw a dark moving streak against its glow as a flock of mallards headed for the big marsh a mile farther down the stream. The pond was a half-mile below camp and the bottoms had widened out, with flat hay meadows extending back into the narrow breaks between outcropping spurs of the Flint Hills. The stream be- 46 low the Forks flowed smoothly between grassy shores free of timber except for numerous thickets of willow. The shadows lifted and Rawhide could see the dark shapes that were mounds of hay in Brown’s stack-yards. Ducks streaked in all directions across the sky and a squadron of great gray geese honked overhead. The big flight of the season was on.

The boy ducked convulsively as fifty bluebills hurtled just above the grass tops all about his head and were gone before he could shoot. A dark line of redheads swept over the pond, wheeled into the wind with set wings and slanted down for the decoys. He fired at the thickest mass of birds and the flock held straight on at the jarring report. He shot twice again as they left. One bird sagged under the rest, gave up the struggle and struck the water with a splash on the far side of the pond. Two drakes floated dead just outside the decoys.

He crammed more shells into the magazine as a cloud of ducks wheeled over the pond,

swung away and circled again. These acted 47 in an entirely different manner from the redheads. At the first report they scattered and climbed, some with wings spread fiat against the wind to retard their advance toward the blind. He fired three more shots without making a kill.

Rawhide had yet to learn that different species of ducks adopt various tactics ; that canvasbacks, bluebills and redheads will seldom scatter or dodge at a shot, but hold straight on their course, while mallards will scatter and climb. A compact bunch of speeding teal will disperse like a puff of smoke with a shot ; and so on, all the way down through the species.

Black swarms rose from the hay land and the big marsh below. A flock screeched over the pond, circling it twice as if to diminish their speed, and headed straight for the blind. They wheeled gi’acefully and he fired as they made the turn. The bottom seemed to drop from the flock and as the heavy bodies splashed on the surface he poured four shots after the vanishing birds. There were four canvasbacks down on the pond, three from the first lucky shot on the turn and but one lone duck brought to bag by the other four shots. Rawhide fired another dozen shells and dropped but three more ducks, then waded out into the pond and picked up his ten birds.

He reached camp before the fiery ball of the sun swung above the Flint Hills. Buckskin had the morning meal prepared and after breakfasting they set forth to run their separate trap lines. Kennedy had mapped out a tentative route for each of them. Rawhide’s line followed the North Fork for five miles upstream, then swung away from the creek and back through the open Flint Hills to the south of it. Thus he traveled in a loop and avoided a waste of time by covering any of the same ground twice. Buckskin’s line was laid out a like distance up the South Fork, his back trip also leading down through the hills between the two streams, their two routes converging a mile above camp at the far edge of the timbered flat.