Quietly reseating the stopper in the bait bottle that hung from his belt, Scratch crouched forward, bending at the knee, and with one hand began to dig away at the bank there a half foot below the pond’s surface. With a proper shelf excavated, he next worked at squeezing closed both of the tough iron springs on the trap so that the jaws fell open. Only then could he slip the trigger into the notch on the round pan that lay in the center of the open jaws.
Carefully he moved the trap under the water, settling it upon the shelf, then adjusted the end of the bait-stick so that it hovered right above the hidden trap. It wouldn’t be long before one of the flat-tails came down that slide, winded the scent of a strange beaver, and waddled over to investigate. When it did, chances were almost certain it would end up stepping right on the pan in trying to get itself a good sniff of the bait—when the trigger would release, snapping the smooth iron jaws shut on the beaver’s leg.
And what the frightened animal did then would be crucial to Scratch having a pelt to scrape and stretch and eventually barter off to a trader … or it would mean losing a trap somewhere at the muddy, grassy bottom of this forest pond.
From the back of his belt he took a long branch he had selected from a nearby stand of lodgepole. Then he stretched out the trap chain to its full length, one end of which was looped around a trap spring. Slipping the branch through the large eye-ring at the other end, Bass drove a sharp end into the bottom of the pond.
Once the jaws had slapped shut around the unwary beaver’s leg, the animal would instinctively dive for the safety of deep water, paddling frantically for the middle of the pond and its lodge. But on the way it would be caught at the end of the trap chain that it had unknowingly dragged down the length of the branch, where the trap-ring would be snagged beneath a large knot. Reaching deep water near the middle of the pond, the beaver would find it impossible to swim back again to the surface, and drown without any damage to its glossy pelt, which would one day be fashioned into a fine top hat for some eastern gentleman, mayhap even a winter muffler for some gussied-up city gal all aswirl in yards upon yards of starched crinoline, taffeta, and satin.
Slowly Scratch turned, careful to make as little noise in the water as he could, keeping to the shadows as the sun continued its descent, here where a man grew his coldest in this water just recently given birth by ice fields. But it was here, just below the dripping shelves of snowy cataracts, just beneath the overhang of melting glaciers, that beaver grew their thickest pelts and maintained those winter coats long into the spring.
Trap after trap he set that afternoon, returning to his trap sack each time on the same circuitous route through the water so that his scent would not become entangled with the brush or the ground near any one of his sets. Ten bait-sticks he cut late that afternoon, and ten shelves he carved away beneath the water’s surface there at the bottom of ten slides.
Ten beaver would he collect come morning light.
Those last two traps at the bottom of the sack felt as heavy as a small anvil to his weary arms as Scratch finally slogged downstream, taking his leave of the flooded meadow only after the sun had disappeared behind the high peaks looming far overhead.
Those ten beaver would again put him ahead of Cooper’s catch. Even farther ahead or Billy’s. And poor Turtle wasn’t even in the running. Yet Bud made himself useful around camp, scraping hides, whipping together the willow hoops on which the others would stretch their beaver plews into the distinctively round “beaver dollars.” As poor a trapper as Bud Tuttle was, to Scratch’s way of thinking he was a damned good man to have along as a camp keeper and fire tender.
His feet heavy, and shuddering with the chill of evening coming, Titus plodded back toward that distant flicker of their camphre signaling like a beacon through the quaking aspens. Coffee and some elk loin would set well on his stomach this night.
He vowed to keep the meadow secret until he had pulled his beaver come morning.
By damn! This would be the last night Silas Cooper would have to gloat.
Now they’d all see just who in tarnation was the master trapper in these parts!
10
That white-headed trader’s whiskey tasted good enough, by damn—nonetheless, Titus still had him a serious hankering for some good old Monongahela rum, generously sweetened with raw cane sugar, the likes of which they served in every watering hole, tippling house, and gunboat brothel on the great rivers back east.
Bass licked his lips, savoring the tang of raw tobacco and red pepper on his tongue, the faintest sweetening of strap molasses … then slowly awoke, still running his tongue over his bottom lip—hoping there was more to drink.
Rubbing the grit from his eyes, Scratch sat up, finding the others still dead to the world around the coals in their fire pit, none of them more than shapeless mounds buried beneath an inch-thick, wet snow. That cold white blanket covered most everything as he reluctantly came awake—feeling as if the cold spring fog had pierced him to his marrow. He peered through the trees, finding the horses still as statues in their rope corral, not bothering to paw at the ground this early.
Shuddering, Scratch thought how good it would feel to have Fawn next to him. Maybeso there really would be women down to the trader’s rendezvous in a few weeks’ time, just as Billy and Silas had been saying over and over again. A man might hold out that long, he considered, working up hope once more. Yes, indeed: a man could get himself through the spring and the autumn … just so he could have him a woman at the height of summer, as long as he had one with him too through the deep of winter.
He kicked back the blankets, stood, and tightened the wide belt around his blanket capote. Then he reached into his possibles pouch and pulled out the blue scarf. Holding two opposite corners, Scratch whipped it into a thin band he tied around his head to hold the long hair over his ears for warmth. Stuffing his coyote-hide hat down on his head, Titus bent over the remnants of last night’s elk. He dug among the chunks of the meat they had boiled, then set to cool in a second kettle. What they hadn’t eaten now had a dusting of snow upon it. He blew some of the icy crust off each piece as he stuffed it into a large piece of oiled nankeen cloth, then rolled up the square so it would slip down into the shooting pouch he slapped over his right shoulder.
With the fullstock rifle in his. blanket mitten and still no sign of life from the others, who went right on snoring in their buffalo-robe cocoons, Bass crept away into the cold mists of that spring morning in the high country, eager to get the jump on the day, and the jump on Silas’s boys.
He hadn’t covered much ground before the calves of his leggings were soaked by the wet, melting snow that clung heavily to everything in his path—frosted to every blade of grass and thick-leafed swamp cabbage, crusted on every willow or aspen leaf. The swirling, thick fog was cold all by itself as it danced and whirled on the ground around his knees, yet it became thicker still the closer he got to the upstream meadow where he had been taking beaver hand over fist for the last six days without seeming to put a dent in the rodents’ population.
And every last one of them was a prime fur. “Seal fat and sleek)” was how Billy Hooks had described the first of the pelts Titus had brought back to their camp.