Chapter Eighteen

Horatio had become fascinated by the Holey Man. After he’d got over his initial fright at the unexpected meeting, he had wanted to go back the next day and find the strange being; and every afternoon since, whenever he and Martha were deciding what they should do, his first suggestion was always that they should play down around the shore.

Martha didn’t mind catering to him at first. A couple of times they had taken the homemade sled back to the dunes and tobogganed again. Once they walked along the lake, kicking at the thin ice that had formed along the shore. Once they had played hide and seek in the warren of fishing reels and dry-docked boats that clustered around the wharf. But all the time they played, Horatio would sneak glances out over West Lake, and Martha knew he was hoping to catch a glimpse of the shuffling creature that had scared them so.

As the year grew old, daylight faded quickly in the afternoons, so on schooldays Martha and Horatio stayed closer to home and amused themselves by playing marbles or tag with the other neighbourhood children. But that Saturday Horatio’s mother didn’t need his assistance in the afternoon, so after the noon meal they headed straight for the shore.

They ventured farther along the sandbar than they had ever been before, nearly reaching the place where the shore started to curve around the lake and the sand hills spread into a wilderness of cedar forest. At one point there was a narrow channel that connected the two lakes, but this seemed frozen enough to walk on if they went carefully. It was here that they caught a glimpse of the Holey Man off in the distance.

“What is he doing?” Horatio asked as they spotted the raggedy figure rowing a skiff slowly around one of the small islands that dotted West Lake.

“I think he’s checking his traps,” Martha replied. “I’m pretty sure those are muskrat lodges along the shore there. I bet he’s a trapper and that’s why his clothes are so funny-looking. He probably just tans the hides at home and makes them into clothes.”

“But where is his home?”

Martha shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know he was here until he scared us that day.”

“Do you think your grandfather would know where he lives?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “We haven’t been here long enough to know stuff like that.”

“What about your uncle?”

Again Martha shrugged. She hadn’t mentioned the Holey Man to her grandparents. She wasn’t sure why, but she had a feeling that if she did, she might be forbidden from going down to the sandbar, and since that was just about the only thing Horatio ever wanted to do, she had no doubt that he would simply go without her.

“What do you suppose he eats?” Horatio asked.

“Well, there’s lots of fish. And squirrels and rabbits. And if you can catch beavers, their tails are good roasted. I guess that would be enough food for anybody.”

“Let’s go look at his traps.”

Martha hesitated. “He might get mad if he thinks we’re fooling around with his traps.”

“I just want to look at them, that’s all.” He scanned the horizon for a few minutes, but the Holey Man had moved on and was no longer visible. “Let’s go across to the island.”

What appeared like a very short distance when you were just looking at it suddenly seemed much farther with the prospect of walking it, and Martha was uneasy about going so far on the ice.

“I don’t think we should. I’m not sure the ice will hold us. Why don’t we just look along the shore here? There’s plenty of muskrat here, too.”

“There’s nothing here but a bunch of reeds and grass,” he said.

“No, those mounds are where the muskrats live,” Martha said, pointing to what appeared to be nothing more than a jumble of vegetation. “Down underneath. And you can see where he put a stick to mark where the trap is.”

Horatio went to where she was pointing and scuffed away the snow. A trail of air bubbles frozen in the ice betrayed the entrance to the animal’s den. They could just see a small piece of chain above the surface. Horatio grabbed it and started to pull.

“Be careful,” Martha said. “It’s probably set. You don’t want to get your hand in the way.”

The trap, when Horatio finally hauled it to the surface, proved to be little more than a few wires twisted together, but it was enough to have caught and drowned a fat, glossy muskrat.

“I thought it would have bigger teeth,” he said, “Don’t they gnaw on stuff?”

“You’re thinking of beaver,” Martha said, “Their teeth are a whole lot bigger,” although she wasn’t by any means sure of this.

Horatio held the trap high and let the muskrat corpse twirl in a dripping circle. “How does the trap work?”

“I think it catches them by the leg and then they can’t get away.”

“It doesn’t kill them?”

“I don’t think so. I think it drowns or the trapper has to come along and bash it over the head or something. That’s why they check the traps all the time.”

“Well, don’t that beat the Dutch,” Horatio said. “I’d like to see that!”

Martha wouldn’t, and she hoped that the occasion would never arise. In fact, she hoped that now that they had had a chance to look at a trap closely, Horatio’s fascination with the trapper would wane.

They lowered the trap back into the water and tried to brush the snow back around the foot of the den, but at this they were not very successful. Martha was sure that the Holey Man would know that someone had been at his traps.

When the pair headed back toward the harbour, it was already starting to get dark. It would soon be suppertime. As they wandered along the path, Horatio tried to imitate the Holey Man, shuffling and snuffling along, but he stopped when he saw someone standing by one of the boats. It was Mr. Gilmour from the hotel.

He nodded at them as they went past, but continued staring across the water toward the marsh.