The next several days were jammed with activity.
On their second day in the valley they traveled to where the stream forked, debated a bit, and finally decided to go up the right fork first simply because they spied a huge beaver lodge up it, bigger than any of them had ever seen or heard of, and the sight drew them like a magnet. They rode until they could ride no farther, until they found themselves at the base of a steep mountain and saw where the stream came down off that mountain from a high country lake Red Moon said was up near the summit. The water was runoff from the snow that perpetually crowned the surrounding peaks.
Eagerly, they established their first camp. The gear was stripped off the packhorses. All four of them pitched in and constructed a sturdy lean-to that would adequately shelter them from the elements. Their food supply, stored in parfleches and packs, was hung by ropes from high tree limbs to discourage bears and other varmints that might wander by while they were off trapping. Their traps and tools were stored in a corner of the lean-to, but only until the next day, when they began trapping in earnest.
They started out when the sun was still below the horizon, working in pairs. Nate and Red Moon crossed the stream and worked along the west side, exploring up each tributary they discovered. Milo and Tom did likewise on the east side.
Since Red Moon knew little about how to properly set a trap, Nate did most of the work that morning. His traps were all Newhouses, manufactured by Sewell Newhouse of Oneida, New York, from whom they got their nickname. Newhouse sold every type of equipment a trapper needed, and even published a useful manual on the trade that many a beginning trapper carried with him into the vast Rockies.
Laying a trap line was cold, hard work. They hiked from dam to dam. At each, Nate would search for a runway or other likely spot to set his trap. Then he would place the Newhouse flat on the ground, stand on the leaf springs until the jaws dropped open, and adjust the trigger on the disk until the proper tension held the disk in place.
Next the trap was carefully carried into the frigid water and positioned on the bottom so the surface of the water was no more than a hand-width above the disk. This was done because beaver, being short legged, had to step right on the disk to spring the trap. If the trap was placed any lower, they might swim right over it.
A stout length of wood was then inserted through the ring at the end of the chain and pounded into the bank using the blunt end of a hatchet. Pulling on the chain verified the beaver would be unable to yank it loose.
The last step in setting a trap concerned the bait. Usually contained in small wooden boxes that were frequently sold at the annual rendezvous, the bait consisted of the musky secretion beavers used to mark their territory, and was collected from the glands of dead ones before they were skinned. A thin stick was dipped into the box and then the other end was jabbed into the bank above where the trap had been placed. Once a passing beaver smelled the scent, it would come to investigate, step into the trap, and be caught in rigid steel jaws. Inevitably it drowned, unless the beaver chewed its own foot off to escape, which happened quite often if the traps weren’t checked regularly.
Nate took until well past noon to set his twelve traps, and then returned to camp. The two Pennsylvanians had finished much earlier and were already there.
“How did it go?” Tom asked.
“We’ll know this evening when we check our lines,” Nate replied.
“This evening?” Tom repeated. “But we’ve always checked our traps in the morning.”
“Only once a day?” Nate inquired.
“Sure. What’s wrong with that? Many trappers only check their line once a day.”
“And they’re the ones who lose a lot of beaver. When you only check once a day, it gives any animal you’ve caught more time to chew its leg off. By checking twice you seldom have one get away on you,” Nate said. “Shakespeare himself advised me to check twice and I’ve always done so.”
Milo had been listening attentively. “So that’s why we’ve lost so many. Okay, Nate. From here on out we check twice each day.”
“That’s a lot of work,” Tom grumbled.
“Which would you rather be?” Milo retorted. “Rich or lazy?”
Tom grinned. “Rich, of course. But I hate going into that icy water. It pains my legs something fierce.”
“Quite a few trappers have the same complaint,” Nate noted. “If you sit by a fire for a while as soon as you’re done checking the line, your legs won’t hurt half as much.”
“I know,” Tom said, and shrugged. “You know how it is. We don’t always do what is best for us even when we know better.”
Red Moon took his bow and quiver from his gear and went off to hunt, leaving his rifle behind. Everyone knew why. Using a gun often spooked game from an area and they wanted to keep the game close so they wouldn’t have to spend as much time securing their fresh meat. Over an hour later he came back with a large doe draped over his shoulders.
The sun was close to the western horizon when they went off to check their lines. Nate didn’t expect to find many beaver in his traps since the line had been in place for such a short time. To his delight, though, he found three.
At each sprung trap he had to wade into the water and haul the forty-pound carcass onto the bank. After removing the dead animal, he reset the trap in a different spot. Since Red Moon accompanied him, they lugged all three back to camp instead of skinning them on the spot as he would have done had he been alone.
Milo and Tom had not yet returned. Nate placed the three beaver near the fire, obtained his curved skinning knife from his pack, and set to work removing the hides. Many a pelt had been ruined by a man who cut rashly and pierced the soft fur, so he took his time. The better the condition of the pelt, the more money he would make for it.
He had been done for quite some time and darkness was descending when Milo and Tom came back. Five beaver had been snared in their traps and they had removed the hides beside the stream.
Milo glanced at Nate’s skins and beamed. “Eight already! I tell you, this venture will pay off handsomely.”
Over the next two days his words were borne out. They caught a grand total of seventy-one beaver, and were kept busy skinning when not checking their lines. They were so busy there was barely time to eat.
By the morning of the fourth day they were all fatigued but elated at their good fortune. Chewing on a flapjack, Milo looked at them and chuckled.
“If we keep going at this rate, we’ll have the valley trapped out in a month.”
“The sooner, the better,” Tom said.
Nate inwardly agreed and was pleased. Between all the beaver along the two upper forks, the dozens of tributaries, and the lower body of the stream, they should each take back between four and five hundred pelts. Not a bad haul at all considering that most trappers took in three or four hundred pelts during an entire year. There were exceptions, of course. Jed Smith had caught close to seven hundred one year. But it was Nate’s mentor, Shakespeare McNair, who held the all-time record for a twelve-month haul: eight hundred and twenty-seven pelts.
For three more days they trapped using the same base camp, until the beaver at the head of the fork were almost depleted, and then Nate proposed moving the camp a bit farther down the stream. The move was accomplished in one morning, and by the afternoon they were again working their trap lines.
Red Moon expressed an interest in learning to trap and Nate took it upon himself to teach the old Crow. The warrior’s keen mind easily grasped the essentials, and before long Red Moon could trap as well as any of them and skin beaver a lot faster.
On the sixth day in the valley, as evening descended, Nate and Red Moon walked along a narrow creek feeding off the stream, checking their traps. They reached a beaver pond surrounded by high lodgepole pines and worked along the north shore toward a spot where they had placed a Newhouse that morning.
“We caught one,” Red Moon said.
A moment later Nate saw the dead beaver submerged in the cold water. He handed his Hawken to the Crow and put his left foot in the pond, idly listening to the nearby chatter of squirrels and the chirping of playful sparrows.
Abruptly, the noises ceased.
Nate had not spent almost five years in the wilderness for nothing. He knew animals never fell silent like that without reason, and the reason invariably was either a roving predator or passing humans. Since there were no other people in the valley except for Benteen and Sublette, who were both over by the fork, the cause for the sudden silence must be a predator.
Visions of a hungry grizzly flitted through Nate’s mind and he reached out and took his rifle. The Crow was gazing into the forest, his expression one of questioning curiosity.
Samson uttered a low growl.
Nate looked down at the dog and saw it peering into the wall of vegetation, its nostrils working as it tried to pick up a scent. He cocked the Hawken to be prepared in case there was a grizzly close at hand, then waited for a telltale sign, the crashing of underbrush or the characteristic gruff rumble of a bear in a killing mood.
Time seemed to stand still. The wind had died and not so much as a single leaf fluttered.
As unexpectedly as the interlude began, it ended with the chirp of a robin. The wildlife resumed its normal rhythm of living and the forest was filled with the songs of birds and the buzzing of insects.
“Must have been a bear,” Nate speculated.
“No bear,” Red Moon said.
“Then what was it?”
“I do not know.”
Nate gazed into the Indian’s dark eyes, eyes rimmed with wrinkles and reflecting a profound wisdom born of a lifetime spent in the wild. He had the impression Red Moon did know, or had guessed. A possibility occurred to him, but he promptly discarded it. Couldn’t be, he told himself. The thing that lurked in the dark only came out at night according to the Indian legends. And besides, there was no such animal,
“I will keep watch while you get the beaver,” Red Moon offered.
In half the time it ordinarily required, Nate had the trap out of the water and the beaver out of the trap. His hand fell on his knife, but he paused. If there was a grizzly in the vicinity, perhaps it would be wiser to remove the hide at their camp.
“What about the last trap?” the Crow inquired.
Nate stared off up the creek, remembering the small pond a hundred yards farther on where they had discovered a recently constructed beaver lodge. “I’ll go. You take this one back to camp,” he proposed.
“We should go together.”
“I can manage,” Nate insisted. He hefted the Hawken and walked off, Samson beside him as always.
“We should go together,” Red Moon insisted, and quickly caught up with them.
Nate glanced at the warrior’s impassive features and tried to ascertain the reason the Crow was being so persistent. As if Red Moon knew his thoughts, he met Nate’s gaze and spoke softly.
“Perhaps you are right, Grizzly Killer. You have killed many grizzlies, so you must know them well. Perhaps there is a bear out there.”
Was Red Moon poking fun at him? Nate wondered, but said nothing. He noticed the Crow had not brought the dead beaver and now held his rifle firmly in both hands.
The last pond in the creek was only forty feet in circumference, the dam barely five feet high but growing higher every day as the beaver occupying the pond behind it worked continuously at improving the size of their barrier.
Nate walked rapidly, seeing the long shadows all around them and realizing the sun had almost disappeared over the far western horizon, spearing the western sky with vivid streaks of red and orange and pink. The beautiful sunset, which ordinarily would stir his soul mightily, failed to impress him.
The trees were farther back from this pond than the previous one, allowing them to hike around to the opposite side without having to push limbs aside or forge through brush.
Above the surface adjacent to where the stake had been imbedded jutted the rounded tip of a beaver tail.
“Another one,” Red Moon said. “We are very fortunate.”
“Yes,” Nate responded, although secretly he would have been just as happy to find the Newhouse empty. Had it been, they would be on their way to camp. Now he must go into the pond and fetch the carcass.
The frigid mountain water soaked his moccasins and the bottom of his buckskin leggings as he waded in. He grunted when he lifted the beaver, and no wonder, for it was an exceptionally large specimen weighing between forty-five and fifty pounds. Once on the bank, he stepped on the leaf springs and yanked the crushed leg out, then stepped aside. The jaws snapped shut with a loud metallic snap.
“We’ll skin both at camp,” Nate proposed. “I’d like to get back and have a cup of coffee.”
“I also,” Red Moon said. He pulled the stake out of the ground and dangled the trap from his shoulder by the chain.
As they retraced their steps, Samson between them, Nate mentally chided himself for his nervousness. There was no logical excuse for him to be so jittery. Winona would be ashamed of him if she knew. Not to mention Shakespeare. He squared his shoulders and whistled as they worked their way around the larger pond to where the other trap and beaver lay. But when they got there, he drew up short in surprise.
The trap was exactly where they had left it.
The dead beaver, however, was gone.