by Terry Grosz
With that bit of ‘housework’ out of the way, Old Potts and Big Foot stripped the Indian dead of any valuables, knives and guns they had brought to the fight and then with their horses, dragged their carcasses to a deep draw a quarter-mile from camp and left them there for the ever-present bears, coyotes, wolves, badgers, ravens, and magpies to feast upon. For the next two days, that deep draw was a popular place for all those four-legged meat eaters of the plains and their aerial friends... However, Big Foot, Crooked Hand and Old Potts did take notice of the fact that of the 14 Indians killed from the Blackfoot raiding party that morning, nine had been killed by Tom!
For the next week, Crooked Hand limped around and Tom was less conversational than his normally closed-mouthed self. However, the ‘doctoring’ by Big Foot was showing some signs of recovery, even though Crooked Hand tended to do a lot more limping around than normal for such a leg wound. However, sore face and leg aside, the men still had the serious business of beaver trapping lying ahead of them if they wished to survive on the frontier as trappers, so the preparation work continued unabated.
But a sharp eye was also now kept ‘skinned’ by the four men for any unwanted visitors just in case, sore face or swollen leg be damned...
CHAPTER FOUR: BEAVER TRAPPING AND A FRONTIER “DOCTOR’S REMEDY”
Sitting on their horses alongside the two pack animals they had brought to carry their traps and other gear, Tom, Big Foot and Old Potts surveyed the marshes lying below the rise upon which they now sat. However that morning, they were minus Crooked Hand. His deep knife wound in the thigh received in the fight with the Blackfoot raiding party had taken a turn for the worse during the last week and was now festering yellow pus! The decision had been made collectively by the men for him to stay home that first day of beaver trapping, rest up and watch over the camp and the rest of their horses. Then when they returned, Big Foot would look once again at the puncture wound in the leg and see if there was anything he could do to alleviate the pain from the infection.
In the meantime, there was the pressing matter of their fall beaver trapping to attend to and time was of the essence. Leaving camp right at daylight, the men headed for the northeastern end of Medicine Lake. As they rode easterly, the men traveled through numerous herds of feeding buffalo and saw no sign of any Indians in the area. Arriving at the confluence of Medicine Lake’s water source, the men paused on a series of hills and once again surveyed their surrounding area for any signs of trouble. The previous week’s Indian raid had brought forth the men’s extreme caution and not wishing a repeat of such a surprise attack, they remained vigilant as to their surroundings. Seeing the way was clear of any signs of danger, the men relaxed and examined the country lying out below them. There below the series of hills upon which they sat stretched several miles of beaver ponds, their signature mounded stick-and-mud houses and water level-controlling dams.
Looking all around the riders’ location once again in an extreme act of caution, Tom was the first to speak. “I suggest that Old Potts do the trapping and the two of us remained ‘horsed’ as lookouts in case we are discovered trapping by the Blackfeet. That way, Old Potts can safely get back to his horse and the two of us can provide covering fire if we are attacked. What say the two of you to that plan?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Big Foot. “You are the best shooter among the three of us and I would feel better if you were the one of us who is standing guard.”
Old Potts just nodded his head in agreement, as he nudged his horse and the two trailing pack animals down off the hill toward the first set of likely looking beaver ponds. Big Foot followed and Tom, before he left the rise, looked all around one more time for any signs of ‘company’, made sure a cap was on the nipple of his Hawken rifle and then followed.
Following behind Old Potts, the two designated ‘guards’ let him pick a likely looking site for his first beaver trap set. Old Potts, an experienced trapper from years past, ambled along with the horses until he was satisfied with a likely looking spot for that first set. There he stopped, stepped off his horse and handed the reins back to Big Foot. Examining the ground as he walked along the edge of the marsh, he soon knelt down and closely examined an area that he suspected was being used by the beaver in that pond as a travel way and slide.
As he did, Tom noticed that Old Potts had stopped near an obvious disturbed area near the edge of the pond, one showing signs of heavy and recent use by beaver, if their numerous tracks in the mud indicated anything to the serious trapper. Satisfied with what he was seeing, Old Potts rose, walked over to one of the packhorses carrying a number of beaver traps in a pannier and pulled one from the bunch. Turning, he walked out into the edge of the beaver pond near the end and off to one side of the slide. Taking his hatchet, he cut off a long and thick willow pole from along the bank, trimmed off its branches and laid it down in the water alongside his legs. Then Old Potts opened up the jaws of the trap, set the pan and carefully laid it down on the muddy bottom, under about four inches of water. Without a word and with his previous beaver trapping experience now in play, Old Potts carefully extended the length of the trap’s chain out into the deeper water. Upon reaching the end of the trap’s chain, he took the four-foot-long, freshly cut willow pole and using the back of his hatchet, drove one end deeply into the bottom of the beaver pond. Then taking out a piece of previously cut to length heavy twine, tied the ring on the end of the trap’s chain to the bottom of the willow pole driven deeply into the bottom of the pond.
By now, never having trapped beaver before, Tom’s attention was raptly watching the actions of Old Potts, instead of being on the lookout. So much so, that Big Foot had to embarrassingly remind Tom of his duty as a lookout and not as a beaver trapper observer...
Continuing, Old Potts walked out from the deeper water and back to where the trap lay under the water on the pond’s bottom. There he carefully swirled the mud off the bottom into the water around the trap with his hand. After a few moments of swirling the water around the beaver trap, the waterborne silt settled down upon the trap in light layers, thereby hiding the trap from the eye of any animal to be lured into its jaws. Then walking over to the adjacent patch of willows, Old Potts took out his hatchet, cut off another limb and walked back to the now hidden trap. There he took the end of the pliable willow limb just cut, stuck one end diagonally into the bank next to the trap and extended the other end out over the pan of the trap in the pond. Old Potts then removed a bottle of beaver castoreum taken from the glands of a beaver that he had purchased from the stores back at Fort Union just before they had left, cut another smaller willow twig and daubed its end into the smelly liquid in the bottle. Removing the small willow twig from the bottle of liquid, Old Potts daubed the stinky mixture on the end of the twig onto the end of the willow limb sticking out over the pan of the trap. Once done, he put the small cork back into the end of the bottle holding the castoreum. Old Potts then carefully put the bottle back into his ‘possibles bag’ for use on the next trap set.
Walking out from the beaver pond, Old Potts could see Tom’s eyes carefully watching his every move instead of alertly standing guard and had to smile. It was obvious that Tom being a novice beaver trapper was not going to miss one single action performed by Old Potts as he set the first beaver trap of their trapping season...
Old Potts, ever the teacher, smiled and said, “Tom, that is how one sets a beaver trap in these here waters. It is done that way because beaver are very territorial. If a beaver ever smells another beaver in its territory, it will swim to that smell and investigate. It will swim directly to the smell coming from the end of that stick I placed over the pan of the beaver trap. Once there, it will lift its nose up to the stick to smell the new beaver scent. In the process, it will set one or both of its feet down onto the bottom of the pond for balance and in so doing, hopefully place them onto the pan of the trap lying hidden under the light film of mud below. Once trapped, the beaver will panic and swim into deeper water pul
ling the trap and chain along with it. Of course, the length of the trap’s chain will keep it from swimming away and once out into deeper water, the weight of the heavy trap and chain will eventually tire out the trying to escape beaver and cause it to eventually drown.”
“There are so many beaver in this area that I would not be surprised on our return trip from the other end of where we are going to lay out our trap line, that some of these earlier set traps will have beaver in them. If that is the case, we will skin them on site in order to save our horses from having to carry such a heavy load of dead beaver carcasses back to our campsite. Or we may even take a few beaver back with us for our supper tonight. In fact, they are damn fine eating if one takes a notion to cook them up and try them,” continued Old Potts, as he detected a ‘learning moment’ in his young beaver trapping protégé...
Continuing, Old Potts said as he mounted back up onto his horse, “Hauling those now skinned-out beaver plus (pronounced “plews”) back to our camp and then our work really starts. We can put Crooked Hand if he be up to it, to gathering up some smaller willow limbs, flesh out our plus and then he can hoop them on those willows and tie them down with sinew so they can dry out right proper like. Then once they dry, we can fold them with the fur side in, pack them to about 60 to a bundle, and each of our packhorses can carry two of them bundles comfortably when we decide to return to Fort Union. There we can sell them, re-provision with them proceeds and then head back into God’s country for more of the same. Asides, each of them packs of plus will bring anywhere from $300-600, and that buys a lot of rum drinking as well when we get back to Fort Union.”
Once again, Tom found himself so interested in what Old Potts was saying and doing, that he forgot why he was there until Big Foot reminded him once again of his primary guard duties. Snapping back into the world at hand, Tom’s eyes once again swept the countryside for any signs of danger. Seeing none but ashamed that he was failing at being a guardian of the defenseless Old Potts when he was setting out the traps, Tom never made that mistake ever again. That alertness was made even more important when he realized that Big Foot was damn good as a blacksmith and one who could fix their firearms at the drop of a hat. But he was one piss poor shooter when it came to the business end of his rifle at more than 50 yards, so ‘why the necessary’ of Tom being on the alert at all times because of being the better shooter... That was made even more ‘necessary’ if that first shot really had to count.
For the rest of that day, the three trappers set out the remaining 39 of their beaver traps in the numerous adjacent ponds and waterways. In fact, there was so much beaver sign in the area, that they only traveled another couple of miles until the remaining numbers of their traps had been set.
Then on the way back to camp as Old Potts had predicted, the men discovered that a number of the earlier set beaver traps already had animals in them! Once again, Tom got schooled in the fine art of how to quickly skin a beaver without wrecking the value of the pelt, while watching Big Foot in action. Then those already yielding traps were re-set and the men moved on.
But as the day progressed, Tom’s well-developed ‘sixth sense’ got the better of him and in so doing, found him watching their back trail more and more frequently. However, nothing was seen to cause him any concern in the way of danger from an ambush, so he then began thinking maybe there was some kind of trouble back at camp. Maybe Crooked Hand had taken seriously ill or, even worse, maybe the Blackfeet had returned in even larger numbers. After all, one of their killing war party had escaped from the earlier battle and maybe he and others had returned...
By the time the men hove into view of their campsite, Tom found himself standing higher in his stirrups as if needing to see further into camp and see if his good friend Crooked Hand was up and moving about. To be frank, riding like that, Tom looked funny as hell. Looked funny as hell as all six-foot, seven-inches of his carcass standing that way all but dwarfed his horse... In fact, if there had been some ladies present, they would have told Tom to get off his horse and let the horse ride alone for a change...
Finally, camp hove into view and there was Tom’s friend, Crooked Hand, standing there by their horse corral waving his arm in recognition. But once in camp, things did not look or smell right! Crooked Hand’s infection, after being stabbed in the thigh in their recent battle by a Blackfoot Indian with an obviously unclean knife, had gotten worse, infection-wise! His wound entry point had turned a deep ugly red and yellow pus was streaming out from the hole and running down his leg, especially every time he moved and his thigh muscle contracted! Crooked Hand’s pain was so great, that he could hardly walk and it seemed that it even hurt for him to breathe.
Big Foot, after looking at the festering and running wound said, “Crooked Hand, I am afraid I am going to have to open up that wound, causing it to drain better and then have to cauterize it. To do that, I will need a red hot poker, which we don’t have…or use the old tried and true gunpowder method to cauterize the wound.”
“Do it with the gunpowder,” said Crooked Hand firmly, who was familiar with the old frontier remedy of wound cauterization.
“OK,” said Big Foot, “but first, I need to get you good and drunk so you don’t feel so much pain when I treat the wound. However, if I don’t treat the wound, you will surely lose your leg and most probably your life...”
“Let us get on with it,” said Crooked Hand firmly, “the quicker it’s done, the faster I can get back up on my feet and get to trapping.”
Turning around, Tom saw Old Potts already coming from their cave with one of their jugs of rum. It was once again obvious that Old Potts, in his earlier days as a frontier trapper, knew what was coming next... Sitting down on a log placed around their fire ring for just such purposes, Old Potts took a drinking cup, filled it with rum and handed it to Crooked Hand. Cup after cup soon followed until Crooked Hand fell off the sitting log some time later in a drunken stupor.
“Alright, let us get going before he comes back to this life,” said Old Potts. Tom, unaware as to what was coming next, just stood off to one side and let his two experienced Mountain Man friends do what they had to do in order to save their friends life.
First, Big Foot and Old Potts removed Crooked Hand’s buckskin pants. When they did, the smell and increased drainage of pus almost turned Tom’s stomach. But he held firm as he and Old Potts laid out Crooked Hand on the ground. Then Big Foot removed his long-bladed cutting and gutting knife from the fire’s coals and commenced opening up Crooked Hand’s festering wound. When he did, his knife sizzled as it hit the stream of pus and bloody, puffy tissue of the inflamed thigh! Taking a deep breath, Big Foot thrust his knife downward until he felt it just tap against Crooked Hand’s thigh bone! Then he twisted it around and around, cutting out a sizeable amount of the dead and dying putrid flesh surrounding the injury hole! When he did, Crooked Hand, still under the effects of the rum, groaned out in pain as his leg convulsed and began to spasm from the new damage being done to the healthy thigh muscle surrounding the dead and dying tissue!
However, Big Foot, having been there before on like wounds in his younger days with other trappers, kept cutting away the damaged and putrid flesh until he was content that he had removed the damaged tissue that was causing the festering! Then Old Potts handed Big Foot a powder horn normally used to refill their single shot pistols. Without missing a beat, Big Foot squeezed out the remaining blood and pus, poured the gaping wound hole in the thigh full of fresh gunpowder, just as Old Potts handed him a stick from the fire with a burning ember on its end.
“Stand back,” cautioned Big Foot, just as he applied the burning end of the stick onto the mound of gunpowder filling the knife’s wound channel. “FOOOFF” went the exposed gunpowder in a quick, upward burning explosion! With the application of the burning stick, the gunpowder exploded and burned its way upwards into the air, as well as clear down to Crooked Hand’s thigh bone! When the flame erupted from the hole, Crooked Hand’s body gave a shud
der, which was followed by a loud groan from the man still in a drunken stupor, then silence. The only thing that remained of the ‘deed now done’ was the smell of burning flesh, steaming pus and the acrid smell of burned gunpowder!
With that, the cauterized wound was wrapped after being flushed out with rum and Crooked Hand was carefully removed from the fire ring area and placed under his sleeping furs in the cave. Then Big Foot placed his knife blade back into the fire’s bed of coals for a few moments but not long enough to reduce its temper. It was then removed and dunked into their nearby creek, making a loud sizzling sound and emitting a small cloud of steam, which floated off into the now cooling night air... Now, Big Foot’s knife was ready to cut chunks off his next buffalo steak when eating.
Without any further conversation, Big Foot put on their coffee pot to boil and Tom sliced several thick steaks off a hindquarter of a cow buffalo hanging from one of the trees in camp and supper was soon had by all. However, each man kept his pistols and rifle laid close at hand in case ‘Blackfoot visitors decided to come uninvited to supper’...
The next morning, everyone was surprisingly awakened with Crooked Hand yelling for his morning coffee! Tom scrambled out from under his sleeping furs like he had been shot from out of a cannon, as did Old Potts and Big Foot! The men gathered around Crooked Hand to see how he was doing, only to be grumpily admonished for not having any coffee ready for him...
Big Foot rolled back Crooked Hand’s sleeping furs and looked at his leg and the wound area. Damn if it did not look and smell better than it had the evening before. It was still horribly swollen, reddish looking in color and ugly looking, but you could tell the ‘frontier remedy’ had more than done what it was supposed to do.