by Terry Grosz
Several days later, Crooked Hand was up and limping about with the assist of a handmade crutch, but it was obvious he was on the mend and raring to go. However, the other three men kept him back at camp fleshing out the numerous fresh beaver and muskrat skins they were bringing back on a daily basis and hooping the same until his leg had healed even more.
Finally the day came when Crooked Hand tried to mount his horse so he could go trapping with his fellow trappers. However, he was unable to do so under his own steam due to his leg still being severely weakened from the knife wound-caused infection and the following ‘gunpowder operation’. One week later, Crooked Hand tried once again to mount his horse and was still unable to do so. The hurt on his face was palpable at not being able to ride and seeing that on the face of his dear friend, Tom quietly and without fanfare, intervened.
“Try it again, Partner,” said Tom as he stood by Crooked Hand’s side. Once again Crooked Hand tried mounting his horse and that time, he was successful! Well, that and a strong boost from his good friend and the man with the “Iron Hand” giving him a strong assist upward. With that assist, the four men were once again united as trappers in the field, and now there were two very straight shooting men acting as guards when Old Potts ran the traps, instead of just Tom...
For the next two weeks until the first snows of winter began falling, the four men were reaping huge rewards in beaver, river otter and muskrat skins from their bountiful trapping area. Old Potts’s idea to come clear up into the Medicine Lake area trapping had placed them away from the mess of the Fort Union’s Company Trappers and of late, they had seen little sign of any roaming Blackfeet Indians. But for some reason, Tom’s ‘sixth sense’ kept reminding him that all was not well and an ill wind was commencing to blow soon... An ill wind that he just could not put his finger on, but the sinister feeling remained ever present, just as sure as God had made green apples.
Crooked Hand’s leg had healed nicely by the time the colder weather had arrived, leaving him with just a slight limp. A very large scar and a gaping indentation in the thigh muscle remained but for the most part, the pain was very much reduced and manageable. The health of the three remaining men had been good and other than being cold much of the time when wading about in the now icy cold waters as they set their traps, their world and life was good. That was especially apparent if one looked at the small mountain of prime furs stacked out of the weather in the deepest recesses of their cave. Furs that were waiting to be transported to and subsequently sold at Fort Union once summer arrived...
But that nagging ‘sixth sense’ still prevailed on a daily basis for Tom as he kept an extra sharp eye out for any sign of trouble, as the men continued their successful trapping operations. Then the ‘sixth sense’ made its appearance in real time and it was totally unexpected by everyone in the little trapping party of Old Potts, Big Foot, Crooked Hand and the big man with the “Iron Hand”...
CHAPTER FIVE: TROUBLE, “IRON HAND” AND FRONTIER JUSTICE
Leaving their camp early one morning, the four trappers headed out to their usual trapping grounds in the Medicine Lake marshy areas to check their previously set traps. A new but gentle snow had been falling overnight and everything had been covered with six inches of ‘white wilderness’, making travel silent and easy as the trappers made their way to the northeastern end of their extensive trap line. Approaching their first beaver set, Old Potts noticed that the trap was empty and not sprung.
“Damn,” said Old Potts. “I just knew that trap would hold a beaver this morning. There are so many beaver in this area, that trap should of had one by now.”
Staying horsed, the four men rode to their next set and that trap did not hold a beaver either. Without a word, the men rode to their third set and once again, that trap was empty as well!
“Something is not right here,” said Old Potts, as he stepped lightly from his saddle and walked over to the set. Kneeling down on the bank next to the beaver slide, Old Potts just examined with his fingers and eyes the now frozen ground for any keys it might reveal as to why the traps were running empty. Keys that may or may not validate what dark thoughts he was now beginning to harbor in the recesses of his mind...
Rising and turning with a scowl spread clear across his heavily whiskered face, Old Potts said, “Boys, we have a trap robber in our midst and he is a white man! From the looks of the moccasin tracks in the now frozen mud, whoever it belongs to walks like a white man with a full footprint and not like an Indian does by walking on the outside of his foot! Whoever it is, that person came in after we had made our sets yesterday afternoon and cleaned out whatever catches we had ‘slicker than cow slobbers’! Then that person, whoever he is, cleverly re-set our traps hoping not to get discovered by us for what he is doing. However, I need to see more of our other sets and look at what additional signs were left behind in order to know exactly what I am seeing and how many trap-robbing skunks are involved.”
For the next hour, the four men backtracked checking their trap line, as Old Potts continued ‘reading’ the slight evidence of sign left behind by what was now discovered to be a number of very clever trap robbers. Trap robbers who, from what little sign had been left behind, were very experienced frontiersmen and beaver trappers as well. Finally Old Potts stopped on their fifteenth empty set, turned around facing the grim-faced men saying, “I can see from the sign they left, there are at least six of them trap robbers and they are all white men! They are riding shod horses and from those tracks that I can find not covered by this new snow, are trailing four pack animals as well. Since we did not cut any sign west of our camp and trap line, that means the men robbing our traps had to come in from the extreme northeastern side of the lake. That being the case, they are not Company Trappers from Fort Union but more than likely Hudson Bay men dropping down from their trapping grounds in the north, who have discovered and are robbing our traps. I suspect they have already trapped out their own beaver waters and are now looking for more promising grounds in our country. However, what they are doing in the way of trap robbing is a killing offense out here on the frontier to my way of thinking,” growled Old Potts. “A killing offense because they are destroying our trapping livelihood and in essence, slowly killing us too!”
“Now, I think we need to catch these beaver-trap robbing thieves red-handed. The way I read the sign is that they are working our trap line in the dead of night. That way, the ground is good and frozen hard and they leave few tracks giving away what they are doing. They can do so because they now know where each of our traps are set and can ride right to them in the moonlight. The way I figure it, we have lost at least 20 good plus just this day alone! Once again to my way of thinking, robbing a man from what his traps are catching out here on the frontier is no better than stealing a man’s horse and leaving him a-foot. A thief is a thief and needs killing, no matter where he comes from or who he is working for. I say we beat it out of here so we don’t leave any more of our sign than we have to and come back after sundown. When we do, we can ride into that long draw down yonder, hide, and wait them out. From there, any riders robbing and riding our trap line will have to ride within 30 yards of where we would be hidden. When they do, we can deal with them as we see fit. What do you fellas say to that plan?” asked Old Potts.
“If we gonna be leaving so we are not discovered, I say we get to it,” said Crooked Hand with an evil look scrawled clear across his weathered face. Without another word, the men left the area via the backside of a hillside so they would not leave any more sign of discovery along their trap line, which was currently strung out along the beaver-rich waters in the lake’s marshes and creek tributaries in the bottoms.
That night and all through the following one, no one showed up to rob their previously set traps. So the men removed the beaver from their traps themselves like they normally would have done, re-set them so they could continue trapping in the beaver-rich area, and then returned to their camp to flesh and hoop out their catches.
“Do you think they saw us looking our empty traps over and have skedaddled?” asked Tom to the group of men sitting around eating breakfast the following morning, after not being able to catch their trap robbers red-handed from the night before.
“No,” said Big Foot, as he wrestled down a rather large chunk of half-cooked buffalo meat. “I have a feeling that they are just letting us continue to trap in the area like nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Then they will hit us once again when they think our suspicions of trap-robbing are down. So we need to continue freezing our hind ends off each night until they return. And my big friend, rest assured, they will return. For sure they will return, especially when we are averaging almost a beaver to every trap that we have previously placed along the length of our trap line. Additionally, we will soon have trapped out this immediate area and they, whoever they are, will know that if they are beaver trappers like the rest of us. With that in mind, I would imagine they will soon tire of stealing from us once our catch begins dropping off,” continued Big Foot.
That evening as the men prepared their horses for another long and cold night hidden in the wooded draw near their trap line, Tom found that his ‘sixth sense’ was bedeviling him once again. That time, Tom shared his unusual inner feelings with his partners. When he finished telling the men about those unusual feelings of foreboding as they continued saddling their horses, they all listened in respectful silence and said nothing.
Then Old Potts said, “Boys, make sure all your pistols are loaded with a double load of buck and ball. I also share some of Tom’s concerns about tonight being the night of contact with our trap robbers and we sure had better be ready because there are more of them than there are of us. If that be the case, it is better to clear a man out from his saddle in the moonlight with a load of buck and ball from close range, than trying to hit him with a single ball from our rifles while riding on a moving horse.” With those words, Old Potts began double loading and charging both of his pistols by the light of their campfire. Moments later, the rest of the men followed suit...
Following that bit of deadly preparation, the four men left their camp riding single file, as they headed for the draw from which they hoped to ambush their trap robbers if they chose to appear that night and dispense some much-needed frontier justice. After half-an-hour of silently riding in the cold winter night lit up by three-quarters of a moon, the men arrived in their grove of trees and sat there quietly on their horses out of sight, wishing they were gathered around a warm fire instead of sitting in a cold saddle... As they did, each of the men more than likely had two thoughts on their minds. Would they fight bravely if their trap robbers bothered to show their cowardly faces that evening and put up a fight, and would this be ‘their’ last night...
Around two in the morning under a three-quarter moon sparkling brightly on the newly fallen snow, the men heard a horse whinny off in a distance! Their cold and stiffness of limbs was immediately forgotten over hearing that familiar sound, and even the horses they sat upon seemed to sense something special was about to happen, and were shivering in anticipation of the event to come as well.
Streaming across the bottom of the draw in which quietly sat the four aggrieved trappers silently moved a long caravan of men, mules and horses! Moving in a single file were ten ‘trap-robbing’ men, their riding stock and a fully loaded horse and mule pack string numbering 15 animals!
Then it dawned on the four trappers waiting in ambush. Their trap robbers were fully loaded because they were pulling out from a beaver-depleted area and moving into another trapping location holding more chances for trapping success. However, they were greedy and not going to leave the current area until they had picked clean all the traps set by Old Potts and his small beaver trapping crew!
But what to do now? flashed through Tom’s mind. They were outnumbered by more than two to one and every one of the men who had slowly filed by in front of the four hidden trappers in the bright moonlight, appeared to be heavily armed and ready to defend themselves at a moment’s notice should the occasion arise!
Old Potts waited until the trap robbers’ caravan stopped and removed a dead beaver from one of his nearby traps. Tying the dead beaver on the side of one of the packhorses along with a now stolen trap, that trap-robbing rider re-mounted his horse and the caravan continued on in the bright moonlit to the next of Old Potts’s traps. When they robbed a beaver from that trap and stole the expensive trap as well, Old Potts had seen and had enough! If it was not bad enough stealing a man’s trappings, taking his traps was doing nothing but taking away his way of life on the frontier as well! thought Old Potts through a gritted set of teeth and narrowly slotted eyes.
Waiting until the trap-robbing caravan began moving on once again towards the next trap holding a dead beaver, Old Potts quietly slipped in behind the caravan with his three compatriots close at hand. Together they rode along quietly until the trap robbers stopped to remove another furbearer from one of Old Potts’s traps and all of their attention was focused on that beaver-removing event.
That was when Old Potts, with a left hand signal to the men riding quietly in the snow behind him to ride around him and be ready, began his move. Moments later after Old Potts’s men had been motioned and moved around him to get into a better fighting location, he ‘lit up the night and let her rip’!
“Hey! What the ‘Sam Hill’ are you doing robbing my traps!” bellowed Old Potts, who by then had moved quietly smack-dab into the middle of the mess of beaver thieves before they knew what was happening and unbeknownst to the rest of their kind.
Immediately, the men in the trap robbers’ pack string ‘blew up’ in utter surprise at having a stranger so close at hand in their midst and catching them in their little beaver and trap-thieving act! Two of the men closest to Old Potts, immediately swung their rifles in his direction as if to shoot him from his saddle! That was their last act on earth as Old Potts blew both men from their saddles with his two double loaded horse pistols from just six feet away!
The man that Tom had quietly ridden up alongside in the long pack string, finally realizing the monster-sized man next to his horse was not one of his party, quickly whipped his rifle around as if to shoot Tom at close range. He did so, only to have his head smashed in from the stock of Tom’s sharply thrust Hawken rifle, knocking that thief dead and under the hooves of his own horse! Another trap-robbing man sitting alongside the man Tom had just unhorsed by smashing in his head with the butt of his rifle, tried to knock Tom off his horse with just his hard-swinging rifle barrel! He did so because he was too close to shoot after his long-barreled rifle got tangled up with horse and man!
Reaching for the man swinging the barrel of his rifle trying to unhorse him and now aware of all the rifles and pistols firing up and down the line of trap robbers, Tom jerked him out from his saddle by the nape of his neck, just as the man was finally able to discharge his rifle in Tom’s direction. The flame from the close-in shot from the trap robber’s rifle burned one side of Tom’s buckskin shirt all to hell! Fortunately, the bullet missed gut-shooting Tom by mere inches!
Feeling the fury rising up in him like he had felt when the Blackfoot raiding party had attacked their camp earlier in the year, Tom grabbed his man by his shoulder-length hair with his right hand, jerked him over to the side of Tom’s horse and cleanly twist-snapped his neck, which made a sound like a muffled pistol shot! That man was quickly dropped under his nervous horse’s hooves just as another problem quickly arose for Tom. Just then, another surprised and now fleeing trap robber tried to unhorse Tom by riding his speeding horse into the side of Tom’s steed! That deadly move only got him cleaned clear out from his saddle with a blast from Tom’s horse pistol from just two feet away! That man was blown out from his saddle due to the closeness of the pistol’s blast and fell down among the line of now nervously milling, fully packed mules and horses as well!
Then a smallish in size man tried dashing by Tom on foot on the opposi
te side of several nervously milling pack animals. As it turned out, he was the outlaw trap robber who had been cleaning out all the traps before Old Potts had ‘blown up their little beaver thieving party’...
As the man ran by Tom, he fired a pistol in his direction from such close range that the flame from the weapon’s discharge burned off most of one of Tom’s eyebrows! That was the last earthly act committed by that individual as well, as Tom’s tomahawk cut him down before he could run another step or take the time to unlimber the other pistol carried in his sash and finish Tom off...
Then silence reigned all up and down the line, other than the nervous shuffling and snorting of the trap robbers’ stock train and the sound of Tom’s rapidly beating heart. Once again in his fury, Tom had killed four men who deserved killing! One with the “Iron” in his hands by a snapped neck, one by Tom’s rifle butt smashed into the side of a trap robber’s head, one with a pistol shot at close range, and the last one with a well-thrown tomahawk!
“Is everyone alright?” yelled Old Potts, who had started off the trap robbers’ ‘Moonlight Prairie Dance’.
“I am,” yelled back Big Foot. “I caught a pistol ball in my bad leg,” groaned Crooked Hand, as his bad luck with his bad leg continued to hold out... “I am fine,” said Tom, “just covered with blood and brain matter from the man I killed with my rifle butt,” he continued.
“Tom, can you build us a fire so we can see what the damned hell we got ourselves into and I can look at Crooked Hand’s leg?” yelled Big Foot.
“Sure can. Let me gather up some wood from the draw where we were hidden and I will be right back,” said Tom as he started to head for the nearby draw.