by Terry Grosz
However after a more detailed inspection, the men determined that the cabin was too small for the four of them, all of their provisions and later on the stacks of beaver plus the men figured they would be accumulating. With that information in hand, the men carefully and always on the lookout for Indians, headed back to their original campsite. About an hour later, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand rode into their original campsite only to find Big Foot skinning out a mule deer from a makeshift meat pole. Upon the two men’s arrival, the four trappers sat down around their cook fire and discussed what had been discovered by the two men earlier in the day.
After a thorough discussion regarding Harlan’s old cabin, the men had made their decision. They would move their temporary camp to Harlan’s old cabin. There the men had decided to make an addition onto Harlan’s cabin making the structure like a “T”. By so doing, the men figured that would save them a lot of time and hard labor by only building an ‘add-on’ instead of another fuller-sized cabin. With that, the horses were packed with all the men’s provisions and following Iron Hand, they backtracked their earlier trail over to where Harlan’s old cabin was located.
Once there, all four men added their input into what needed doing and then the work began. The men set about cleaning up the old cabin first and then moved all of their valuable provisions inside to be out of the weather and away from the temptation of theft from the hands of the ‘locals’ if their cabin site and stockpile of provisions were inadvertently discovered. Then while Iron Hand began enlarging and rocking in their nearby spring so the trappers and their livestock could water more easily, Crooked Hand began cutting stout poles for the corral from an adjacent aspen grove. As they labored away, Old Potts and Big Foot built and rocked in their permanent outside firepit, set up their pot-hanging cooking irons and began making supper. Prior to supper being served, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand cut and dragged with the aid of their horses sitting logs for use around the outside campfire and set them into place. Once supper was finished, all of the men set to digging and setting the corral’s previously cut-to-size and hell-for-stout posts so their horse herd could be safely housed without fear of easy theft by Indians. But for the interim, the horses were just double hobbled and left to graze under the watchful eyes of the close at hand trappers.
After breakfast the following morning, the men set to finish constructing the rest of the horse corral and finally had the work done to their satisfaction by nightfall. With the iron-linked chain and padlock in place around the gate posts, the horses were finally safely ensconced. Then the real work began as Big Foot cut a doorway into the back wall of the cabin with a saw, while the other three men cut the needed green timbers for the addition onto their existing smaller cabin. By week’s end, the new addition to the original cabin was up, roofed and ready for storage of all their provisions and the men’s sleeping quarters which would now be housed in the great, fresh-smelling pine wood addition. That way, the smaller original one-room cabin could be used for cooking during the winter months and also for the fleshing and hooping room when the fresh beaver, muskrat, river otter, bear and buffalo skins began arriving for processing. Then while Big Foot set to making chairs, tables and shelves for inside their cabin, the other three men cut dead and dry timber and with their horses, dragged the logs next to their cabin to be used as their winter woodpile. By now, things around their cabin were beginning to look homey and shipshape. Then Big Foot cut pegs and drilled holes into the outside walls of their cabin so their traps could be hung from the pegs for ready access. Additionally, he built a floor sill below the front stoop just inside the doorway into the front of their cabin as a trap for any persons attacking the cabin. By so doing, anyone making a surprise unwanted entrance and not being familiar with the inside stoop, would stumble over such an extra step and fall. If that occurred, upon rising after falling flat onto the floor, guess what awaited the unwanted intruder once he stood up… Lastly, Big Foot cut out shooting holes in all of the walls of the cabin in case the trappers were attacked and trapped inside their cabin. Then he built shooting-hole plugs that could only be opened from the inside to preclude anyone trying to shoot the trappers by using outside shooting holes to shoot through back inside the cabin at its hiding occupants.
Finally, Iron Hand because of his height, began hanging their perishable food items like the dried raisins, dried apples and the like from pegs driven into the inside rafters to preclude ‘the little people’ from chewing through the sacks and consuming the contents, especially if they had been left sitting on the now hard-packed dirt floor. Finished with the last of the inside work, Iron Hand and Big Foot set to work building a meat pole, along with drying and smoking racks for any buffalo and venison meat brought in to be made into jerky. As it turned out, Crooked Hand and Old Potts brought into their camp all the buffalo meat their three packhorses could tote and after the men had sliced the meat into thin strips, the drying and smoking racks were put into immediate use in the making of jerky for the winter months.
That evening under the light from their outside campfire, all four men, using chopped off chunks from their pigs of lead, began the time-honored tradition of casting a small mountain of rifle and pistol balls so that once they began trapping and hunting in earnest, they would have an adequate supply for most eventualities. As they sat around the hot fire pouring and casting their bullets, the men made sure their first keg of high proof rum acquired earlier from Fort Union, was tested to make sure it did not contain any ‘poison’...
By now, the prairie grasses were starting to turn yellow and brown, the geese were moving south in greater and greater numbers, there was usually a skim of ice now in the morning on the cabin’s water bucket, and the aspen trees’ leaves in the area were bright yellow and orange in color. Noticing the distinct nip in the air as he hustled around the outside campfire making coals for his Dutch oven biscuits that the men had come to expect every morning for breakfast, Iron Hand also tended to his buffalo meat frying in bear grease in his three three-legged cast-iron frying pans set in a thin layer of hot coals as well. As many great cooking and baking smells filled the air, out tumbled Iron Hand’s three partners, as they headed for the coffee pot hanging and bubbling away over the hanging irons. Once all the men had poured themselves steaming cups of boiling hot coffee, they then spent the next few minutes trying to cool down those cups of coffee with lots of blowing. As they did, Iron Hand dished out generous slabs of cooked rare buffalo meat as the men liked it and perched a piping hot biscuit on top of each steak served to his friends. After they had been served and were eating their breakfast, Iron Hand served himself, sat down on a sitting log, and THEN HIS PLATE EXPLODED FROM OFF HIS LAP AS A RIFLE BULLET BLEW CLEAR THROUGH THE EDGE OF THE METAL!
Falling over backwards in surprise, Iron Hand quickly rolled towards his rifle sitting alongside another close at hand sitting log, grabbed it, jumped up and looked for the puff of black powder smoke from the assailant’s rifle shot so he knew where to place his shot. Seeing an Indian standing by an aspen near the horse corral hurriedly reloading his rifle, he died as he tried...
Then Iron Hand heard two more shots being fired as he grabbed for his pistol which he always carried in his sash. Whirling around, Iron Hand saw another puff of black powder smoke slowly drifting lazily in the air by a single pine tree standing at the end of their cabin. That was when he also saw an Indian crumpling onto the ground with a bright red splash of blood smeared all over his face. To Iron Hand’s way of thinking, that Indian had died at the hands of Crooked Hand, the man among them who liked to head shoot those he felt it necessary or ones that he did not like... As for Old Potts and Big Foot, they stood at the ready with their rifles in hand around the cooking fire looking all around for any other signs of danger! Seeing none, that gave Iron Hand and Crooked Hand time to reload both of their rifles. Then the men walked over to the two dead Indians, Gros Ventre by their dress, and made sure they were both dead. As expected, there was no doubt as to their being on
their journey to meet the Cloud People... Crooked Hand had shot his man through the head with his rifle appropriately named “Never Miss”, and Iron Hand had exploded the heart in the man he had shot...
For the next hour or so, the men scouted out the area around their cabin and finally came to the conclusion that the two Indians had just been out hunting deer. In so doing, they had stumbled upon the secluded trappers’ cabin and had taken matters into their own hands upon seeing the trappers quietly eating their breakfasts. Those concerns as to their assailants’ deer hunting were further borne out when the men discovered where the Indians had tied off their horses. One of the horses had a previously killed, forked-horn buck tied over the back of the animal. Sensing those two Indian hunters were the only threats, the men continued with the business now at hand.
Bringing the two Indians’ horses down off the hills, they were placed into the corral with the trappers’ other horses. Then the men once again returned to their breakfast without a word being spoken about the most recent series of deadly events. That was until the men had finished eating and then the conversation turned to the matter at hand. That matter at hand being what to do with the two dead Indians so when others came looking for them, they would not be found nor the trappers found out or discovered for what they had done.
Taking another now slightly browned biscuit since they were not tended to in the Dutch ovens while the ruckus was on going, each of the men took turns pouring honey over them and then made sure they did not last in the morning’s cooling air. “Now what do we do with the bodies?” asked Iron Hand, as he finished eating his honey-slathered biscuit and licked the ‘sticky’ off his fingers.
“Well, when John Coulter was being pursued on foot by a mess of Blackfoot Indians hellbent on killing him, he eventually hid under a log pile of driftwood in a creek,” said Old Potts, as he still was wrestling around with the remains of his sticky biscuit. Then licking off his fingers, he said, “Yesterday, I seed jest such a log pile of driftwood down by the bend in the Porcupine, due east of our camp. I say we do the same as did old John Coulter with his self. Let’s take the dead down there, wade out into the water and jam their bodies up under that mess of logs out of sight and let them be until eternity takes us all,” said Old Potts in a matter of fact tone of voice. Hearing no dissent over his suggestion, Old Potts said, “Guess we best get to cracking afore some of their kin come nosing around and then if they see what happened, there will be hell to pay in this here camp come sundown.”
An hour later, Iron Hand stripped down bare naked and waded out into the now getting colder-as-hell Porcupine River dragging Crooked Hand’s head-shot Gros Ventre, jammed him up under the log pile to where he was out of sight and in such a manner, that when he rotted he would not float free. Then Iron Hand took the Indian he had heart shot, waded back into the chest high waters gasping for his breath as the cold made his heart skip a beat or two, and jammed his dead Indian way up under the logjam and out of sight in such a manner that he would not float free when he bloated or rotted away, ever.
Iron Hand then swam out from the cold waters and jumped up onto the bank for what little warmth he could get from the late fall sun’s rays. “Damn, I don’t look forward to this fall’s trapping. I swear, the water in the Porcupine is one hell of a lot colder than that on the Poplar,” grumbled Iron Hand as he shivered violently, while wiping himself off with handfuls of long and now fall-dried grasses from the prairie around him.
“What say we get out of here? Knowing them Indians as I do, if they see us fooling around here by this logjam, they sure as thunder will come and investigate. And if they do, they may see the blood still draining out from that log pile from the one Crooked Hand head shot. Hopefully no damn ‘griz’ will scent blood drippings from his head and then come looking for a meal. They can be sloppy eaters and many times will leave a head, the hips or some long bones and then if they do, the Indians may be on to us as well. So let’s skedaddle afore we get found out and blamed.”
That evening before supper, found Iron Hand hammering out his tin plate on a woodpile log with the steel butt on his pistol to close up the bullet hole the Indian had shot through the plate’s edge with his poorly placed shot while trying to kill Iron Hand. Later during dinner, he found that his hammered-out plate ‘ate’ just as good as before, if not better, since the Indian had missed his chance and Iron Hand had not...
Once again, the trappers decided to venture forth as a group of four and initially scout out the beaver trappings. That way, if attacked, they had a better chance of surviving with four ‘gunners’ instead of just two. At least that was the plan until the trappers got ‘logjammed’ with too many fresh pelts needing fleshing and hooping in order to prevent them from souring. When that occasion arose, then Old Potts and Big Foot would stay back at the cabin, process the fresh pelts and watch over their horse herd being held in their corral, while Iron Hand and Crooked Hand did all of the trapping.
Trailing two packhorses with panniers full of 40 beaver traps, the men left their camp right at daylight. Then doing as they did before on the Poplar River, Iron Hand did all the setting of traps and the other three men stood guard. As it turned out, the waters were so full of beaver, the men only had to run their trap line for about two miles and then all of their 40 traps had been set. Seeing no use in scouting out any new beaver ground until they had trapped out the waters they were now working, and hoping to avoid discovery, the men headed back to their secluded cabin site. But not before collecting 19 dead beaver in their earlier set traps at the front end of their trap line!
That evening when Iron Hand began preparing their traditional evening meal of roasted beaver from their first day’s trappings, Dutch oven biscuits and a raisin and dried apple cobbler in another 16-quart Dutch, the other men fleshed and hooped out their first day’s catch. That night after supper, the men sat around their outside campfire, drank a celebratory cup of rum and smoked their pipes. It had been a good first day, 19 beaver had been caught in their first sets of the trapping season, four roast beaver had been consumed in their entirety, and nothing was left of the raisin and apple Dutch oven cobbler except the gas the men were later passing over having eaten such a rich and sugary repast, which was somewhat foreign to their primarily meat, biscuit and coffee-driven digestive systems…!
The next morning was a repeat of their first and Iron Hand, upon running their traps, discovered 29 beaver present out of the 40 they had set the day before! Plus, almost all of the 29 were what was known in the fur trade as ‘blanket beaver’ they were so big! On the way back to their cabin, Crooked Hand shot and killed a cow buffalo, and soon the packhorses were groaning under the weight of the next mess of suppers and breakfasts, as well as a mound of potential jerky for use later on when the winter winds were howling out on the prairie and fresh, close at hand sources of meat were scarce...
However, things were going to soon take a turn for the worse. The trappers found that they were spending a large amount of their time hidden in the brushy creek and river bottoms, as it seemed more and more Indians were on the prowl looking for their two lost comrades. But after a week of lying low, the numbers of Indians out looking apparently had given up and thinned out, and the trappers got back to their normal trapping activities.
But with the increasing numbers of beaver skins arriving back at the cabin on a daily basis, the trappers found themselves splitting their numbers with two men running the trap line and two staying home caring for the pelts, so they would not mold or spoil before they had a chance to dry out. Once again, the trappers by being split up in their numbers, found they were staring danger in the eye from the Indians and discovery almost on a daily basis.
The fall and the early vestiges of winter were soon upon the four men and then all beaver trapping stopped as the thickness of the ice became problematic when it came to easily trapping beaver. Then it was on to buffalo hunting and the trapping of wolves around the buffalo carcasses. Soon, the new addition to Harlan�
�s old cabin began taking on the looks of a St. Louis fur house. The entire back of the add-on was quickly filling with buffalo hides, a small stack of black and grizzly bear rugs, tanned wolf skins, and 16 packs of beaver pelts wrapped with their protective deer hides and ready for the trip to Fort Union come late spring
After breakfast one morning, Iron Hand and Crooked Hand dressed for the cold, saddled up their mounts and one packhorse and left Old Potts and Big Foot back at the cabin casting more bullets, as they went out to check their wolf traps previously set around three buffalo carcasses. As it turned out, there were wolves in a number of their traps at each buffalo carcass. By the time Crooked Hand had skinned out the wolf carcasses for easier transport back to their cabin in the panniers on their one packhorse, it was nearing nightfall.
Iron Hand decided they would take a shortcut back to their cabin since it was nearing dark and with that, the two trappers headed over a low ridge holding a finger of pine trees that ran out onto the nearby prairie. As the two trappers swung by the lower end of the finger of pines, Iron Hand abruptly slid his horse to a stop in the snow and froze river rock-still in his saddle. Crooked Hand, leading their packhorse and seeing Iron Hand quickly skid to a stop, did the same. Both trappers, in the fast-approaching darkness of night, just sat there in their saddles with their eyes cast up towards the crest of the finger of pine trees. As both men intently looked into that finger of pine trees, they both could smell pine wood smoke. Iron Hand knew they were still about a mile from their secluded cabin and that he and Crooked Hand could not possibly smell wood smoke coming from their cabin site! That smell meant one thing and one thing only, and that was possibly the sign of danger near at hand!
Without a single word being spoken between Crooked Hand and Iron Hand, the two trappers quickly turned their horses around and headed downhill towards a nearby gully holding a dense stand of leafless aspen trees. Arriving in the sparse cover the aspens offered, Iron Hand dismounted and walked back to where Crooked Hand sat quietly on his horse, leading their packhorse.