by Terry Grosz
Neither trapper hardly moved, other than their arms and hands, as they hurriedly reloaded their rifles and pistols. Slowly riding out from their place of concealment in the willows in the pre-dawn light next to one of Gabe’s trap sites, the brothers then sat silently on their horses for a long moment. Sitting there quietly, they looked around for any other signs of danger. Seeing or hearing none, the Dents rode over to the two Indians’ quietly standing horses. Stepping off his horse, Gabe gathered in their reins as Josh continued standing guard. With those horses in tow, they began trailing Curly Bear’s horse’s tracks in the snow as the dawn began breaking. Off in the near distance, the howling of the previously seen wolf pack trailing the herd of elk signaled a kill. How ironic, thought Josh, as death, in its many forms, rode in on the morning rays of the chill winter sun.
Shortly thereafter, the brothers discovered Curly Bear’s body but his horse had run off. That was not good, thought Josh, because the horse would more than likely go back to its original camp. That being the case and if there were more Indians there, trouble would certainly follow. Especially once the Indian kill site was discovered after those warriors had backtracked their compatriot’s riderless horse in the snow...
Realizing this new danger, the brothers carried off the three dead Indians into a nearby deep draw they knew that housed a grizzly bear’s den. Hurriedly exiting the area, they gathered up all their traps and then, with the two Indian riding horses and one packhorse, headed back towards their cabin. Meaning to confuse anyone trailing them, they took a circuitous route through several creeks. Then using a high place of concealment to observe their back trail, they hurriedly skinned out the beaver and river otter carcasses they had gathered when they had pulled their remaining traps. Discovering no one on their back trail by late afternoon, Josh and Gabe finally came into their camp late at night, guided by their horses’ night vision and innate sense of direction.
Back at camp, Josh told the rest of their party what had happened and the precautions they had taken to foil any Blackfoot followers. Jim was more than satisfied at the men’s precautions and even happier the next morning when he went out to get water for their breakfast. There was another foot of fresh snow on the ground and it was obvious that more was coming throughout the day! Mother Nature had seen to it that the trappers were more than safe now—more than safe because with the fresh snows there would be no one tracking the now-lost trails left by Josh and Gabe. In short, the Blackfoot menace over what had just transpired was more than likely over for the moment, especially since Indians did not like traveling during the winter, war party or not.
A few weeks later, freeze-up settled over the land and the trappers pulled their beaver and river otter traps. Then they settled down for the winter trapping of other furbearers with the use of snares and deadfalls. In and around those activities, the men initiated the hunting of buffalo for their hides and meat. However, as they did, they now traveled in a group of six heavily armed Mountain Men. After all, one never knew from whence the dangers might come...
CHAPTER SEVEN: SPRING, 1810 —GRIZ AND THE LOSS OF A FRIEND
Early one January morning, Gabe awoke to much grunting and the rumbling of many hooves on the frozen ground just outside their cabin. Fearing an attack by the Blackfeet, he sprang up from his sleeping platform, grabbed his rifle and yelled at the others to get up! Soon the cabin was alive with hurrying men grabbing their rifles for the anticipated battle to follow. Then a quick look outside through their shooting holes cut in the side of their cabin at thousands of passing buffalo, “meals” on the hoof, allayed those fears of Blackfoot attack. With that realization, the frantic activity changed from battle mode to that of six trappers quickly putting on their heavy winter clothing and capotes for the hunt soon to follow, particularly since the buffalo had only rumbled into the large meadow just below the trappers’ cabin. There they stopped and began moving the snow aside with their noses and hooves, seeking out the life-giving grasses underfoot.
“No time to cast any balls, Men,” yelled Gabe. “Just grab what you have and let’s make some meat before this here herd feeds out of the area from the reaches of our cooking fire.”
After the herd had finally passed the cabin, it didn’t take the men long to ready themselves for an unplanned buffalo hunt. As several men saddled the horses, the rest scrambled to load all their powder horns and gather up extra knives and whetstones in preparation for the hunt and butchering soon to follow. Running out into the frigid winter air, the rest of the trappers tumbled into their saddles and trotted off after the buffalo herd. The herd, undisturbed by the slow riders lying over the necks of their horses and breaking up the outline of the riders, gradually spread out in the meadow below their cabin like so many dark dots of course grained pepper on a white snowy tablecloth.
Reining up behind a small knoll, the men hurriedly ran to just below the rim and then flopping down on the snow-covered ground, slowly crawled the remaining distance to the top. Careful not to be seen by the now casually feeding buffalo close-at-hand below, the trappers spread out along the lower side of the ridge top. With a low whistle from Jim, the men carefully peeped over the crest, took their positions, and commenced firing into the shaggy beasts below. Within minutes, some twenty-four cow buffalo lay kicking their last. As they rolled over and died, they left bloody red slosh marks in the pure white snow. Now alarmed at the loud noises from firing rifles and the pungent smell of fresh blood renting the air, the herd began slowly ambling off to the far side of the meadow. Rising to their feet, the men laughed and yelled in glee at the now-cooling bounty lying before them close to their cabin!
Then the work began but not before the men quickly reloaded their rifles. After all, one never knew what the noise of a lot of rifle fire would bring in the way of visitors... Once done, four of them walked down to the dead buffalo and began the business of gutting, skinning, and boning out the rich meat. After being skinned, the hides were laid fur side down in the snow and the best cuts of meat from that buffalo piled high on top of the skin side of the hide to cool. As the butchering progressed, Jim and Al had ridden back to the cabin and assembled four travois. Once done, they hitched up a like number of pack animals for the meat hauling at hand. When they returned to the kill site, the men gathered around several undressed cows and, after opening up their sides, removed their steaming hot livers. Opening up the bile gland, the green liquid was smeared over the steaming liver. Then taking their gutting knives, they quickly cut off smaller slabs of the warm and bloody liver for immediate consumption. After much slurping and belching, a liver from a second ungutted cow was removed and quickly consumed in a like manner. Finally satisfied with their “breakfast,” the real work then began. The men skinned out the remaining carcasses and hauled those slabs of steaming meat back to their cabin on the travois for drying, smoking and processing.
To remove the hides, the men cut a circle around each ankle to the bone and made a slit up the legs of each animal. Another cut was then made around the neck and then from the bung, ventrally up to the circle cut around the neck. The hide was then jerked off the buffalo by tying a large rock in the loose skin at the back of the neck. Then a rope was tied around the hide-enclosed rock. With a horse pulling the rope tied to the skin-bound rock, the hide was quickly jerked off.
Once back at the cabin, the hides were scraped clean of all fat and meat scraps and then stacked under a lean-to or pegged to the side of the cabin for drying. Later they would be folded ten to a pack for trade at Fort Raymond. From there they would be transported by boat down to St. Louis and then to New Orleans. Once at the trading establishment, the hides brought anywhere from three to five dollars each. These were later fashioned into heavy winter coats, rugs, replacement leather, strapping for running heavy machinery, or suspending the riding portion of stagecoaches on their carriages making for a smoother ride.
Salvage efforts continued throughout the day on the buffalo bounty with little let-up by the men. Come sundown, t
he work, except for the cleanup by all the land and avian scavengers, was completed. Back at the cabin, the meat was stacked up in huge bleeding piles. Then it was trimmed into strips and laid across the drying racks. Other cuts from the hams and hump ribs were smoked and later hung from the rafters in the cabin or in the newly built cache house to store the overload of fresh meat. Later, much of this bounty was placed in numerous tanned deerskin bags designed for holding many pounds of dried jerky that was then hung inside from roof rafter stringer pegs. That way, by hanging the precious meat in suspension, it kept those little critters normally associated with living in a backwoods cabin, such as mice, from also “tasting” the fruits of the trappers’ labors.
When Josh and Gabe got back to the cabin, a huge outdoor fire was built and many slabs of buffalo meat were staked on sticks along the fire for the hardworking men to partake. Into one large cast iron pot partially filled with water went many pounds of smaller ham chunk meat and pieces of leaf lard followed by several pounds of dried red beans. This, along with several handfuls of hot pepper flakes, was left to slowly cook for many following evening meals.
Then taking a mess of smaller intestines, Gabe turned them inside out, ran some water through them and slammed them against a corral post to remove the remaining previously digested vegetative contents. This was the process since he didn’t have a free-running creek—it was now frozen over—to help with the washing process. Once that “cleaning” was done, Gabe stuffed them with dried wild onions and plums taken from their stores in their cabin. That was followed with chunks of still-bloody leaf lard from their morning’s kill and previously boiled rice being stuffed inside. Then he sewed the ends shut and slow-roasted them over the fire’s coals on a high cooking grate. Once the fatty boudins began sizzling juices and emanating many wonderful smells, the men took time off from their meat processing and returned to the “fire of great smells.” Soon, they had wolfed down great lengths of the greasy, hot, lip-burning, wonderful, not yet fully cooked but great tasting delights until they were gone. As for the pieces of fodder remaining in the intestines from the buffalo’s previous meals, the men just picked those slivers of vegetable matter from their teeth and spit them back into the fire. Roughage in meals was many times an everyday hazard of the Mountain Men so they just ate it anyways and bore the following collateral discomforts, intestinal and otherwise.
Days later, the hides and fresh meat had been processed. That included the Mountain Man’s staple: numerous sacks of jerky loaded into tanned deerskin bags and hung from their cabin’s ceiling rafters by the six hardworking Mountain Men. Many times men of such mettle went hungry on the frontier so bounty of the type just described was considered Heaven-sent by the hardworking trappers and not to be ignored, if one wanted to enjoy the next sunrise.
Flush with buffalo meat, the men now turned to other details needed to further sustain the life of a frontiersman, particularly when the winter winds howled around the eaves of their cabin and the land remained in a cold deep sleep. Knives were sharpened, rifle and pistol balls were cast by the small mountain, powder horns refilled, horses and mules were shod as needed, and firearms were lubricated with oil from beaver tails or from the oily glands of prairie dogs. Then traps, the staple of any Mountain Man’s existence, were repaired and sometimes lubricated with beaver tail oils. Beaver plews—the Mountain Man term for tanned beaver skins—from the fall and early winter trapping seasons were then folded with the fur side in. These were then compressed sixty to a pack, tied with elk sinew, and covered with a tanned deerskin on the outside for protection during transport to a trading post. Finally, tack was repaired and new clothing, moccasins and firearms repaired or their parts replaced for the coming year. In between all those everyday winter activities, the trappers ran their winter trap, snare, and deadfall lines for the furbearers yielded during that time of the year from the dense forests. Furbearers such as the wolf, coyote, bobcat, lynx, marten, and gray fox were eagerly collected for the profits they would bring the trappers during the summer get-together at Fort Raymond.
One fine, windless day, Josh and Gabe let the group know they had a hunger for some bighorn sheep meat. Everyone else advised they also had a hankering for some of the same as well after eating buffalo in its many cooked forms for such a long time. As a result of the consensus, a hunt for the treat was planned. The next morning, Josh and Gabe ventured forth in almost zero degree weather and, after a short ride of several miles to a small mountain range known to harbor bighorn sheep on their winter range, they dismounted. Wary of the local Blackfeet, they tied their horses off in a small copse of trees hiding them from prying eyes. Two hours later, Gabe was successful in bagging a large, fat bighorn ram that was soon quartered and carried back to the waiting horses. Loading the animal onto one of their horses, they found themselves back at the cabin in time for supper. Since they had killed the beast, the rest of the trappers happily suggested it was up to the brothers to cook it under playful threat of being wrestled into the snow by the others if they didn’t...
That evening, after a supper of fireside-roasted bighorn, boiled rice mixed with dried plums and small mounds of bannock bread, the men advised the brothers the meat from their animal was the equal to buffalo in flavor, very tender and sweet. Several even thought it was similar tasting to the spring-killed lambs they used to eat back home in years past.
***
The rest of that deep winter passed without problem, other than the usual cabin fever and desire to be out and about trapping beaver once again.
Soon, rich spring grasses began pushing through the semifrozen soils, much to the horse and mule herds’ delight. It wasn’t long before those animals waxed fat on the newfound greens, as the creeks, rivers, ponds, and marshes began opening up once again as well. With ice barely out, the beaver returned to the casual eye, as did the ducks on the ponds and the sandhill cranes in the meadows. With those happy signs much evident, the trappers realized spring trapping for 1810 was upon them. Little did anyone realize that this trapping season would be the last for one of their number...
Arriving back after their first day of spring trapping on the northern end of the Musselshell, Josh and Gabe were surprised to see all the rest of their trapping clan already back at their cabin. Dismounting, Josh discovered Jim approaching with a concerned look on his face.
“Did either of you boys run into any sign of goodly numbers of Blackfeet today?” he asked.
“Nary a one up where we were working and only just a few old pony tracks. But we sure did run into a passel of griz and its sign all over in the bottoms,” said Gabe. “They must be up to their old tricks of filling up on all the clams in the river now that the ice has gone out,” he continued.
“Well, we four ran into a passel of them savages. (Indians supplied a majority of all the furs taken during the Mountain Man heyday. They eagerly trapped for what they considered a common bounty of animals for scarce white man’s goods. Plus, there were more Indians out and about trapping than all the white trappers combined.) We didn’t set a single trap fer fear of tangling with them in our old trappin’ areas,” he replied. “It looks like they be out in force this year trappin’ and the like in our neck of the woods. In fact, me and the boys discovered a large camp of those heathens camped down in the big meadows by the old eagle’s nest tree next to the area we are used to trappin’,” continued Jim. By now, Al, One-Shot and Big-Eye had joined Jim to listen in and see what the boys had discovered during their first day afield.
“Well, they ain’t up in our neck of the woods as of yet and we found the beaver trappin’ damn good. So much so, that we hate to back off trapping now, especially with a trip to Fort Raymond in our sights for this summer,” replied Josh with a grimace. “However, as I said earlier, we have a real passel of griz in our neck of the woods. It seemed every sow had at least two cubs this winter and we seed two of them that had three! And they ’pear to be eatin’ everything in sight left over from the winter kills as well as eve
ry clam they can stuff in their boilers.”
“Well, it not be good to risk our top knots trappin’ down were we usually go. At least until them savages graze off all the good grass in the meadows and then move on,” said Al. “As fer the griz, that problem comes with the turf and is one we will jest haff to high-step around and be on our best alerts.” The others standing nearby listening to the conversation just nodded their heads in agreement over what Al had said realizing that when it came to the plentiful griz, one had best not be a “low-stepper” unless he wanted to become bear bait or scat.
“Why not move up where we are working?” said Gabe. “There be plenty beaver in that neck of the woods and as such, we would be closer together if something bad were to happen to any of us. Especially if a bad situation with them Blackfeet was to break and we needed each other for support,” he continued.
“We may haff to,” said Jim slowly. “I don’t cotton to messin’ with all them Blackfeet rascals iffen I don’t haff to,” he continued.
“Then it’s a done deal,” said Josh with his characteristic toothy grin. “Me and my brother would welcome all of you trappin’ in our neck of the woods because there sure nuff is plenty to go around for all of us.”
“Then so be it. Tomorrow the six of us will team up and continue trappin’ up north. Josh, you, Gabe and One-Shot team up, and me and Al will team up with Big-Eye and get her done. That-a-way, we can continue to fill our bag with beaver plews and have an extra gun in each group fer defense iffen them rascals decide to move north where we be,” said Jim thoughtfully.
With that, all the men fell to helping Josh and Gabe hoop out their beaver skins from their first day’s trappings. Then they pitched in working as a team stewing up a supper with steak from a freshly killed moose, beans laced with wild onions, mounds of bannock bread slathered in honey, and many steaming cups of “hot tar,” affectionately called trapper’s coffee.