BEAVER JOE
Joe Dubois, or Beaver Joe, as he was known to the Factor and his fellow
woodsmen, was the most successful trapper who had ever baited steel jaws
for the Hudson Bay Company in all its long history of two hundred and
twenty-five years. Not in all the howling wilderness from the Great
Lakes to the mouth of the Mackenzie, and from Labrador to the Selkirks,
was there another who brought in such packs of skins.
Joe's fellow trappers said that mink and muskrat would play tag on the
pans of his traps just for fun, and that the beaver loved Joe's body
scent on the trap, better than its own castor, an oily substance taken
from the beaver and nearly always used in baiting the trap.
Joe was a half-breed, his father being a Frenchman and his mother an
Indian girl. It was his father who had given him the nickname of Beaver
Joe, but his mother called him by a long Indian name, which I can
neither spell nor pronounce, but it signified man of many traps.
This famous woodsman always went further into the wilderness than any
other trapper, and his rounds of traps were spread over a larger area.
He had to travel fifty miles through a trackless wilderness to make the
circle of his traps. How true his Indian's instinct must have been to
scatter several hundred traps over an area of fifty miles, and then go
to them month after month unerringly. How easy one could have gone
astray in the shifting gray glooms of the snow-laden forest, which
changed from week to week as the snow was piled higher and higher and
the full fury of winter settled on the land.
But Joe was never lost, and owing to his Indian inheritance, and his
knowledge of the woods in wind and rain, snow and sleet, he rarely lost
a trap.
He always located his cabin at a central point where he could return to
it every two or three days.
His was not the ordinary shack but a well built cabin with a hole about
six by eight under it called the cellar.
Why Joe wanted a good cabin, instead of a rude shack, and why he took
pains to make it comfortable, you will see later.
On the fourth summer of his rambles, Shaggycoat went much further from
home than usual. This nomadic habit grew upon him, and each year he
visited new lakes and streams. But this year he left all his old
landmarks far behind and penetrated a new country.
Occasionally he saw signs that made him think this country was inhabited
by the strange creature who had visited his lake two years before, in
the great red duck. Something told him that it was a fearful country but
curiosity and a desire to visit new places impelled him on and on.
Once he heard a loud pounding in the forest near the stream, and going
cautiously forward, saw one of the strange creatures standing by a large
tree, pounding upon it with mighty strokes. He was about to turn and
flee from the place in haste, when he noticed a tremor in the top of the
tree. He had seen this shudder in a tree many times before and knew well
what it meant, so waited to watch and listen.
Then the strange creature struck upon the tree a few times more and it
wavered, as though uncertain where to lay its tall form. Then with a
rush and a roar, and a thunderous sound that rolled away through the
forest, it fell and was no more a tree, but only a stick of timber.
When the sable mantle of night had been spread over the land and the
creature who stood on his hind legs and pounded at the tree so
vigorously had gone away, Shaggycoat went ashore and examined his work
critically.
Tree-felling was in his line and this interested him very much.
Perhaps the queer creature was a beaver after all, for he was cutting
trees just as they did about his own lake, but when he had examined the
stump, he felt quite sure it was not the work of a beaver. The cleft was
very smooth, and there were no teeth marks. The trunk had been cut in
two, and here the cut was also smooth. The chips were much larger than
those left by a beaver.
During the next few days Shaggycoat saw signs of much tree-cutting and
they were all evidently cut by the creature who pounded on the trunk
with his bright stick. The following week he came upon something that
interested and astonished him even more than this, and that was a real
dam, more symmetrical than his own, and holding in its strong arms a
beautiful lake. He was sure that the dam was not made by beavers, for
many of the logs used in its construction were too large for a beaver to
manage. Besides there was a queer doorway in the middle of the dam for
the water to run through. The lake was rather low and considerable water
was escaping through the door.
Our industrious dam-builder thought this waste of water a great pity,
and although the dam did not belong to him, he set to work and in half a
day had stopped the sluiceway very effectively.
This industry greatly astonished the real owners of the dam, who
discovered it a week later. They were a party of log-men, who had built
the dam to help them in getting their logs through a long stretch of
shallow water.
The following day Shaggycoat came upon a great number of logs in the
stream.
They stretched miles and miles, and he thought these must be remarkable
creatures, who could cut so many logs. He also thought it was getting to
be a perilous country, and no place for a beaver who wished to live a
long life, so he started homeward.
The leaves had just turned red upon the soft maple along the little
water courses and that was a sign that he always heeded.
The second day of his return journey, while wading through a shallow in
the stream, he put his remaining good forepaw in one of Joe Dubois's
traps. It was only a mink trap, and would not have held, had he been
given time to wrench himself free, but he had barely sprung the trap
when the alder bushes on the bank parted and the celebrated trapper,
club in hand, stood upon the shore within ten feet of the terrified
beaver.
"Oh, by gar!" exclaimed Joe at the sight of him. "You is just one pig,
fine skin by gar. I got you.
"Now you run away, I shoot. You keep still, I kill you with my club.
That not tear you fine coat."
So Joe got hold of the end of the chain and began carefully working the
beaver in toward him, holding the club ready.
When he had drawn poor Shaggycoat within striking distance he raised the
club slowly.
The beaver saw the flash of the sunlight on the stick and the sinister
look in Joe's eye, and something told him that his hour had come. He had
seen a beaver killed once by a falling limb, and he knew quite well how
stiff and motionless he would be when the club had descended. All in a
second the picture of his woodland lake and Beaver City flashed before
him and there was Brighteyes, and the beaver kids all waiting
expectantly for him; all the colony waiting for his home-coming that
they might begin repairs upon the dam.
The sun had never shone so brightly in all his life as it did at that
moment, and the murmur of a brook had never sounded so sweet in his
ears. But some great lady in the far away city was waiting impatiently
for her cloak, and the factor at the post was holding out two bright
shillings, so Joe brought the club down with a mighty stroke.
But the love of life was strong in Shaggycoat, as it is in nearly all
animate things, so, quick as a flash, he twitched his head to one side,
and the club fell in the stream with a great splash, filling the
trapper's eyes with water.
"By gar," ejaculated Joe, blowing the water from his mouth, and laying
down the club to wipe his eyes. "You is one mighty slick beaver, that
you is, but it wasn't smart of you to get into my trap. Dat time you was
one pig fool." Then a sudden inspiration came to Joe.
"By gar," he exclaimed, "I good mind to pring you home to my leetle gal.
How she laugh when she see you. You pehave, I do it. You bother me, I
prain you."
Then Joe scratched his head and thought. How could it be done? Finally a
plan came to him, for he went to the alder bushes and cut a crotched
stick, and another stick which was straight. With the crotched stick, he
pinned Shaggycoat's neck to the ground, while with a piece of buckskin
thong taken from his pocket he made a tight fitting collar for the
beaver's neck. Then with another piece of thong he bound his hind legs
tightly together. When this had been done, he passed a stout stick
through the collar and the other end of it, between the beaver's hind
legs. He then loosed the trap, and, grasping the stick half-way between
the collar and the thong on the hind legs, started off with the unhappy
beaver, carrying him, so that all the landscape looked upside down.
At first, Shaggycoat struggled violently but whenever he struggled Joe
tapped him on the nose with his club and he soon saw that his best
course was to keep still and let his captor carry him wherever he would.
The stick through the collar choked him so that he could hardly breathe,
and the thong on his hind legs cut into the muscles, but even these
discomforts were better than the club from which he had so narrowly
escaped, so he behaved very well for a wild thing and watched Joe's
every motion, always with a view of making a break for freedom at the
first opportunity. But there seemed little chance of escape as long as
the stick held him stretched out at his full length so that he could not
get at his fetters.
So the woods went by with the trees all upside down, sticking their tops
into the sky.
The blood surged into Shaggycoat's head, and his eyes grew dim. The
great sleep was coming to him, that into which his grandfather had
fallen, from which there was no awakening.