THE MAKING OF THE MOCCASINS
It is a grim joke of the animal world that the lazy moose is the moose
that gives wings to the feet of the pursuer. When snow comes the trapper
must have snow-shoes and moccasins. For both, moose supplies the best
material.
Bees have their drones, beaver their hermits, and moose a ladified
epicure who draws off from the feeding-yards of the common herd, picks
out the sweetest browse of the forest, and gorges herself till fat as a
gouty voluptuary. While getting the filling for his snow-shoes, the
trapper also stocks his larder; and if he can find a spinster moose, he
will have something better than shredded venison and more delicately
flavoured than finest teal.
Sledding his canoe across shallow lakelets, now frozen like rock, still
paddling where there is open way, the trapper continues to guide his
course up the waterways. Big game, he knows, comes out to drink at
sunrise and sunset; and nearly all the small game frequents the banks of
streams either to fish or to prey on the fisher.
Each night he sleeps in the open with his dog on guard; or else puts up
the cotton tepee, the dog curling outside the tent flap, one ear awake.
And each night a net is set for the white-fish that are to supply
breakfast, feed the dog, and provide heads for the traps placed among
rocks in mid-stream, or along banks where dainty footprints were in the
morning's hoar-frost. Brook trout can still be got in the pools below
waterfalls; but the trapper seldom takes time now to use the line,
depending on his gun and fish-net.
During the Indian's white-fish month--the white man's November--the
weather has become colder and colder; but the trapper never indulges in
the big log fire that delights the heart of the amateur hunter. That
would drive game a week's tracking from his course. Unless he wants to
frighten away nocturnal prowlers, a little, chip fire, such as the
fishermen of the Banks use in their dories, is all the trapper allows
himself.
First snow silences the rustling leaves. First frost quiets the flow of
waters. Except for the occasional splitting of a sap-frozen tree, or the
far howl of a wolf-pack, there is the stillness of death. And of all
quiet things in the quiet forest, the trapper is the quietest.
As winter closes in the ice-skim of the large lakes cuts the bark canoe
like a knife. The canoe is abandoned for snow-shoes and the cotton tepee
for more substantial shelter.
If the trapper is a white man he now builds a lodge near the best
hunting-ground he has found. Around this he sets a wide circle of traps
at such distances their circuit requires an entire day, and leads the
trapper out in one direction and back in another, without retracing the
way. Sometimes such lodges run from valley to valley. Each cabin is
stocked; and the hunter sleeps where night overtakes him. But this plan
needs two men; for if the traps are not closely watched, the wolverine
will rifle away a priceless fox as readily as he eats a worthless
musk-rat. The stone fire-place stands at one end. Moss, clay, and snow
chink up the logs. Parchment across a hole serves as window. Poles and
brush make the roof, or perhaps the remains of the cotton tent stretched
at a steep angle to slide off the accumulating weight of snow.
But if the trapper is an Indian, or the white man has a messenger to
carry the pelts marked with his name to a friendly trading-post, he may
not build a lodge; but move from hunt to hunt as the game changes
feeding-ground. In this case he uses the _abuckwan_--canvas--for a shed
tent, with one side sloping to the ground, banked by brush and snow, the
other facing the fire, both tent and fire on such a slope that the smoke
drifts out while the heat reflects in. Pine and balsam boughs, with the
wood end pointing out like sheaves in a stook, the foliage converging to
a soft centre, form the trapper's bed.
The snow is now too deep to travel without snow-shoes. The frames for
these the trapper makes of ash, birch, or best of all, the
_mackikwatick_--tamarack--curving the easily bent green wood up at one
end, canoe shape, and smoothing the barked wood at the bend, like a
sleigh runner, by means of the awkward _couteau croche_, as the French
hunter calls his crooked knife.
In style, the snow-shoe varies with the hunting-ground. On forested,
rocky, hummocky land, the shoe is short to permit short turns without
entanglement. Oval and broad, rather than long and slim, it makes up in
width what it lacks in length to support the hunter's weight above the
snow. And the toe curve is slight; for speed is impossible on bad
ground. To save the instep from jars, the slip noose may be padded like
a cowboy's stirrup.
On the prairie, where the snowy reaches are unbroken as air, snow-shoes
are wings to the hunter's heels. They are long, and curved, and narrow,
and smooth enough on the runners for the hunter to sit on their rear
ends and coast downhill as on a toboggan. If a snag is struck midway,
the racquets may bounce safely over and glissade to the bottom; or the
toe may catch, heels fly over head, and the hunter land with his feet
noosed in frames sticking upright higher than his neck.
Any trapper can read the story of a hunt from snow-shoes. Bound and
short: east of the Great Lakes. Slim and long: from the prairie. Padding
for the instep: either rock ground or long runs. Filling of hide strips
with broad enough interspaces for a small foot to slip through: from the
wet, heavily packed, snow region of the Atlantic coast, for trapping
only, never the chase, small game, not large. Lace ties, instead of a
noose to hold the foot: the amateur hunter. _Atibisc_, a fine filling
taken from deer or caribou for the heel and toe; with _askimoneiab_,
heavy, closely interlaced, membraneous filling from the moose across the
centre to bear the brunt of wear; long enough for speed, short enough to
turn short: the trapper knows he is looking at the snow-shoe of the
craftsman. This is the sort he must have for himself.
The first thing, then--a moose for the heavy filling; preferably a
spinster moose; for she is too lazy to run from a hunter who is not yet
a Mercury; and she will furnish him with a banquet fit for kings.
* * * * *
Neither moose call nor birch horn, of which wonders are told, will avail
now. The mating season is well past. Even if an old moose responded to
the call, the chances are his flesh would be unfit for food. It would be
a wasted kill, contrary to the principles of the true trapper.
Every animal has a sign language as plain as print. The trapper has
hardly entered the forest before he begins to read this language. Broad
hoof-marks are on the muskeg--quaking bog, covered with moss--over which
the moose can skim as if on snow-shoes, where a horse would sink to the
saddle. Park-like glades at the heads of streams, where the moose have
spent the summer browsing on twigs and wallowing in water holes to get
rid of sand flies, show trampled brush and stripped twigs and rubbed
bark.
Coming suddenly on a grove of quaking aspens, a saucy jay has fluttered
up with a noisy call--an alarm note; and something is bounding off to
hiding in a thicket on the far side of the grove. The _wis-kat-jan_, or
whisky jack, as the white men call it, who always hangs about the moose
herds, has seen the trapper and sounded the alarm.
In August, when the great, palmated horns, which budded out on the male
in July, are yet in the velvet, the trapper finds scraps of furry hair
sticking to young saplings. The vain moose has been polishing his
antlers, preparatory to mating. Later, there is a great whacking of
horns among the branches. The moose, spoiling for a fight, in moose
language is challenging his rivals to battle. Wood-choppers have been
interrupted by the apparition of a huge, palmated head through a
thicket. Mistaking the axe for his rival's defiance, the moose arrives
on the scene in a mood of blind rage that sends the chopper up a tree,
or back to the shanty for his rifle.
But the trapper allows these opportunities to pass. He is not ready for
his moose until winter compels the abandoning of the canoe. Then the
moose herds are yarding up in some sheltered feeding-ground.
It is not hard for the trapper to find a moose yard. There is the
tell-tale cleft footprint in the snow. There are the cast-off antlers
after the battles have been fought--the female moose being without horns
and entirely dependent on speed and hearing and smell for protection.
There is the stripped, overhead twig, where a moose has reared on hind
legs and nibbled a branch above. There is the bent or broken sapling
which a moose pulled down with his mouth and then held down with his
feet while he browsed. This and more sign language of the woods--too
fine for the language of man--lead the trapper close on the haunts of a
moose herd. But he does not want an ordinary moose. He is keen for the
solitary track of a haughty spinster. And he probably comes on the print
when he has almost made up his mind to chance a shot at one of the herd
below the hill, where he hides. He knows the trail is that of a
spinster. It is unusually heavy; and she is always fat. It drags
clumsily over the snow; for she is lazy. And it doesn't travel straight
away in a line like that of the roving moose; for she loiters to feed
and dawdle out of pure indolence.
And now the trapper knows how a hound on a hot scent feels. He may win
his prize with the ease of putting out his hand and taking it--sighting
his rifle and touching the trigger. Or, by the blunder of a hair's
breadth, he may daily track twenty weary miles for a week and come back
empty at his cartridge-belt, empty below his cartridge-belt, empty of
hand, and full, full of rage at himself, though his words curse the
moose. He may win his prize in one of two ways: (1) by running the game
to earth from sheer exhaustion; (2) or by a still hunt.
The straightaway hunt is more dangerous to the man than the moose. Even
a fat spinster can outdistance a man with no snow-shoes. And if his
perseverance lasts longer than her strength--for though a moose swings
out in a long-stepping, swift trot, it is easily tired--the exhausted
moose is a moose at bay; and a moose at bay rears on her hind legs and
does defter things with the flattening blow of her fore feet than an
exhausted man can do with a gun. The blow of a cleft hoof means
something sharply split, wherever that spreading hoof lands. And if the
something wriggles on the snow in death-throes, the moose pounds upon it
with all four feet till the thing is still. Then she goes on her way
with eyes ablaze and every shaggy hair bristling.
The contest was even and the moose won.
Apart from the hazard, there is a barbarism about this straightaway
chase, which repels the trapper. It usually succeeds by bogging the
moose in crusted snow, or a waterhole--and then, Indian fashion, a
slaughter; and no trapper kills for the sake of killing, for the simple
practical reason that his own life depends on the preservation of game.
A slight snowfall and the wind in his face are ideal conditions for a
still hunt. One conceals him. The other carries the man-smell from the
game.
Which way does the newly-discovered footprint run? More flakes are in
one hole than the other. He follows the trail till he has an idea of the
direction the moose is taking; for the moose runs straightaway, not
circling and doubling back on cold tracks like the deer, but marching
direct to the objective point, where it turns, circles slightly--a loop
at the end of a line--and lies down a little off the trail. When the
pursuer, following the cold scent, runs past, the moose gets wind and is
off in the opposite direction like a vanishing streak.
Having ascertained the lie of the land, the trapper leaves the line of
direct trail and follows in a circling detour. Here, he finds the print
fresher, not an hour old. The moose had stopped to browse and the
markings are moist on a twig. The trapper leaves the trail, advancing
always by a detour to leeward. He is sure, now, that it is a spinster.
If it had been any other, the moose would not have been alone. The rest
would be tracking into the leader's steps; and by the fresh trail he
knows for a certainty there is only one. But his very nearness increases
the risk. The wind may shift. The snowfall is thinning. This time, when
he comes back to the trail, it is fresher still. The hunter now gets his
rifle ready. He dare not put his foot down without testing the snow,
lest a twig snap. He parts a way through the brush with his hand and
replaces every branch. And when next he comes back to the line of the
moose's travel, there is no trail. This is what he expected. He takes
off his coat; his leggings, if they are loose enough to rub with a
leathery swish; his musk-rat fur cap, if it has any conspicuous colour;
his boots, if they are noisy and given to crunching. If only he aim
true, he will have moccasins soon enough. Leaving all impedimenta, he
follows back on his own steps to the place where he last saw the trail.
Perhaps the saucy jay cries with a shrill, scolding shriek that sends
cold shivers down the trapper's spine. He wishes he could get his hands
on its wretched little neck; and turning himself to a statue, he stands
stone-still till the troublesome bird settles down. Then he goes on.
Here is the moose trail!
He dare not follow direct. That would lead past her hiding-place and she
would bolt. He resorts to artifice; but, for that matter, so has the
moose resorted to artifice. The trapper, too, circles forward, cutting
the moose's magic guard with transverse zigzags. But he no longer walks.
He crouches, or creeps, or glides noiselessly from shelter to shelter,
very much the way a cat advances on an unwary mouse. He sinks to his
knees and feels forward for snow-pads every pace. Then he is on
all-fours, still circling. His detour has narrowed and narrowed till he
knows she must be in that aspen thicket. The brush is sparser. She has
chosen her resting-ground wisely. The man falls forward on his face,
closing in, closing in, wiggling and watching till--he makes a horrible
discovery. That jay is perched on the topmost bough of the grove; and
the man has caught a glimpse of something buff-coloured behind the
aspens. It may be a moose, or only a log. The untried hunter would fire.
Not so the trapper. Hap-hazard aim means fighting a wounded moose, or
letting the creature drag its agony off to inaccessible haunts. The man
worms his way round the thicket, sighting the game with the noiseless
circling of a hawk before the drop. An ear blinks. But at that instant
the jay perks his head to one side with a curious look at this strange
object on the ground. In another second it will be off with a call and
the moose up.
His rifle is aimed!
A blinding swish of aspen leaves and snow and smoke! The jay is off with
a noisy whistle. And the trapper has leather for moccasins, and heavy
filling for his snow-shoes, and meat for his larder.
* * * * *
But he must still get the fine filling for heel and toe; and this comes
from caribou or deer. The deer, he will still hunt as he has still
hunted the moose, with this difference: that the deer runs in circles,
jumping back in his own tracks leaving the hunter to follow a cold
scent, while it, by a sheer bound--five--eight--twenty feet off at a new
angle, makes for the hiding of dense woods. No one but a barbarian would
attempt to run down a caribou; for it can only be done by the shameless
trick of snaring in crusted snow, or intercepting while swimming, and
then--butchery.
The caribou doesn't run. It doesn't bound. It floats away into space.
One moment a sandy-coloured form, with black nose, black feet, and a
glory of white statuary above its head, is seen against the far reaches
of snow. The next, the form has shrunk--and shrunk--and shrunk, antlers
laid back against its neck, till there is a vanishing speck on the
horizon. The caribou has not been standing at all. It has skimmed out of
sight; and if there is any clear ice across the marshes, it literally
glides beyond vision from very speed. But, provided no man-smell crosses
its course, the caribou is vulnerable in its habits. Morning and
evening, it comes back to the same watering-place; and it returns to the
same bed for the night. If the trapper can conceal himself without
crossing its trail, he easily obtains the fine filling for his
snow-shoes.
* * * * *
Moccasins must now be made.
The trapper shears off the coarse hair with a sharp knife. The hide is
soaked; and a blunter blade tears away the remaining hairs till the skin
is white and clean. The flesh side is similarly cleaned and the skin
rubbed with all the soap and grease it will absorb. A process of beating
follows till the hide is limber. Carelessness at this stage makes
buckskin soak up water like a sponge and dry to a shapeless board. The
skin must be stretched and pulled till it will stretch no more. Frost
helps the tanning, drying all moisture out; and the skin becomes as soft
as down, without a crease. The smoke of punk from a rotten tree gives
the dark yellow colour to the hide and prevents hardening. The skin is
now ready for the needle; and all odd bits are hoarded away.
Equipped with moccasins and snow-shoes, the trapper is now the winged
messenger of the tragic fates to the forest world.