TRAPPING AND NETTING.
It was eight o’clock when the boys got up the next morning. Joe was
stretching the skin on the barn door, and his wife frying bear’s steaks
for breakfast. They had eaten but two meals the day before, and though
the last was a very hearty one, yet, as they had been at work out of
door, the greater part of the night, they awoke hungry. The smell of
the meat was so savory, and it looked so tempting, as Sally piled up
the large slices on the plate, and prepared to place them on the table,
that, resisting the impulse to go out of doors, the boys sat down to
await breakfast, which they saw was nearly ready.
“Where is Joe?” inquired John.
“Stretching the bear’s skin.”
“Has he been to the trap?”
“I don’t know.”
Charlie shoved back the sliding shutter of the window that commanded a
view of the barn (there was but one glazed window in the house; the
others were furnished with wooden shutters, in two of which there were
diamond-shaped holes cut, and small squares of glass set in them),
where Joe was at work.
“Joe!”
No reply.
“Joe!”
Joe kept on driving the nails into the edges of the hide.
“Jo-o-o-o!”
“Well.”
“Have you been to the bear-trap?”
“Been _where_?”
“Why, to the trap, to see if it was sprung.”
“How could I go, when I had this hide to take care of?”
“Will you say you haven’t?”
“Guess not.”
“Is there anything in it?” cried Charlie, stirred up by the evasive
answers he received.
“How you do like to ask questions!”
“A bear! a bear!” roared Charlie, jumping out of the window and running
full speed for the trap, with John at his heels. When they arrived at
the spot, the trap was sprung, sure enough, and in it was a bear of
the largest size, with his body across the lower log, the upper on his
back, and his hinder parts on the ground.
“Ain’t he a big one!” said John: “see what handsome fur; a real jet
black,”--passing his hand along his back; “they are not all so black;
some of ’em are kind of brown and faded out.”
“See what claws!” said Charlie, taking up one of his fore paws and
spreading apart the toes with his fingers.
“They are awful strong,” said John: “Uncle Isaac says they will stave
the head of a barrel of molasses in with blows of their paws, and that
he has seen ’em, when hunting after bugs and wood-worms in old rotten
logs, strike with their paws, and split them right open.”
The horn now sounded for breakfast.
“How much is that bear-skin worth, Joe?” asked Charlie.
“About six dollars; perhaps more.”
“Then you’ll get some pay for your corn.”
“Yes; and then the meat is good.”
“And the fat is first rate to have in the house; it’s as good as lard,”
said Sally.
“The worst of it is,” said Joe, “we have it all at once; now we’ve got
the meat of two bears, and it will spoil before we can eat half of
it; then there are sea-fowl, lobsters, and pigeons, so that everything
comes together. We ought to give some of this meat to the neighbors:
bears ain’t so plenty down to the village as they are up here in the
woods.”
“I’ll go over to Uncle Isaac’s,” said Sally, “and tell him he can send
word to some of the neighbors, and to your father’s folks, to come and
get some.”
“When the boys go home I will take them down to Captain Rhines’s in the
boat, and carry some meat to him and Ben.”
“We’ll help you dress the bear, Joe, and then we must go,” said
Charlie: “we can’t stay any longer; we should like to; we’ve had the
greatest time that ever was, but we must go now.”
“Don’t want to hear any such talk as that; it’s no kind of use to talk
that way here; can’t spare you; we’ve got just as much to do to-day as
we can spring to, then fix the pigeon-bed, set the net, make a cage to
put them in, dress this bear, and set the dead-fall for another.”
“A pigeon-net? What is that?”
“Why, Charlie,” said John, “don’t you know what a pigeon-net is?”
“No. I thought they shot ’em.”
“How should he know?” said Joe.
“Why, Charlie, they catch them by hundreds in nets.”
“Do?”
“Yes, and put them in a cage.”
“And put them in a cage?”
“Yes, they put them in a cage, or some place, and keep them, and fat
them.”
“Don’t the net kill ’em?”
“No. Don’t hurt ’em one mite.”
“Then I shan’t go, if all that’s going on.”
No sooner was breakfast over, and the bear dressed, than Joe brought
out his net. It was fifteen feet in length by ten in width.
“Who made this net?” asked Charlie.
“Sally: she spun all the twine on the flax wheel, and netted it.”
Taking the net, they went on to the wheat stubble. Near the woods was
a place where there had been an opening when the land was in forest;
consequently, when the fire had burned off the moss and leaves (duff,
as Joe called it), the ground was mellow and free from roots. A portion
of this he had dug up, carried away all the sticks and stones, raked it
as smooth as a garden bed, and flung wheat on it.
Early in the morning and towards night the wild pigeons would come,
light on the trees, look at the grain a while, then fly down and eat.
He had baited the pigeons thus for several days, till they had become
used to the spot, and quite tame: now he prepared to net them.
In the first place, they set down, at each corner of the bed (which
was a little larger than the net), pieces of plank with their edges
directed across the bed, about a foot above the surface of the ground:
in the sides of two of them cut slots, on the inside of one and the
outside of the other, that is, the corner ones; on the longest side, at
the distance of about twelve feet from the planks and on the opposite
side from the posts in which the slots are cut, they put down, three
feet into the ground, and on a line with them, two tough green beech
saplings, three inches through at the butt, and six feet in height.
To the top of these posts he fastened a strong rope forty feet long,
and the edge of the net to this rope. The lower edge of the net was
fastened to the ground by little crotches, on the opposite side from
the high posts, and merely slack enough left of the rope to admit of
taking the net and rope across, and permitting the net to lie nicely
folded in as compact a form as possible on the ground along the edge
of the bed. He then took two strips of stiff, hard wood board, an inch
and a quarter thick and two inches wide, with a dove-tail notch in one
end to hold the rope; one end of these he set against the plank posts,
which were well over towards the middle of the bed on the side the log
posts stood, put the notched end against the bight of the rope to which
the net was fastened, and, pressing down with all his might, sprung
the stiff beech posts enough to force the sticks (flyers he called
them), with the rope attached to them, into the slots in the plank
posts. The net, which lay nicely folded along the edge of the bed, was
then covered over with earth; long limbs, thickly covered with leaves,
were now cut and set up, forming a booth around one of the high posts
at one end, bringing the line to which the flyers were fastened into
the booth, thus enabling the hunter concealed there, at one twitch, to
pull the flyers, which held the net down, out of the slots, when the
tremendous spring of the beech poles would fling the net over the bed
in an instant.
Wheat was now strown in a long row the whole length of the bed, and
nearest to the side on which the net was folded, that the pigeons, when
they came on, might be sure to be completely enveloped, being nearer
the centre of the net. Some saplings were set in hollow stumps and in
the ground to form lighting places, as pigeons like to have a chance to
reconnoitre before flying down.
Joe had not intended to set the net so soon, but to have built the
booth, set up the poles, and put on the rope, in order that the pigeons
might get accustomed to the sight of these objects; but he had hurried
up matters to keep the boys there and gratify them.
“We won’t spring it to-night, boys, but let them come here, get their
supper, and see all these fixings. They will come and light on the
trees, look round, see the grain; some of them will come to the bed,
eat a little, and make up their minds that all is right. To-night we’ll
put on fresh grain, and in the morning make a real haul.”
The forenoon was fully occupied with the bear and the pigeon-bed. In
the afternoon they went to work to make a cage to keep them. They made
it of logs, covering the top with small poles, that they might have
plenty of light and air, put in roosts, and made a trough for water.
The cage, instead of being square, was made in the shape of a blunt
wedge, and the apex lined with a net, so that they could be driven into
the narrow part into the net, and caught without difficulty.
At night they visited the bed, found the pigeons had been there, and
having put on fresh grain, went home, and, being weary from the work of
the previous night, retired early, with sanguine expectations for the
morrow.
Joe called them before the dawn of day, and they were all three soon
secreted in the booth. As the day broke, they began to hear a flapping
of wings. First came three or four, then more, till long before sunrise
the saplings, trees in the woods, and even the rope that ran from the
spring-pole to the ground, were all covered with them.
Charlie was quivering with excitement. He had never seen anything like
it in his life, and could scarcely contain himself as he watched them
through the network of branches. There they sat, arching their necks,
turning their heads first to one side and then to the other. At length
one flew down to the grain, instantly followed by others; and then the
whole flock came down, crowding together, and eating with the utmost
voracity. As they were coming to the place, Charlie had entreated Joe
to let him spring the net, and now stood with his hand on the rope;
but when the crisis came, he felt that there was too much at stake, and
made a sign to Joe. He gave a sudden jerk; whiz! went the rope. The
fliers were flung twenty feet in the air, the whole front of the booth
fell over, flung off by the rope, and such a fluttering of wings you
never heard!
“O, my soul!” exclaimed Charlie. “There, there, I’ve lived long enough!
Only see the--see the necks!”
“There’s forty dozen if there’s one,” said Joe.
“That’s what I call a haul,” said John.
“But,” said Charlie, “only see how pert they look, and happy, too! I
thought it was going to hurt or kill some of them.”
When the net goes over the pigeons, they will stick up their necks
through the meshes. It was this sight, so singular to one unaccustomed
to it, that excited the wonder and prompted the exclamation of Charlie.
“I have made up my mind to one thing,” he continued. “I _will not_ go
back to Portland if I can get my living here.”
“Nor I, either,” said John.
“Glad you’ve both got so much sense. What ails you to get your living?
I’ll give both of you your board and clothes to come and work for me.”
“Much obliged, but we want to do a little more than that.”
“Well, haven’t you got a good farm, all paid for, or something to make
one of? Ain’t you a boat-builder? Ain’t John a blacksmith?”
“If anybody was living here,” said John, “they could put in and do a
lot of work, then go off and hunt, have a grand time, get straightened
out, the kinks taken out of them, and then come back and work all the
better.”
“Yes,” replied Charlie; “and it pays to net pigeons, kill bears and
coons, and get the flesh to eat; also sea-fowl, seals, and deer, and
have the feathers and skins to sell. But in Portland, if you’re out
of work, all you can do is to sit on the anvil, or stand in the sun,
leaning against an upright in the ship-yard, chewing chips, making up
sour faces, and saying, ‘O, I wish somebody would give me a job! some
farmer lose his axe and want another, or some ship would get cast away,
so I could build one.’ I tell you, I won’t go back. The more I think of
it, the more I don’t want to.”
“On the strength of that,” said Joe, “kill half a dozen of these
pigeons, and we’ll go home and get some baskets to take the rest to the
cage.”
Our readers know that Charlie was exceedingly fond, not only of
the soil, but of trees and plants of all kinds. Born and reared in
early life in a land where trees are comparatively rare, and prized
accordingly, he was not at all pleased with the wholesale destruction
Joe had made with axe and firebrand. Joe, on the other hand, possessed
the true spirit of a pioneer, and had been educated to consider trees
as natural enemies, and that a person’s pluck was to be measured by the
number he could destroy.
“Joe,” said Charlie, “why didn’t you save some of those splendid great
maples, ash, and birches to shade your homestead?”
“_Save_ ’em! I’ve had trouble enough to get rid of ’em. I’d rather have
corn and wheat.”
“But after you get all this land into grass, and a frame house built,
then you’ll wish you had, and go to setting them out; and by the time
they’re grown you’ll be an old man. Don’t you think the trees around
our brook, and before Captain Rhines’s house, look handsome?”
“Yes,” said his wife, “I’m sure I do; they look beautiful. There’s one
tree I don’t believe Captain Rhines would sell for a hundred dollars.”
“You can’t save ’em. You got to put the fire in to clear your lands,
and do it when it’s dry, or you can’t get a good burn; and if you leave
any trees, the fire will roast the roots and kill ’em. Those trees of
Captain Rhines’s wasn’t _saved_. His father set them out, and I’ve
heard Uncle Isaac say people thought he was in his dotage for doing it.”
“They don’t think so now. I don’t see why you can’t pull the brush and
other trees away from their roots.”
“I tell you, you can’t; for in a dry time the old leaves, moss, and
the whole top of the ground will burn, or at any rate be hot enough to
scald and kill the roots.”
“I don’t believe you ever tried very hard to save a tree, Joe.”
“I don’t care. I saw Seth Warren try to save some sugar maples, and he
couldn’t.”
“Well, if ever I build a house on my place, I’ll save some, and a good
many, too; see if I don’t.”
“We shall see. When is that happy time coming?”
“I don’t know, but hope it will be before you kill all the bears.”
“You and I ain’t much alike. You want to save all the bears and trees,
and I want to use up both.”
“Joe, there’s one thing I wish you’d do for me.”
“What is that?”
“If you ever come across a little cub, save it for me, or a pair if you
can.”
“You going to stock Elm Island with bears?”
“I would if I could. Joe, what’s the reason pigeons don’t come to Elm
Island? Only once in a while half a dozen light as they go over.”
“’Cause there’s nothing for them to eat there. They live on what bears
do--acorns, beech-nuts, and blueberries; but on your place there’s
enough for both. Come, hurry up your cakes, and get on to it, and we’ll
hunt in company.”
In the afternoon Joe carried the boys down to Captain Rhines’s in the
boat, with pigeons and bear’s meat enough for his family and Ben’s.
After meeting Sunday, Charlie returned to the island.