THE BEAR-TRAP.
When the family came down to breakfast the next morning, it looked as if
every thing but the venison-steaks and johnnycake and hot coffee had
been forgotten. The steaks were capital; and as for the johnnycake,
nobody in all Benton Valley could beat aunt Judith at that sort of
thing. She was proud of her skill, and liked to see its products eaten;
but even as Porter Hudson was helping himself to his third slice, she
said to him,--
"Once, when I was a girl, I remember being out of bread for a whole
week."
"O aunt Judith!" exclaimed Pen, "didn't you eat any thing?"
"We had plenty of milk and pork and eggs and poultry, and we didn't
starve. We pounded corn in a mortar and made samp, and we hulled some
corn and made hominy, and ate it, and did capitally well."
"I think I could live a while on such starvation as that," remarked
Susie, "especially if I had maple-sugar to melt down, and pour on the
samp."
"We had some," said aunt Judith; "but we were just about out of flour
and meal, when there came a thaw and a freshet; and the mill-dams all
gave way, as if they'd agreed to go down together; and we had to wait
till the mills got to running again. It wasn't easy to get a grist
ground, even then; but we didn't suffer any. Folks sent ever so far for
flour; but there wasn't any railroad then, and the roads were awful for
a few weeks. There used to be great freshets in those days."
"That's a thing that might come any time after the bears turn over,"
said Mr. Farnham; and Port instantly asked him,--
"After the bears turn over! What have they to do with it?"
"Didn't you know that? Well, well! You're a city boy, and don't have any
bears at home. Every bear hunts up a hollow tree as soon as it's too
cold for him to get around in the woods comfortably, and sits down
before it till there's a heavy snow. Then he creeps in, and gets the
hole snowed up, and goes to sleep. He never dreams of waking up till
spring; but, as soon as the sun is hot enough to warm the tree on one
side, it makes him comfortable on that side of him, and he turns over in
his sleep to warm the other. It's a sure sign of a thaw; and the snow
melts pretty fast after that, till it's time for him to creep out and
get something to eat."
"How hungry he must be!" said Pen.
"When is the best time to hunt for bears?" asked Port, with a dim idea
that he would like to boast of having killed a few.
"Along in the fall, when the nuts are coming down. They're fattest then.
They trap 'em every year all through the mountain country north."
"Trap 'em! Is there any trap big enough to catch a bear in?" asked Port.
"Big enough! I'd say so. And sometimes it's a wolf, or a wildcat, or a
panther, instead of a bear; and I know of a man getting caught in one
once."
"Did he get out?" asked Pen.
"I won't tell you about it now; but when we get into the sitting-room
this evening, I'll let you know just how one man made a bear of himself
away up on Sawbuck Mountain."
That was something to look forward to; but not long after Corry and Pen
had gone to school, Porter Hudson took his gun, and marched away to the
woods, all alone by himself. The crust was still as firm as ever, and
there had been no snow worth mentioning since the great storm.
"I don't know exactly what I'm going to kill," he said to himself; "but
I'm ready for any thing that comes."
His first call for Ponto had been obeyed somewhat fatly and sluggishly;
but, the moment the old dog saw the gun, he was another and a more
willing animal. He led the way, head and tail up, until he came to the
spot in the road where the wolves had pulled down the buck. The new
snow, thin as it was, covered all traces of that adventure. But Ponto's
memory, or nose, made him precisely accurate. Port was quite willing to
stop a moment, and recall how that spot had looked in the moonlight, and
how uncommonly loud and sharp had seemed to be the reports of the guns.
All the hills had echoed them; and it occurred to him, that, if he
should now meet a pack of wolves, he would have but two loads of
buckshot, instead of eight.
"And no slugs," he added. "I should have brought some along. I don't
care, though. I could climb a small tree, and fire away."
He afterwards noted quite a number of small trees well adapted to such
business. So were some lower limbs of several larger trees, and he stood
for a few minutes under one of these. He imagined himself sitting on
that great projecting branch, climbing out to where it was ten feet
above the snow, with a large pack of very ferocious and hungry wolves
raging around below him, while he loaded and fired until the last of
them had keeled over.
"Wolves can't climb," he remarked to himself; and he felt that such an
affair would be grand to tell of when he should get back to the city. It
would make a sort of hero of him, and the wolves could be skinned right
there. He enjoyed it mentally; but that particular pack of wild beasts,
killed off, in his imagination, under that tree, were all the game, of
any kind, that he obtained that day. Ponto did better, for he discovered
innumerable tracks in the snow, and they seemed to answer his purposes
admirably. He could sniff and bark, and run and come back again, and
look up into Port's face as if he were saying, "There, I've had another
hunt."
Port had one. In fact, he hunted until he was sick of it, and decided
that it was altogether too cold to hunt any longer. It seemed to him
that he had been gone from the house a very long time indeed; and he was
all but astonished, on his return, to discover that he was quite in
season for dinner.
"Didn't you see any thing whatever?" asked Susie. She had felt a little
anxiety about him, considering what dreadful things the forest was known
to contain, and was even relieved to have him reply,--
"Not so much as one rabbit. You never heard any thing so still as the
woods are."
"Didn't know but what you might bring home a few deer," said Deacon
Farnham, "or find a bear-tree."
"I'm good and hungry, anyhow," said Port; "and it's the hardest kind of
work, looking all around for nothing."
He had not done that. No city boy can spend a morning in the winter
forest, with a gun and a dog, without learning something. It is an
experience he will not forget so long as he lives.
Those had been great days for Vosh Stebbins. He felt that he had new
duties on his hands ever since his new neighbors came, and was more and
more inclined to hurry home from school in the afternoon, and get his
chores done early. His mother remarked more than once that she had
hardly one moment to say a word to him, and that he could split more
wood in half an hour than any other boy in Benton Valley. Nevertheless
it was at their own supper-table that evening that she said to him,--
"We'd best not go over to the other house to-night, Lavawjer. We've been
there a good deal lately, and I like to be neighborly, and it's a good
idee to help 'em with their city cousins, and I never seen any that I
took to more'n I do to Port and Susie Hudson; but there's reason in all
things, and we mustn't be runnin' in too often."
Vosh buttered another hot biscuit, and did not make any reply, because
he could not think of the right one to make. It was made for him just a
little after tea, when he told his mother that every thing he had to do
was done. She had cleared away the tea things, and had taken her
knitting, and both of them were sitting by their own fireplace.
"Our sittin'-room," she said, "isn't as big as Joshaway Farnham's, and
it doesn't call for more'n half so much fire; but it's a nice one, and I
wish we had more folks into it. We must ask 'em all to come over some
evening, and I'll see if I can't make 'em feel comfortable. I'll make
some cake, and we've got a'most every thing else on hand. And that makes
me think: I want Judith Farnham's new recipe for makin' the kind of cake
she had Christmas and New-Year's; and you can put on your overcoat and
come right over with me, and we won't stay one minute, and you mustn't
let them get ye to talkin' about any thing." And Vosh was beginning to
get ready before she reached that point. She put away her knitting at
once, and said there was plenty of wood on the fire, for they were
coming right back; and so Vosh piled on two more large logs, and they
started. He may have had ideas of his own as to how much wood might burn
while he and his mother were walking to Deacon Farnham's and returning.
Some short walks are long ones, if the people who walk them are not
careful.
"I'm real glad they've come," said Mrs. Farnham the moment she heard her
neighbors at the gate. "They're good company, too, and it must sometimes
be kind of lonely for 'em,--only two in the house, and no young people."
Her fireside had no lonely look, and it was all the brighter for those
who now came in. It was of no manner of use for Mrs. Stebbins to speak
about cake, and say she had not come to stay. Vosh settled himself at
once with a hammer and a flat-iron and some hickory-nuts; and aunt
Judith pulled up a rocking-chair, remarking,--
"Now, Angeline, don't let us have any nonsense. Sit right down here and
be comfortable. I'll make a copy of the receipt for you to-morrow, and I
always put in more eggs than it calls for."
"Vosh," said Pen, "you mustn't make too much noise. Father's going to
tell a story. It's of a man that got lost in the woods, and made a bear
of himself."
"I've known fellows do that, and not go far into the woods either," said
Vosh; and Susie thought a moment before she added,--
"So have I. But then, some men can be bears, and not half try."
The deacon laughed, and put down the apple he was paring.
"I don't know if it's much of a story," said he; "but it has one
advantage over some other stories, for it's a true one.--Take an apple,
Mrs. Stebbins.--Corry, pass them to Vosh.--Pen, well, keep the cat in
your lap if you want her."
"Now," said aunt Judith, "I guess everybody's ready."
"I won't go home till after the story, nohow," said Mrs. Stebbins; "but
speaking of bears"--
"Mother," interrupted Vosh, "you've dropped your yarn. Here it is."
"Hem!" said the deacon. "There were more bears all around the country
once than there are now, and they did more mischief. It was really worth
while to take a hunt for 'em now and then; and there's always a good
market for bear-skins, if you cure 'em well. The way my story came about
was this:--
"There was one November when the woods were just full of deer, and some
young fellows from Benton Valley made up their minds they'd have a good
hunt before the real cold weather came. There hadn't been just such an
Indian summer for years and years, and camping out in the mountains was
no kind of hardship. The nights were cold, but the days were warm; and
all four of them were strapping young men, used to taking care of
themselves, and brimful of fun.
"They went up beyond Mink Lake, and it looked as if the deer kept away
from them all that first day. They'd have gone to bed hungry, if it
hadn't been for some fish they caught; and the next morning they made up
their minds they'd go out singly, in different directions, and see which
of them would do best. What was curious, they didn't have but one dog
along, and his owner counted on having the most game, as a matter of
course."
"He was the man that got beared," whispered Pen to the cat in her lap;
but her father went right on,--
"The man that owned the dog started out from camp right along the slope
of Sawbuck Mountain, northerly; and there are little lakes every mile or
so, and they're just swarming with fish. He was following an old path
that was pretty well marked. Maybe it was an old Indian trail; but white
men had followed it in winter, for the trees were blazed, so you could
follow it if there was snow on the ground to hide it."
The deacon paused a moment, as if thinking how to go on; and Porter
Hudson asked him eagerly,--
"Did he have the kind of luck I had yesterday?"
"Well, not exactly," replied his uncle. "Before it was ten o'clock by
his watch, he had killed and hung up three deer. Real fat ones they
were, too, and one of them was a seven-year-old buck with horns that
were worth having."
"'Pears to me," remarked Mrs. Stebbins, "the deer nowadays don't have
the horns they did when I was a gal;" but the deacon went right on,--
"He didn't know just how many miles he might be from camp; and he knew
he'd need help in carrying in those deer, unless he should cut up the
meat and set out to smoke it right there."
"And good smoked deer-meat is something worth having," said his wife.
"But he walked on for half a mile or so, just as if there was any use in
going for another deer that day, till he came out into a sort of open.
The land sloped down to the shore of a little lake as regularly and
smoothly as if it had been cleared for a deer-pasture. There wasn't a
deer on it just then; but right in the edge of the opening the hunter
found something that set him a-thinking. It was the best bear-trap he
had ever seen. There was a little ledge of rocks; and about the middle
of it was a break that made a square place the size of a small bedroom,
only it wasn't much more than six feet high by ten feet deep. The
fellows that made the trap had built up the front with heavy upright
logs to hang their gate on, and covered the top with logs."
"Please, uncle Joshua," said Susie, "what is the gate for?"
"To let the bears in. Did you ever see a figure 4 rat-trap? That's it.
The gate lifts up, with a strong sapling for a hinge, and the ends of
the sapling (that's the roller) are fitted into the logs at the sides.
There's a long pole fitted into the gate to lift it by, and, when that's
pulled down flat on top of the trap, the gate is up about level. There
was a wooden catch geared through the roof of that trap so nicely, that,
when the pole was in the notch of it, the trap was set to spring at any
kind of pull on the bait. The lower end of that catch hung away back by
the rock, and the whole machine was in prime order."
"It was somebody else's trap," remarked Corry doubtfully.
"Oh, he could see that nobody had been there that year. The timber was
all seasoned, and there was grass growing against the gate. There was a
good stiff latch, made with a deep notch in the logs to hold that gate
after it came down; and, if a bear once shut himself in, there was no
possibility of his getting out. The hunter looked it all over, and made
up his mind he'd set the trap, and go back to the last deer he'd killed,
and get some fresh meat for bait, and see if something could be done
with it. It was some time before he could get at the pole so as to bring
it down; but he worked it with a grape-vine for a rope, and it came into
place perfectly. Then he went to his deer, and got his bait, and hurried
back, as if he were afraid some beast or other would get caught before
the bait was there to account for it. You use it just as you use toasted
cheese in a rat-trap, only you tie it on, so it'll take a hard pull to
get it off. A bear is sure to pull, and that springs the trap; a panther
isn't so apt to be stupid about it; and a wolf won't, unless he's
hungry. They're more cunning than a bear is, anyhow."
"He didn't toast the whole deer, and put him on?" said Pen.
"No, he didn't toast any thing; but he was hard at work, tying all he
had taken from the inside of that deer to the catch of the trap, when
something happened that he hadn't been looking for."
"Was it a bear?" said Pen.
"Worse than that. He had pulled too hard on the catch, and it had
slipped the pole free, and down came the gate with a bang, and he had
trapped himself completely. The gate just missed the dog when it fell,
but it left him outside. The first thing the hunter did was to laugh.
Then he said he would finish tying the meat on, and go up and set the
trap over again. He tied it on carefully, and set out to get ready for
bears; but, when he tried to lift that gate, it wouldn't lift. It was
made heavy purposely; and it was caught in the notch below, just exactly
right, for the man that made that trap knew how. There was nothing about
it to laugh at, and the hunter sat down and thought it over: so did the
dog, looking at him through the cracks of the logs, and whimpering. It
doesn't take a good dog long to understand when things are going badly."
"He could have chopped his way out," said Port.
"Yes," said the deacon, "but he had no axe, and a jack-knife is a poor
tool to work with on seasoned timber. He tried it for a while; but it
seemed as if he might whittle away for a week, or till he starved to
death, before he could make a hole to get out by. He couldn't dig under,
for limestone rock is hard digging. He worked a little at the roof, but
that had been weighted with heavy stones, so that a bear could not have
stirred a log of it. On the whole, it was a pretty tight place to be in;
and it was dinner-time, and he was tremendously hungry. He had not a
mouthful to eat or drink, and he knew his friends would not be uneasy
about him before night, and not much even then. He was uneasy already,
and so was the dog. The poor fellow came and pawed at the logs, and
whined and whined; then he went back, and stood and barked like mad at
the whole concern."
"What a pity he didn't have an axe to chop himself out!" said Pen. "Then
he wouldn't have staid there and starved to death."
"He didn't do that exactly," said the deacon. "He sat down and thought
about it, and studied that gate, until by and by an idea came to him. It
was the middle of the afternoon before it came, but it was a good one.
There were splinters of wood around the floor of the trap, and he had
whittled a heap of shavings from the log he had worked on. He gathered
them all, and began to crowd them into the chinks of the logs, away up
in both corners of the gate, just under the roller that it swung on.
Soon as he'd got them well packed in, he took out his match-box, and set
them on fire. There isn't any trouble about getting dry wood to burn;
and it was plain enough, that, if the ends of that roller were burned
away, the gate would have to go down."
Everybody around that fireplace felt sure about the burning qualities of
seasoned wood, for they all had to pull away a little, and the story
went on.
"The fire kindled well on both corners. The fact was, it kindled a
little too well, and it spread, and the smoke began to come back into
the trap. Just before the hunter took out his match-box, he had looked
around for his dog, and the fellow wasn't anywhere to be seen. There was
time now to wonder what had become of him, but no amount of whistling
brought him. Then the smoke grew too thick to whistle in, and the hunter
lay down to get some fresher air at the bottom of the gate. The fire
spread to the logs of the roof, and began to climb down the gate, and
the trap became the hottest kind of a place. It took a long time for all
that; but there was plenty of excitement in watching it, and in
wondering whether or not he was going to roast himself to death instead
of getting out. It grew hotter and hotter, until it could hardly be
endured, and the smoke was stifling. At last the hunter sprang up, and
gave a shove at the gate with all his might. If he had done it before,
it might have let him out sooner. The gate went over upon the ground
with a crash, and one jump carried the man out of the trap. He had left
his rifle outside, leaning against a tree; and there it was yet, but
there was not a sign of the dog.
"He had left a big piece of deer-meat out there too; and his next
thought was that he had plenty of fire to cook by, and that he wanted
some supper as soon as he had been to the lake for a long drink of
water. That water tasted good, now, I tell you, and so did the broiled
meat afterwards; for the sun was only an hour high, and he had had an
early breakfast that morning. He sat and cooked and ate, and felt
better; and all the while the fire was finishing up the bear-trap, roof
and all. He did his cooking on the gate; and, if he had not been able to
get out when he did, the gate and roof would have cooked him."
"Oh!" exclaimed Pen. "And he wasn't hurt a mite?"
"No," said her father; "and just as he finished eating, and rose to pick
up his rifle and start for the camp, there came a yelp, yelp, yelp
through the woods, and there was his dog got back again. He hadn't come
alone either; for right along behind him, travelling good and fast, were
the three other hunters. The dog had been to the camp for them, and made
them understand that his master was in trouble."
"Splendid!" exclaimed Susie.
"And when they saw the smoke of that fire, they all shouted and ran,
till the dog gave a howl and a jump, and began to dance around the man
he belonged to. He told his friends the whole story, and there was the
fire to prove the truth of it; and each of them had killed a deer that
day."
"And how did you ever come to know just exactly how it all happened,"
said Mrs. Stebbins, "so't you can tell it right along, 'most as if you'd
been there?"
"Well," said the deacon, "I suppose it's because I was the man that got
caught in the trap; and the other three were Alvin Lucas, and Levi
Stebbins, and Sarah's brother, Marvin Trowbridge, that's living now at
Ticonderoga."
"I'd heard the story before," said aunt Sarah, "and I remember seeing
that dog when he was so old he was gray."
"I guess he didn't get turned out of the house when he was old," said
Port enthusiastically; "but why didn't you fix the trap, and set it
again?"
"That's the very thing we did; and we caught three bears in it, and one
wildcat, before the snow came. Only we always took care to bait the hook
before we set the trap; and nobody else had to set it on fire to get out
of it."
"Vosh," said his mother, "as soon as I've finished this apple, it'll be
time for you and me to be getting ready to go home."
"That's all," said the deacon.