FISH FOR BAIT
Andy’s knee was worse next morning, but he did not say so. He admitted
that it didn’t seem to be any more supple, spoke hopefully of another
day’s rest and a little more bear’s grease as being all that it
required, and again referred to the fight of fifty years ago in terms of
regret and acrimony. The truth was that the old fellow had rheumatism;
and he knew what it was; and he had felt it before, once or twice a
year, in the very same place. Furthermore, the gritty old sportsman was
too vain to admit the truth. Of course he had fought with a man from
Quebec fifty years ago, in a lumber-camp on Tobique River, and twisted a
knee in the heat of the encounter—but if you had put him on oath and
asked him to lay a finger on the knee he had wrenched on that distant
occasion, he couldn’t have done it.
“I hope you walloped that man from Quebec,” said Young Dan.
“I sure did,” replied Andy, brightening. “He was counted a smart fighter
even for them days—but I was the snag he busted himself on.”
“I betcher! Well, I’ll be back in time to cook dinner, so you just keep
quiet while I’m gone.”
“No, you take yer grub along and I’ll have supper ready when you git
back. I ain’t a cripple yet.”
Young Dan put some food in his pockets and went about his day’s work,
armed as usual with axe and rifle. He set out on the line of traps that
ran crookedly almost due west, for this was the one that had been
longest neglected. Andy Mace had been along it last, just before the
forty-eight-hour storm, and now the tracks of his snowshoes were buried
deep. Young Dan kept to his course without difficulty, however, though
the line was not blazed. He worked easily by signs that would have meant
nothing to a city man. His guides were certain trees and bushes and
humps and hollows; and the wilderness was full to crowding of such
things. So much for the line of general direction—but some of the traps
lay several score of yards to the right and left of that line. A modest
blaze had been cut in the bark of tree or sapling at several of these
points of deflection.
Young Dan drew two blanks and then a fine big lynx. He skinned the lynx
before going on. The fourth trap was empty, but the bait which had been
placed on and around it so artfully had been snatched away even more
artfully. He rebaited with frozen trout. The fifth trap was snapped
tight on the forepaws of a skunk. The skunk itself was gone but Young
Dan soon discovered odds and ends of hair and bone scattered in the snow
in the immediate vicinity. Something with an amazing appetite had beaten
the trapper to that trap, for certain. Young Dan set these things to
rights and passed on, wondering at the driving power of hunger.
Two more blanks, a red fox and a skunk followed. The last trap on the
line was empty and evidently undisturbed. The bait was covered with
snow. Young Dan felt for it with a small stick and twitched a bit of it
to the surface. He replaced it with a frozen trout, left it lying on the
snow as an extra lure and turned away. He even took a step away; and
then he turned back sharply and with the stick drew closer the piece of
bait which he had twitched out of the snow. He took it up in his
mittened hands and examined it closely. His eyes rounded and his lips
parted with astonishment. Then his face took on an expression of blank
bewilderment. He gazed all around at the crowding underbrush and soaring
spires of the forest, then straight up at the clear sky, then down again
at the lump of frozen bait in his hand.
“That’s queer,” he said. “Andy was here last, and that was before we
went fishing—yes, and before the last snow. We were baiting with
porcupine that day. I wonder where he got this from.”
He tossed the thing back into the snow and, still wondering, went his
way. His way now was not by the back trail, but sharp to the right, and
then more to the right, until his course lay southeast. He traveled by
the sun. The way was rough and tangled, and the “going” was heavy. He
struggled over blow-downs and through cedar-twined fastnesses of swamp.
After a couple of miles of it he sat down to rest and eat his lunch.
After that he came to a patch of open barren, desolate and flat under
the colorless sun. He held to his course straight across the level, a
distance of about two miles, and made good time. Beyond the barren he
entered a forest of big timber and crossed a wide ridge of maples and
yellow birches; and far beyond the ridge he came at last to the locality
of the southernmost trap of the southern line.
Young Dan had traveled close upon fifteen miles since breakfast, and
here he was still six miles at least from camp as the crow flies—and
what would have been a laughing matter to a crow was a tough job for
him. He almost found it in his heart to hope that all the traps between
him and his supper were empty. No such luck! In that first trap, the
farthest from home, he found a big bobcat—a cheap pelt on a big body.
It was past eight o’clock when Young Dan pushed open the door, staggered
into the camp and let his load thump to the floor. He dropped his axe,
too, stood his rifle against the wall, threw aside his fur cap and
mittens, and sank into a chair with a grunt of relief.
“That _was_ a day’s work, and I’m darn glad it’s through with!” he
exclaimed, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.
Andy Mace didn’t say a word.
Young Dan sat up and looked all around. He saw the glow of the fire in
the rusty stove, red embers on the hearth, and the lighted lantern at
the little window, hooked to a nail in the frame. The room was poorly
illuminated. Most of it, including Andy Mace’s bunk, was in deep shadow.
“He’s taking a nap,” reflected Young Dan. “I guess his knee hurts him
more’n he lets on, and maybe it kept him awake last night.”
He hunched forward and untied the frozen thongs of his snowshoes very
quietly, fearful of disturbing the sleeper. Stealthily he put a few
sticks of wood in the stove and a log on the red embers in the chimney.
Next, he pussy-footed over to the window and unhooked the lantern and
set it down on the table near the stove. He felt bone-tired and sleepy,
but his spirit was untouched by fatigue. Recalling Andy’s statement
concerning supper, he decided to cook something good—something
elaborate, like buckwheat pancakes or bacon—and boil a big pot of
coffee, without waking the sluggard. He would even go so far as to tuck
into the grub before arousing the sleeper by clattering a spoon against
the coffee-pot. It would be a good joke on the old boy.
Owing to the changed position of the lantern, Andy Mace’s bunk was now
free from shadow. Young Dan glanced at it and instantly forgot the
contemplated joke. The bunk was empty!
Young Dan felt a sharp sense of unreality, as daunting as it was new to
him—but in a moment the chill of that gave way before a surge of
anxiety. He searched through the camp in a minute, all his weariness
forgotten. Andy Mace was nowhere indoors; his snowshoes were gone, too;
but his rifle leaned in its usual corner, in its old canvas case. Young
Dan began to dress for the open with both hands and both feet. His coat,
cap, mittens and snowshoes all seemed to fall into position and attach
themselves at once. He took up the lantern and his rifle and went out,
pulling the door shut behind him.
Young Dan found his partner’s tracks in fifteen seconds. They did not
lead along any one of the four lines of traps. They told him, as plain
as print, that the old man’s right leg was still as stiff as a ramrod.
Why Andy had gone into the woods at such an hour, lame or limber, was
more than he could even begin to imagine. He reckoned the time of Andy’s
departure from the camp by the condition of the fire in the stove at the
time of his return. He put it at something between an hour and a half
and two hours.
He followed the trail in feverish haste for a hundred yards or so, then
halted and shouted his partner’s name at the top of his voice. A faint
shout came back to him. He yelled again and continued his advance,
holding the lantern high and struggling in the snow-choked underbrush
like a swimmer in heavy surf. He reflected that Andy had certainly taken
a bee-line for wherever he was bound, regardless of natural obstacles.
In his care to keep the lantern from contact with the snow he stumbled
heavily several times and at last fell flat. The thick, hot glass of the
lantern cracked like a pistol-shot and fell apart as it plunged into the
snow, and the flame sizzled to extinction.
Young Dan arose to his knees slowly and in silence, with his rifle in
one hand and the ring of the chimneyless lantern in the other. In
silence he struggled to his feet and reset his right snowshoe. What’s
the use of talking when you know that the words required by your
emotions don’t exist? Still in silence, he cleared his eyes and neck of
snow. Then, to his great relief, he saw a yellow glow of fire-light far
away beyond the tangled screens of the forest. He went straight for the
light with as much noise and almost as much speed as a bull moose in a
hurry. He bored ahead, shielding his face with the cased rifle and
battered lantern, and letting his feet look after themselves. He
frequently snarled his snowshoes in the brush and took a header, but he
was never down for more than five seconds at a time.
Young Dan found the distance between the fire and the place of his first
tumble to be considerably less than he had feared. The fire burned in
the center of a tiny dell; and beside it, on a mat of spruce boughs, sat
Andy Mace.
“What’s the matter with you?” cried Young Dan. “What are you doing
here—and why didn’t you stay home like you said you would?”
“I’m glad you come,” said the old man. “I cal’lated that’s what ye’d do.
Well, I don’t blame ye a mite for feelin’ riled, Young Dan. But what
else could I do?”
“What do you mean? You could have stopped home!”
“I clean forgot to tell ye. Look what’s layin’ t’other side the fire,
Young Dan. So what else could I do but turn out an’ hunt about, when I
heard him shootin’ off his rifle like a battle. And I thought all along
it was yerself, until I found him.”
Young Dan stumbled around the fire and saw what the smoke had veiled
from him—a big man lying prone on a blanket, flat on his back, with a
lumpy sack partially sunk in the snow near his head. His snowshoes, axe
and uncased rifle stood upright in a row several paces distant from the
fire.
“What else was I to do?” asked Andy Mace. “And when I come up on him an’
seen it wasn’t you I couldn’t leave him to perish, could I now?”
“It’s Jim Conley,” said Young Dan. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Jim Conley, hey? That’s what I suspicioned. Well, pardner, he’s got
more troubles nor one the matter with him; an’ what laid him there on
his back the way ye see him now was a clout over the head I handed him
with the butt o’ his own rifle.”
The youth’s bewilderment increased.
“Did you kill him?” he asked, in awe-stricken tones.
“I reckon not,” replied Andy, casually. “He’s alive—in his own way.”
Young Dan chopped more brush for the fire and heaped it on, then removed
his snowshoes and reclined beside his partner.
Andy Mace filled and lit his pipe and told his story. He had sat quiet
all day and rubbed the last of the bear’s grease into his stiff knee. He
had fallen asleep along about mid-afternoon and slept soundly for hours.
Waking suddenly, for no particular reason that he knew of, he had found
the camp in darkness except for the glow of the fallen fire on the
hearth. He had built up the fires in a hurry and lighted the lantern;
and he had just opened the door for a look at the weather, before
concentrating his mind on the preparation of supper, when he heard a
rifle shot. That shot had been followed quickly by three more. He had
hung the lantern in the window then and scrambled into his outdoor
things and hobbled off at the best pace he could manage, feeling quite
sure that the shots were calls from Young Dan for help. Another had
sounded before the door was shut behind him, and yet another before he
had gone fifty yards into the woods. He had bored straight ahead, slap
through everything except the actual trunks of the big trees, taking the
rough with the smooth and the hard with the soft—and just how many times
he had plunged into the snow with his face and swept it up with his
whiskers he’d hate to try to remember. His ears had been plugged with
snow most of the time, anyhow, and his stiff knee had received some
violent shocks, but he had kept going, and after a while he had heard
someone yelling. He had gone ahead more circumspectly after that,
knowing that the voice did not belong to his partner; and before long he
had found Jim Conley trying to light a fire and making a poor job of it.
“Why couldn’t he light it?” asked Young Dan.
“Well, every time he’d get it lit he’d fall down slam on top o’ the
little flame an’ smother it out.”
“Was he that near froze?”
“That’s what I suspicioned, so I drug him off an’ sot him down an’ lit
the bit o’ brush an’ bark for him. I cut some dead stuff, an’ some
chunks o’ green wood, an’ built up a good fire; then I looked round an’
seen him settin’ back as comfortable as you please sucking away at a
square-face. That riled me, Young Dan. That would rile a more peaceable
man nor me—to see him draggin’ at that there bottle, an’ it more’n
three-quarters empty already—an’ considerin’ how I’d nigh busted my leg
off to find him, thinkin’ it was yerself shootin’ an’ hollerin’. Yes, I
reckon even a deacon would of felt kinder sore. So I went up to him an’
grabbed the bottle an’ hove it away an’ bust it agin a tree; an’ up he
come, spry’s a cat, an’ lammed me one on the shoulder that laid me flat;
but up I come on one leg, quicker’n a wink, an’ finished him. I looked
into his pack—an’ then I wisht I’d hit him harder.”
“Why? What’s in the bag?”
“Considerable baccy, and a pound o’ tea, an’ maybe as much as a whole
pound o’ bacon, and a box o’ seegars, and a bran’ new razor an’ strop,
an’ some ca’tridges, and a red weskit, an’ four more square-faces o’
gin. That’s what’s in his pack!”
Young Dan continued to recline on an elbow and stare at the fire between
half-closed lids in silence for several minutes.
“I was just thinking he must of had great luck with his few traps,
considering he didn’t set them out till after that night I saw him,” he
said, at last.
“Why was ye thinkin’ that?” asked Andy.
“Well, he’d have to pay a lot for the gin, wouldn’t he, for the man who
sold it to him was risking being sent to jail, wasn’t he? He had as many
as six bottles when he started for home, or he wouldn’t have four now;
and I betcher it cost him as much as eight or ten dollars a bottle. He
must of had great luck with his traps—in the two days they were set.”
“I reckon he must of, Young Dan. What’s on yer mind, anyhow?”
“Jim Conley’s luck, that’s what.”
“He must of caught somethin’ special, that’s a fact.”
“What did you bait with last time you tended the west line?”
“The west line? Lemme think. That was the day before the big snow. I
baited with porcupine.”
“It’s baited with fish to-day.”
“Sure it be. What o’ that, Young Dan?”
“I mean it was already baited with fish when I got to it. I mean that
someone had rebaited it—and reset it, too, I guess—since your last
visit.”
“You don’t say! Someone at our traps! Let’s make a try at gittin’ home,
pardner. I be that danged hungry an’ oncomfortable my brains won’t
think.”
[Illustration]