CHAPTER XXXIII. 



Some Early Experiences. 



COMRADES of the trap line and trail, as I have gotten too 

 .old, March 1913, and too nigh played out to longer get 

 far out into the tall timber, I will, with the consent of 

 the editor of the H-T-T, relate some of my experiences 

 on the trap line and trail of some years ago. 



A young man by the name of Frank Wright was hunting and 

 trapping on the Crossfork waters of Kettle Creek. Frank was a 

 young man barely out of his teens, and had been in the woods 

 but little, but Frank was a hustler and was not afraid of the 

 screech of the owl ; the days were altogether too short for him. 



We went into camp early in October as we had to do a good 

 deal of repairing on the camp as the cabin had not been used in 

 two or three years, and the porcupines got in their work in good 

 shape. The cabin was built of logs and the "porces" had gnawed 

 nearly all of the chinking out from between the logs and the mud 

 was all gone from around the 'chinking. Some of the shakes were 

 gone from the roof and the door which was made of split shakes. 



First, we split out shakes and repaired the roof and the door. 

 We then split chinking block out of a basswood tree to renew the 

 chinkings that had been gnawed and eaten up by the porcupines. 

 After the chinking was all replaced and fastened in place by mak- 

 ing wedges and driving them into the logs, one at each end of 

 each chinking block, we gathered moss from old logs and calked 

 every crack, pressing the moss into the cracks with a wedge- 

 shape stick made for the purpose. The calking was all done from 

 the inside. 



After the chinking and calking was done, we dug into a clay 

 bank and got clay, which we mixed with ashes taken from the 

 fire then added sufficient water to make a rather stiff mortar. 



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