62 



RECREA TION. 



wide knowledge of business, besides be- 

 ing an expert miner, hunter, trapper and 

 mountain man in general. His Indian 

 squaw was far above the average 

 Siwash. As a rule the " squaw man " is 

 regarded unfavorably in the far west, 

 but hereabouts it seemed to be looked 

 upon as quite the proper thing for a 

 white man to have a red wife. 



Truly, it was a strange little group that 

 had drifted together in this out-of-the- 

 way spot ! The two frontiersmen, each 

 with a checkered and romantic history ; 

 the Indian women with their quiet and 

 curious ways ; the little half-breed boy, 

 with curling Saxon hair, and the dark 

 eyes of his mother's race — and the 

 roaming Briton from his far-away 

 English home, whose life, for years past, 

 had been hardly less varied than that 

 led by his older companions. 



That fall I had the finest deer hunting 

 I ever enjoyed. They were mostly mule 

 deer of large size, and so rich was the 

 feed that a doe with two well grown 

 fawns by her side would be rolling fat. 

 Bears were scarce, but Len killed a dark 

 silver tip grizzly, with a magnificent 

 skin, and when he sauntered over to my 

 cabin that evening, making a cigarette, 

 and coolly related the particulars, I re- 

 solved to go with him next day and help 

 bring in the hide and some of the meat. 

 The bear had chased Len's dog out of a 

 little gulch, whither it had gone in pur- 

 suit of a wounded deer, and on reaching 

 the higher ground it reared up, appar- 

 ently looking for its disturber. Len 

 stood just sixteen yards away, and a bul- 

 let from his .44 Winchester shattered the 

 great neck bone to atoms. Cool, good 

 shot as I knew Len to be, he admitted 

 he would have hesitated about firing, 

 but he mistook the animal for a black 

 bear. 



Len and Schomberg each had a num- 

 ber of steel traps. The latter was run- 

 ning his in two long lines, and was 

 catching some fur-bearing animals, but 

 they were not plentiful. However, I 

 became interested in his work, and bor- 

 rowing some of Len's traps, I essayed 

 catching a few furs for myself. By the 

 end of November I had a few of my 

 own to show ; but although we fre- 

 quently saw the tracks of monster 

 wolves, they were far too cunning to be 

 taken in steel traps. Sometimes they 

 would approach our cabins at night, 



being attracted by the fresh venison ; and 

 their howling could be heard for miles. 

 At first I thought the deep, long drawn 

 yell of the timber wolf the most weird 

 and blood-curdling sound I had ever 

 heard, but when softened by distance 

 into a kind of wailing music, it seemed 

 to have a soothing effect, far from un- 

 pleasant, and often served as a lullaby. 



The snow fell heavily early in Decem- 

 ber, but the weather remained mild. I 

 passed my time in hunting and attend- 

 ing to my traps, which were strung 

 through the low forest-covered hills that 

 bordered the broad open river bottom, 

 some two miles up the valley, and this 

 afforded me plenty of amusement, but 

 no great variety of game, although a new 

 experience was in store for me, that at 

 least had the charm of novelty. 



A mile or so from my cabin there was 

 a long, half-moon-shaped pond. At 

 the head of this stood a dense body of 

 heavy timber that extended back from 

 the river's bank, and out of it issued a 

 little rivulet that took a wide semicir- 

 cular sweep and ran around to the main 

 stream. Just at the junction of the two 

 the beavers had built a dam and this had 

 formed the pond. Another dam had 

 been built a hundred yards above the 

 first or lower one, which extended clear 

 across the pool, but both were covered 

 with a dense, rank growth of willows. 

 There were no beavers there now, for 

 they had all been caught long ago. The 

 water was frozen over to a thickness of 

 nearly six inches and the snow laid on 

 the ice as smooth and level as a carpeted 

 floor. Two air holes still remained, 

 however, near the upper dam. A dark 

 stretch of open water yet flowed slowly 

 to the lower one, and then trickled 

 gently into the river. 



The trail up the valley led along a high, 

 terrace-like bench that followed the 

 curve of the pond, and several times of 

 late I had noticed some tracks on the 

 clean white surface below, but thinking 

 they were made by cayotes, paid little 

 attention to them. One evening, 

 when returning from an unsuccess- 

 ful hunt, I noticed an unusual number of 

 foot-prints and walked out on the ice 

 to examine them. The first glance told 

 me they were not made by cayotes. The 

 tracks were those of some short-legged 

 animal, that traveled in short jumps, and 

 every few yards there was a long furrow 



