Dec. 14, 1895.] 



FOREST AND STREAM, 



609 



barefoot, with his boots in his hand, and without means 

 of sustenance, bound, he said, for Grand Falls, 100 miles 

 of wilderness between hitn and his destination. 



I have often wondered what happened to him. His 

 manner, his incoherent replies, his indifference to the 

 perils of his position, his peculiar religious tendencies, 

 indicated that he was not in his Tight mind. If Risteen 

 had not fired his rifle the poor old man, lying there with- 

 out a fire, blanket, food or knowledge of his whereabouts, 

 was in a fair way to starve. That vast tract of mountain 

 and forest is an extremely bad place for a man who has 

 neither food nor fire. Yet somehow cur lost man had 

 worried along through this world for more years than 



At least so said the signs, and they have only a true 

 tongue. 



When the sun was up the old buck stalked away along 

 the hillside, over the ridge and toward the cedars that 

 fought with the winter wind for life. These cedars stand 

 close together, that the living may support those who die 

 and turn gray like dead men's bones when the north wind 

 chills their hearts and the snow weaves a winding sheet 

 for them. 



All the wild things are friends, and the old buck went 

 to the cedars and they hid him when he slept. They 

 wove their dead bones against his antkrs until both were 

 one, and they painted their tufty leaves with blue until 



THE LOST MAN. 



had any of us who had pitied him. He was not afraid of 

 the big woods. And perhaps he came out all right. Per- 

 haps he did not; in that case, he found a cemetery with- 

 out troubling anybody very much. Mr. Braithwaite dis- 

 missed him from his mind by saying: "Well, I've been in 

 these woods all my life, and he beats me." I have pre- 

 sented his picture and so much of the story as I know to 

 the readers of Forest ajsd Stream. What do you sup- 

 pose became of him? Frederic Irland. 



WHAT THE SIGNS DID. 



The haze of Indian summer was in the air and the rays 

 of sunshine filtered down, bronzing the dried buffalo 

 grass and the buttes, making all one color, tinting, toning 

 softly down, until the rugged outlines were lost in the 

 blue distance. 



A dreamy, contented air seemed to have settled on all 

 things in this great lone wilderness as they silently waited 

 for the passing of the summer and the coming of the 

 blizzards which would soon be sweeping across the 

 country, born of the north wind. 



At «uch times all nature reminds one of an old, old 

 man, white-haired, withered and palsied, a man who has 

 had good days, but who has passed them and is slowly 

 wasting away, dying from the mere lack of vital force 

 to keep him going, dying as the white-bearded milkweed 

 dies, from a want of heat and moisture. Such an old 

 man is nature, basking in the sun and waiting for the 

 winter of death to strike him down; old, very old, and 

 with seams and wrinkles on his face, basking in the sun 

 for warmth. 



So thought I as I rode along, with rifle across the 

 saddle pommel and eyes and ears alert for any indication 

 of game, for I knew the fat blacktail deer were basking 

 in this same sunshine, lazy enough so long as they were 

 safe. I also knew that the blue haze did not dim the 

 ever watchful eye of the old buck, whose antkrs were 

 like a plum thicket for branches and whose nose was 

 ever pointing in the wind for the first sniff of danger. I 

 knew that old fellow, knew I was in his country and out 

 of meat. I wanted a deer, and that old buck was the one 

 deer above all others. 



Wasn't his track nearly as big as those of the last year's 

 mavericks that mingled with it in the mud around the 

 spring? Didn't he look lordly as he bounded up the moun- 

 tain side last week? 'Wouldn't that set of horns make a 

 first-class hat rack in the hall down in the States? I 

 wanted that set of horns and I was going to have them, 

 there was no doubt about that. 



On I went, letting the wiry little cayuse pick his own 

 way over the rough ground, until I reached the spring, 

 where a few pines stood shoulder to shoulder around the 

 damp spot — a mark to be seen for miles, crying in a 

 dumb way, "Here is water, good water; let him who thirsts 

 drink." 



I had quaffed the treasure that they guarded and had 

 thanked the pines for showing me the place. They had 

 whispered and pointed to a huge track in the mud, and 

 the mountain breeze had sung, "Here is the spot. Here 

 the big buck drinks too, for he knows that this is the best 

 water for miles around, and his taste is only for the 

 best." 



While the horse drank I walked about and saw his track 

 again, big and fresh and close together. It sunk deep in 

 the mud where he had loitered in the water, while the 

 sun rose until the level beams had shone into his big 

 brown eye's. He had paced back and forth this last morn- 

 ing, nipped a killikinick bush here, a tender shoot of tule 

 there from the only bunch at the spring, and taken a taste 

 cf hunch grass from the hillside; at peac9 with himself 

 and the glowing morning as he watched the sun come 

 up from behind the Bearlodge range for the last time. 



you could look at the buck and see only cedar trees, or 

 look at the cedars and every one was a blue buck, so cun- 

 niDg are tbey. 



Yet the signs know and tell tales to all who know 

 them, and I listened to the signs. 



They knew where the buck went and they made it all so 

 plain that soon the cedars whispered in the old buck's ear 

 and said, "Fly." 



Then the buck stood up and looked about and smelled 

 the air. The air gave him nothing, for it was traveling 

 the wrong way. The cedars blinded his eyes, for they 

 could not move and show him danger, they could only 

 whisper. Then the signs pointed him out as he stood 

 there big and grand, and I knew he was mine. 



Silently the rifle looked at him — and spoke. 



The lead found his side, but he did not fall, only 

 bounded away, hurt to death, yet he would strive to live. 



In his flight he bounded with full, strong leaps along 

 the mountain side. Then the rifle looked again and sung 

 to him, twice more it sung and the big buck went down. 

 My long knife ripped his skin and drank his good red 

 blood, and so he died. Soon he was bound on the horse 

 and carried away from the cedars, away from the spring 

 and down the mountain side, and made meat for the 

 ranch, and good moccasins were made from his skin. 

 See you that head? That was his. 



Thus it was he died, betrayed by the signs when the 

 blue haze was on the mountains and the world was like 

 an old man sitting in the sun. El Comancho. 



HOW FUR IS CAUGHT.-III. 



Snowed In. 



When we awoke on the morning of our first day at the 

 camp on Turtle Lake we found a heavy, damp snow fall- 

 ing, covering all the woods with great flaky fleeces, and 

 lying light and deep upon the ground. We were afraid 

 to start out on the trail in so wet a snow, as the string- 

 ing of the shoes was certain to wet through and stretch — 

 a condition of affairs much to be dreaded by the web 

 shoe man. Moreover, Norris was not sure of his inclina- 

 tion or ability to finish the journey over the line, the 

 hardest of which was on ahead, including two nights or 

 more out in very rough shelter. We therefore lay in 

 camp, and spent the day in talking. Some of the things 

 which our trapper friends told us may be of interest. 



Elk, Moose and Turkeys in Wisconsin. 



I asked Brandis if he knew of any instance where elk 

 or moose had ever been seen in Wisconsin. He said that 

 some years ago on the Ripley Richards farm, near Antigo 

 (some ninety miles south of where we were), three pairs 

 of elk horns had been found under water in a lake. 



In Forest county, Wis., in 1893, both Frank Brandis 

 and Fay Buck more than once saw a "great big animal, 

 black, with no horns," which was living in a swamp, and 

 which "wouldn't run, but trotted fast." They both shot 

 at it, but never knew what it was. 



In 1892 a timber cruiser killed a moose between Hurley 

 and Ashland, Wis. (about forty miles from where we 

 were). A homesteader by name of Tommy Ryan had this 

 moose located and was waiting for it to get fat. He was 

 much incensed when he learned it had been killed. 



Old man Back spent hi3 youth trapping in the Michi- 

 gan South Peninsula. Hh says that thirty years ago there 

 were wild turkeys below Grand Rapids, Mich. A.t Cadil- 

 lac, further north, there never had been any so far as he 

 could hear. He could tell of no proof of elk or moose in 

 the South Peninsula. He thought the buffalo once lived 

 in the South Peninsula, and later in Wisconsin, as well 

 as the wild turkey. 



(O. W. Sayner, of Plum Lake, Wis., told me that there 



is a steep Muff r hill about m tit tniles f 'rom E n G'la're, 

 Wis., which is known t '-day as ' E k Mound Tradi- 

 tion says that forry years ago an elk was 8' ■> " stanomg 

 on top of this mound. Joe Blair, a trapper of Big St. Ger- 

 maine Lake, said that years ago his father found one elk 

 horn in a marsh in Fond du Lac county, Wis. I have 

 heard of other horns found in this same county.) 



More Curious Game Stories. 

 Brandis told me that in 1893 he saw quail (Bob Whites) 

 in Forest county, Wis. This is most singular, though 1 

 do not doubt it. Forest county (where the moose was also 

 seen) is away up in the pine country. In the lower part 

 of Wisconsin, in the farming and hardwood region, the 

 quail run wild. (Who would look for quail in North Da- 

 kota? Yet Ed. Bowers, of Fargo, in the Red River Valley, 

 saw a small bird fly into a plum thicket a few years ago, 

 not far south of Fargo, and on putting the bird up and 

 killing it found it to be a Bob White quail, the only one 

 ever seen in that country.) 



Panthers. 



Our trappers said that twelve years ago, in Altegamme 

 county, two panthers were killed between Bear and Maple 

 creeks. The fall after that one panther was seen near 

 Clintonville. Neither of these had ever personally run 

 across any panther sign in their years of trapping. 



Wolves, Lynx, Otter and Marten. 



Our trappeis said that the gray wolves of upper Wiscon- 

 sin were the largest of the United States. They drove the 

 deer a great deal. A pack of seven wolves had twice 

 crossed their lines that winter and they had poison out 

 for them. Wolves aw pt across a great deal of country, 

 thirty, forty, fifty miles or more, and did not remain 

 local. The lynx also traveled a great deal. A lynx usu- 

 ally came around again in about seven days, and the wolves 

 onoe in two or three weeks, though not so regular as the 

 lynx. The otter also traveled a great deal, but was irreg- 

 ular. It would sometimes leave the water courses, and 

 travel miles across dry divides to entirely new country. 

 The best place to trap marten was along the high ridges 

 between waterways, and that was best also for fisher. 

 They quite often caught fisher, but never had a wolver- 

 ine. 



How to Trap the Shyest Animals. 

 Our trappers rated the fox the hardest animal to trap, 

 the wolf next, and the otter third. To catch a fox they 

 often made a bed of chaff and got him to lying in it or 

 fooling around it, the trap being set under the chaff. Or 

 a trap was set at a place where several foxes seemed to 

 stop for a certain purpose. Or a fox could be caught 

 sometimes by putting a bait a little way out in the water, 

 and then putting a pad of moss between the bait and the 

 shore, with the trap hid under the moss. The fox, not 

 liking to wet his feet, would step on the moss and be 

 caught. 



For wolves the usual way was to put out poison (strych- 

 nine). Often they would not touch the poisoned meat. 



For otter it was necessary to use great care, not leaving 

 any chips or litter around. Our trappers usually caught 

 them either on a Blide or at a place where they came out 

 of the water (not where they went in , as the otter slides 

 with his feet doubled under and would be apt to spring 

 the trap with his body). It was a good way to drop a 

 limb or stick on the side of the slide, cutting it down and 

 letting it fall naturally, so that the otter could not so 

 easily escape the trap. The trap should never be set in 

 the middle of the slide, but at one side, as the otter's feet 

 are so wide apart, and he would not be caught should he 

 spring the trap with his body. 



For otter and beaver, if they were trapped near deep 

 water, a sliding pole was usually used, arranged with the 



A BLANKET CAMP. 



small end stuck down into the deep water. The animal 

 when trapped plunges into the water, and the ring of the 

 trap chain slips down along the pole. The little stubs of 

 the trimmed-off boughs prevent the ring from slipping 

 back up again, and the animal is drowned. An otter 

 should not be left in the water over nine days or the fur 

 will slip. A few days makes no difference. All traps 

 should be visited about once in bix to eight days. 



Our trappers said there were very few beaver left. 

 (Protected absolutely by law in Wisconsin.) The beaver 

 was an easy animal to trap. A good way was to find 

 where he came out of the water and to put a dead stick 

 (not a green one) across his path. If the stick were green 

 the beaver would pick it up and carry it into the water; 

 but he will always stoop down and crawl under a dead 

 stick. Then he steps into the trap. Our trappers had 

 caught seven beavsr that Beason. The Indians watched 

 the beaver very closely, and if they located a family 

 always got them all. 



"Black-tail" and Other Deer. 



Having; heard it said that there were some strange deer 

 seen in Wisconsin at times, I asked my friends about it. 

 Brandis said he had noticed a difference in the b.orns of 



