S06 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
tOcT. 14, 190s. 
Charles McConnell's Black Foxes. 
The deputy sheriff slackened the strap of his pack 
and rested against a stump. “Charlie McConnell isn’t 
at home, and he ain’t going to be at home in this county 
for some time,” he remarked, as he lit his pipe. “Charlie 
lit out of these parts four years since, taking with him 
the good wishes of the entire community and the curse 
of Peter Sinclair, and four hundred dollars of good and 
lawful money of Canada which Peter had lifted from 
other people, and he lifted from Peter.” 
We were five miles from McConnell’s camp. The hour 
was high noon, the mercury stood at 85 in the shade, 
and I concluded that it would be more profitable to 
learn the story of Mr. McConnell’s migration than to 
pursue our way over the trail which led to his shanty. 
We were in the woods after a gang of roughs who 
made a business of setting moose snares. We had 
failed to locate them so far, and it was our intention to 
pass the night at Charlie McConnell’s shanty. 
In his yqunger^ days, Mr. McConnell had worn the 
Queen’s uniform in the capacity of a gunner. He had 
acquainted me with that fact; but I imagine that no 
one else in the country knew it, for deserters from the 
imperial service are not, as a rule, inclined to communi- 
cate to ordinary civilians the fact that they are “wanted” 
at Halifax. 
The sheriff continued, as he puffed at an exceedingly 
foul and refractory briar; “You don’t know Peter Sin- 
clair. Then you ain’t missed anything unless it’s the 
being able to say you know the meanest man in all 
Canada. Charlie had his faults, so have we all; but 
Peter would assay ten ounces to the ton in pure mean- 
ness and cussedness, while poor old Charlie was as 
white as they make them. You see, he came here , from 
no one knows where, with nothing but an elegant little 
rifle and some clothes. He bought the lot his shanty 
stands on for $40, and he built the camp himself. First 
of all, there was only himself, a dog, and a yearling calf. 
Then he increased his belongings until he had six head 
of cattle, and two of the best hounds ariy .man ever ran 
after. Them hounds was dandies. Many a fun I’ve had 
after foxes, raccoons and cats with them going ahead, 
and poor little Charlie puffing like a steam engine any- 
where from half a mile to a mile behind them. All the 
same, he managed to come in at the death of no end. of 
game, and for all he sold so much fur, I could swear it 
was all fairly trapped, and none of it strychnined. 
“Peter kept store about twenty miles the other side of 
Charlie’s place. He failed with his pockets full two 
years ago and skipped across the line. He was the 
greatest man to quote Scripture I ever heard. I guess 
he knew the w'hole Bible by heart. It took an able man 
to get ahead of him on a business deal. He was into all 
kinds of things, lumber, mines, brickyards, and so on. 
He kept the post office, and one of his girls ran the 
telegraph. They say he used to open letters and read 
them if he thought they had any new'S in them it would 
come in handy to know. If he’d lived handy to the sea, 
he would have gone into smuggling, or I miss my guess. 
Charlie used to 'go out to his place every six weeks or 
so and trade his pelts for groceries. Peter had a dead 
cinch on the country trade before the new railway came 
through, and between giving fourteen ounces to the 
pound and six- pints to the gallon, he raked up quite a 
little bit of money. 
“Charlie had it pretty hard for the first few years he 
w^as out in the woods, but in time he got on his feet. 
The lumber people liked him, he used to go cook on the 
drives, and the company paid him to keep an eye on the 
shanties and stores in tire summer. Then he used to 
sell moose meat to the crews in winter, and in the fall 
he used to guide Yankees. He took a boy out of the 
poor house, and they lived out here for a good many 
years; the boy enlisted and went to South Africa the 
year Charlie moved away. It doesn’t cost a man an 
everlasting fortune to live when he has no family, raises 
all his vegetables, shoots most of his meat and has 
nearly all his clothes given him. There’s a wild meadow 
below the cabin, wffiere we’ll get a duck or two to-night, 
and that gave him all the hay he needed for his 'stock. 
He had aboat three acres of prime land cleared and 
fenced round his cabin, and that grew potatoes and 
vegetables enough to feed him and his stock, and he 
always had plenty left over to sell to the lumbermen. 
Of course, Charlie lived too far away from the road to 
truck any produce out — that is in the spring or fall. He 
used to take a little hay and potatoes out when it came 
sledding. 
“People used to say that it was easier pulling wire 
nails out of a hardwood plank with your fingers than 
getting cash out of Peter Sinclair. Charlie and he used 
to have it hot and heavy sometimes, b.ut Charlie always 
managed to get some ready money. 
“I forget whether it was in the spring of ’91 or ’92 
that mink went up to famine price. They were low in 
the fall, and. Charlie held on to his catch, expecting a 
rise. He came out in the spring — he had been cooking 
in a lumber camp all winter — and he brought eighteen 
fine fall mink skins out with hirii, not a shot hole in the ’ 
whole lot, and half a dozen spring ones. Peter was 
sitting in the little room off the store he called his 
office, with his ledger in front of him and a big Bible 
open along side of it. Charlie dunmed his pack of 
skins on the Counter, and one of the Sinclair girls told 
her father he had come in with some fur, Peter walks 
out, and begins to sort the pelts over. 
“ ‘These here mushrats is worth twenty cents as prices 
are now,’ says he. ‘These cats ain’t worth mo’n a dollar, 
and the foxes are worth two dollars each, ’cepting that 
one that’s been “crusted” lated in the season; he’s 
worth a dollar. Now about these minks. Mink was 
way up until the first of the month; then they dropped, 
and I be blessed if I know what to give for them now. 
Here’s the last dispatch I had, “Buy no more mink 
unless extra prime, for more than one-fifty.”. Tell you 
what I’ll do. I’ll give you one-twenty-five for the lot, in 
trade, and if I get more for them I’ll pay you the dif- 
ference in cash, and if I lose, you pay me.’ 
“ ‘Lands sakes, man,’ says Charlie, ‘mink was worth, 
two dollars last fall, and I kept these fellows over, 
hoping for a rise.’ 
“ ‘They were worth two-fifty in February, and three 
weeks ago they were worth two-twenty-five, but they 
have been dropping ever since, and that is the best I 
can do for you.’ 
“Finally, after a lot of dickering, Peter agreed to pay 
Charlie thirty dollars cash for the twenty-four pelts and 
five dollars’ worth of groceries. If he got more for the 
skins in Halifax Charlie was to have the balance, and if 
he lost, he was to make the loss good. 
“That was a bad spring for the lumbermen. The 
water fell away and left ten million of lumber high and 
dry up the river. The driving camps were full of grub, 
and the company hired Charlie to keep an eye on things. 
He put in a .good spring, going from one camp to an- 
other, with his day’s pay coming in regular, plenty of 
grub and nothing to do. Early in May he went down to 
the dam on Crooked Brook and found two strangers in 
the camp. They were mighty civil fellows, out on a 
fishing trip, and they gave him a very pleasant time. 
He camped with them two days, and the second evening 
they were together two mink came out of the dam and 
started fishing right in full view of the camp. “There’s 
two five dollar bills three weeks ago,’ says one of the 
men, pointing to the minks. 
“ ‘How’s that?’ says Charlie. ‘Mink are away down 
this year.’ 
“ ‘Mink away down!’ says the other man. ‘I paid out 
six thousand dollars for mink alone last month. The 
lowest I paid was two-fifty for small spring mink, and 
the best skin I got cost me nine dollars. I’ve been in 
the fur business for nearly thirty years, and I only re- 
member mink being as high twice before.’ 
“ ‘You told me your name was Bushell. Do you be- 
long to Tobin & Bushell, of Halifax?’ says Charlie. 
‘I don’t know the firm myself, but I sell my fur to Peter 
Sinclair, who does a pile of business with that firm.’ 
“To cut a long story short, Charlie found out that 
Peter sold all his fur to Tobin & Bushell, and that the 
lot of mink he had traded to Peter for thirty-five dol- 
lars, had fetched a hundred and twenty-five in Halifax. 
“When Charlie got out to Peter’s again he tackled him 
about the deal, mentioning no names, only asking him 
for a statement of account. Peter told him a lot of 
stuff and paid him two dollars more in cash and gave 
him some tobacco and stuff to make up five dollars 
more. Charlie took the stuff and walked off without 
saying anything. He sold very little fur to Peter after 
'that. Maybe he’d take in a bear skin or a bundle of 
moose hides onCe in a while, but his best fur he shipped 
to Halifax .direct. Peter growled about this, but he 
couldn’t prevent it. 
“It was some five years after the deal in mink skins 
that Charlie found a fox den, and dug the young foxes 
out. He said nothing about it to any one. but he had 
them tame round his house for some time. That fall 
word was brought out to Peter Sinclair that there were 
two black foxes in the woods back of Chalmers Grant, 
not more than five miles from Charlie’s place. He 
asked Charlie about it when he came out, and he told 
him that he had seen one of them two days before and 
that it was a clear black. 
“ ‘I didn’t shoot it,’ says Charlie, ‘for two reasons. 
First, the fur is poor in early October, and secondly, 
I’m going to catch him alive — if it’s a he one — and try 
to breed him to a little bitch fox I’ve got at home.’ Peter 
said that no living man could catch a black fox alive, 
and that he would give ten dollars to see one. 
“‘You wait until next March, when the foxes are 
dogging, and I’ll let you see one right in this store, 
unless some one brings the hide in before I can catch 
him. I mean to breed foxes like that fellow down in 
Maine that I read of in the papers.’ 
“Not more than a week after this, one of the black 
foxes came out in broad daylight and killed two geese, 
and half a dozen chickens for old Deacon Prendergast, 
of Chalmers Grant. The Deacon, his wife and her 
sister saw him. They hadn’t any gun in the house, and 
the Deacon was too blind to shoot straight if they had 
one. When the snow came- several people tried to get 
those foxes with hounds, but they seemed to have gone 
away.' They killed a pile of common red foxes, and one 
or two patch foxes in the district, but never a black fox 
showed his nose. 
“Charlie didn’t go cook that year. He stayed round 
home, and hunted and trapped all winter. Peter used 
to laugh at him about letting the black fox go; but 
Charlie took it all in good part, and he sold old Peter 
considerable fur, taking care to get something like the 
just price for it. 
“It would be along about the middle of March — I 
think it was the third Friday—that Charlie came out to 
Peter’s with his sled and dagon. [A dagen is an ox 
trained to work alone in harness.] He had a big box 
on the sled. It was after sundown, and the lamp was 
lit in Peter’s store. Charlie walks in, and says he, ‘You 
owe me ten dollars, Mr. Sinclair, I’ve got the black fox 
alive.’ 
“‘Lands sakes,’ says Peter, ‘where is he?’ 
“ ‘Right in that box,’ says Charlie. ‘Wait one mo- 
ment and I’ll fetch him in for you and the crowd to see.’ 
“He fetched the box in, and inside it was the blackest 
fox you ever saw. The box was all lined with tin, so 
he couldn’t gnaw out, and the slats were also covered 
with tin. Every time any one would go near him, he 
would show them long white teeth of his and snap them 
like an otter trap. 
“ ‘Now,’ says Charlie, ‘you wait a minute and I’ll show 
you the bait I caught him with.’ And he goes out to 
the sled and fetches in the prettiest little bitch fox you 
ever saw. She was fat and sleek, and she had a collar 
op like a dog. Charlie reached for a cracker, and she 
begged for it, and rolled over at the word of command. 
“ ‘I ris that little devil and trained her myself — her and 
her sister,’ says Charlie. ‘I ketched four red foxes on 
the sister, and I was afraid I was going to have the same 
luck with this one; but I happened to be in luck, and 
she’s good for a litter of “patches,” if what they. say is 
right. It’s a mighty easy thing to catch foxes if you 
only know how, and when I found him and her [point- 
ing to the black fox] in the pen together this morning 
I felt more than good.’ 
“‘Gentlemen,’ says Peter, ‘I promised this man ten 
dollars if he would bring that black fox alive into this 
store. I’m a man whose word is as good as his bond, 
and here’s the ten dollars I promised you, Mr. Mc- 
Connell. It’s a long tramp from your place to here, 
and you’d better go to the house, and Agatha will give 
you some supper, and you can have a bed if you are too 
tired to go home to-night.” 
“Charlie thanked him kindly and went in, and Agatha 
Sinclair, who was a nice girl for all she came from such 
a father, set to work to get his supper ready, while her 
sister Annie, went to the telegraph instrument (which 
was in the sitting room) and began to send a dispatch. 
Charlie asked her to send one for him as soon as she 
was through with the first one, and he got her to write 
it, saying that he had poor learning and she could write 
it better than he could. It ran like this : 
“ ‘To Manager of Fox Farm, Pirate Island, Me.; What 
price for live black fox and mate? Mate red, both un- 
hurt. Will ship C. O. D.’ 
“Annie rattled away at the instrument, while Charlie 
ate his supper, and little Vixen, the fox bitch, sat beside 
his chair waving her bushy tail and begging for scraps. 
After supper Peter came in and offered Charlie a glass of 
rum, saying he only kept it in the house for medicine, 
but he thought it might do him good after his long, 
tramp. 
“The way that telegraph instrument was worked that 
night was a caution, I can tell you. It was past 9 when 
Charlie got his answer : ■ _ 
“ ‘Two hundred the best we can do on the pair. Ship 
at once.’ 
“He said nothing and started for the kitchen where he 
had left his moccasins. While he was putting them on 
Peter comes in and says to him : ‘Mr. McConnell, my 
daughter tells me you had an answer to your dispatch, 
and it wasn’t at all to your liking. Now she said mor’n 
she had any right to, seein as she’s not allowed to tell 
what goes over the wires, but if I can help you out any- 
way let me know, and I’ll do so.’ 
“Charlie told him that the price offered was too low 
altogether, that he would sooner kncck the black fox on 
the head and take his chance on Vixen’s pups coming 
‘patches.’ than sell at that price. I have a letter in my 
pocket from a Frenchman who’s going into the fox busi- 
ness on. Anticosti, and he offers me $500 lor a pure black, 
and $350 for a silver-gray,’ says he, and he pulls the letter 
out of his pocket and hands it to Peter. To cut a long 
story short, Peter oaid him $400 in cash for the black 
fellow, leaving him the little bitch fox. 
“It would be about a week later that the high sheriff 
came to my place early in the morning and told me he 
had papers he wished me to serve on Charlie McConnell, 
back of Chalmers Grant. The sheriff knew Peter as well 
as I did, so our fees were secured. I hitched up and 
drove as . far as I could, and walked the rest of the way. 
Charlie was cutting wood just outside his shanty when 
I came in sight. He never offered to run, he just walked 
to meet me and asked if I had papers for him. ‘The 
case of Peter Sinclair versus Charles McConnell.’ ‘I 
thought it would be the queen versus me, I only wish it 
had been. Say, you put those papers back in your pocket 
and come in and have some dinner, and I’ll walk out to 
the road with you and go down to the corner and see 
Peter. If we settle the case I’ll pay you your fees and 
mileage, same as if you served the papers, and if we 
don’t yau can serve them on me all the same.’ 
“I went in and had dinner, and we walked out to the 
road afterward. It was near dark when we got to Peter’s 
store at the cross-roads. The store was full of loafers, 
but Charlie never minded a bit. When Peter saw us he 
came out of his office like a snarling yellow cur dog com- 
ing through a fence after a team. His thin red hair and 
sandy whiskers stuck right out like the fur on a wildcat 
when the dogs have him ‘treed,’ and every yellow tooth 
in his head showing. He’d forgotten his Scripture for 
once in his life, and the swearing he did was something 
