were frozen stiff, but I kept up such a fast pace that I wasn’t cold 
when I reached home, even though I had something like a mile to 
run, but there was no harm done with the exception that my frozen 
clothes chaffed my skin; anyway it was nothing new to see me come 
home wet. 
Losing this otter put an end to my fastening my traps with rope; 
thereafter I used chains. 
Using the information the old trappers gave me to advantage 
I soon began to catch lots of animals in my traps—and also soon 
learned that steel traps were the most effective. 
As time went on, which was very fast in those days it seemed, I 
would meet my comrade trappers at the still house and tell them of 
my success. This, of course, interested the old fellows and they 
would instruct me more in regard to hunting and trapping. 
1 used to sit hours and listen to their tales of hunting in Arkansas. 
They told of bear and panther hunts, also of deer and how you could 
catch wild turkeys by the hundreds and beaver, coon, otter, mink and 
wolves by the thousands and I learned afterwards that these old 
fellows didn’t stretch the possibilities a bit. Arkansas was, beyond a 
doubt, the hunter’s paradise. I listened to their stories until I decided 
to give up home, father, mother, brothers and sisters for the happy 
hunting ground. 
My father had built me a log cabin in the yard, for the dogs and 
I to sleep in (I was too big a nuisance in the house). My kind mother 
always kept plenty of fresh clothes in my cabin because she Knew 
how often I came in wet to the skin and needed dry clothing. The 
dogs slept in one end of the cabin and I in the other—about the 
only real difference between us was the fact that they walked on four 
legs and I on two. I always treated them as my equal—or maybe 
superior. 
At that time I had four dogs. Braun was a typical black and tan 
hound with a white ring around his neck, his four feet were white 
above the ankles and he had white on the end of his tail. He was 
my favorite dog, beyond a doubt the best coon and opossum dog I 
have ever seen. He would never lie—many times I have made climbs 
in the dark where I thought there was no coon, only to find that 
Braun was right and Mr. Coon would jump out. I have chopped for 
hours, by firelight, to throw a tree that I could not climb because 
Braun said there was a coon up it, and invariably there would be one. 
Next to Braun I liked Pudle, a large black Newfoundland which 
I had raised from a pup and trained with old Braun. Pudle was an 
excellent coon and opossum dog; he never barked on a track often. 
He would run the coon up a small tree and when I would make the 
coon jump to the ground it was all day with him. 
I remember one night old Braun treed four coons up a hackberry 
tree which bent over the bank of the river. It was really a very pic¬ 
turesque tree, with a grape vine running all over it and the silvery 
light of the moon shining on it and reflecting itself in the still, mirror¬ 
like river. My appreciation of the beauty of the setting, however, was 
— 9 — 
