February, 1923 
i 
jeen able to swim that swift river, im- 
eded as he was. He was a very large 
fellow and must have weighed at least 
[eighty pounds. I count the brush wolf 
as being the shrewdest animal of this 
country and we were delighted to think 
chat we had caught such a fine specimen, 
right off the bat! 
The next day we continued on up the 
Baptiste. During the night it had 
snowed a little and we half expected 
S our traps to be frozen up. Most of 
them were and at length we came to the 
I last trap, or rather the point from where 
we could see its resting place, and we 
had taken nothing as yet. Although we 
f vvere some distance away, we could see 
that something had been in this trap, 
I for the snow was all worn away from 
the creature’s struggles. On approach¬ 
ing nearer we saw a dark animal strain¬ 
ing furiously on the trap chain and he 
was so completely covered with mud we 
could not tell what it was until real 
close. It proved to be a big otter at 
which we were especially elated, for this 
animal was a scarce article. 
It seemed Fate had been working 
against this otter; the river was open 
within a few feet of where the traps 
had been set but the animal, instead of 
plunging for the water, had climbed the 
R bank and got tangled up on an old stub 
of a small poplar. It seems like there 
is often some little incident of this sort 
that spells the difference between suc- 
S cess and failure. This otter measured, 
when stretched, nearly six feet. 
T OWARD Christmas the snow com¬ 
menced to come down heavily and 
in a surprisingly short time enough 
snow fell to make things look serious 
for Mr. Rapelje’s stock. His wild hay 
was far from ade¬ 
quate when it came 
to lasting through 
the bitter cold 
period and he had 
figured on the 
horses rustling up 
till near Christ¬ 
mas. Consequent¬ 
ly, when the snow 
: got too deep for 
the horses they 
commenced to die 
and their numbers 
decreased at an 
.alarming rate. 
They say it is an 
ill wind that blows 
nobody good—such 
was the case with 
Mr. R’s poor 
stock, no sooner 
had they started 
dying than foxes 
and brush wolves 
congregated on the 
had been passable throughout the win¬ 
ter, and relying on this Mr. R. had not 
taken time to get in a good supply of 
flour, sugar, tea, etc. To make things 
further complicated, another family had 
been left at the Athabasca Crossing 
without enough grub to bring them 
To be a wilderness trapper one must 
have rare courage. When every¬ 
thing is going well it is a fascinating 
game, but when bad luck dogs his 
footsteps his spirit is sorely tried. 
Then it is that the fine qualities 
of determination and patience are 
brought into play as he faces a 
struggle for bare existence against 
the unrelenting forces of Nature. 
through. To relate just how this hap¬ 
pened, I will have to go back a couple 
of months in my narrative. 
Just before freeze-up an outfit had 
stopped at our Baptiste headquarters 
one night, being on the way to Mile 120, 
on the old trail. There were two part¬ 
ners, Murphy and Morris, who had been 
'financed by a Mrs. MacDonald; their 
purpose being to open a trading post on 
Moose River, some sixty miles north¬ 
west of the Crossing. After Murphy 
and Morris had passed by we thought 
nothing of the incident until the women 
folks arrived at the Athabasca, only 
three miles distant by pack trail. Mrs. 
Murphy and Mrs. MacDonald had hired 
a freighter to take them to the place 
where the men were stopping, but on 
arriving at the Athabasca, the condition 
Mile Ninety House, where iheodore Walters traded with the Indians and present 
home of W. R. Hare 
Baptiste Flats in 
large numbers, and we were enabled to 
catch quite a bunch of them. 
But, while the fact of his horses dying 
was quite a severe loss to Mr. Rapelje, 
he was more concerned with the ques¬ 
tion of getting in more grub for his 
family. Up to that time the old trail 
of the trail, and the fact that it was 
impossible to cross the Athabasca River 
at that time, made the freighter un¬ 
willing to continue further, so he left the 
women there and returned to town. 
In the meantime Murphy and Morris 
had been having hard luck on their end; 
57 
Morris became discouraged and went 
out by way of High Prairie and Murphy 
came down to the Athabasca to see if 
there had been any word from the 
women. When Murphy reached the 
Crossing and found out what had hap¬ 
pened he gave up all notion of going 
back to Moose River. Hindmarsh, the 
Athabasca ferryman, was leaving for 
the winter, so Murphy rented his cabin 
with the intention of staying there and 
doing a little trapping. Mrs. MacDon¬ 
ald was taken back to town and every¬ 
thing should have been satisfactory. It 
would have, too, IF we had all been well 
supplied with grub! How we all con¬ 
trived to live through that hard winter 
will develop later on. 
IX’NOWLES and I were rather young 
* to be isolated for very long, and as 
Yuletide approached we planned on tak¬ 
ing our “catch” out to Edson and spend 
a week or ten days in civilization. 
When we left the Athabasca, on our 
fifty-three mile hike on snowshoes, we 
promised Murphy that we would try and 
rustle some sleigh dogs and bring back 
all the grub we could. 
Young Knowles’ parents had come up 
from the State of Washington and were 
living in Edson, so we went directly to 
their home. They were delighted to see 
us and admired our catch of furs very 
much. We did have a splendid variety: 
lynx, wolf, fox (red and cross), mink, 
otter and weasel. I have seen a time 
when that same catch would have 
fetched a couple of thousand dollars but 
at that time it was a great deal less in 
value. I had a great pile of letters from 
home and read and re-read them time 
after time. 
After consider¬ 
able dickering we 
sold part of our 
catch in Edson to 
a local buyer, and 
shipped the remain¬ 
der to St. Louis. 
Flere are some 
representative 
prices which we 
received for this 
lot: Lynx brought 
from ten to four¬ 
teen dollars or say, 
a n average o f 
twelve ; minks, 
around five dol¬ 
lars ; red foxes, 
ten dollars; two 
cross foxes, thirty- 
six dollars each; 
brush wolves, 
seven dollars aver¬ 
age ; otter, fifteen 
dollars and weasels 
averaged 70 cents 
straight. Now, 
these prices may not seem extra good, 
yet, considering the game there was in 
the country, they might have been 
worse. I have seen much lower prices 
prevail. I saw ninety-eight lynx sold 
bv a trapper for seven hundred dollars; 
I have seen red foxes sell for four dol- 
