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Then you will know you've got a Coon tree." Yan took the earliest chance. He sought and found a great Basswood with some gray hairs caught in the bark. He took them home with him, not sure what kind they were. He sought the stranger, but he was gone, and no one knew him. How to identify the hairs was a question; but he remembered a friend who had a Coon-skin carriage robe.
Life is working problems for us all, and you are working yours to a sweet conclusion, helping the children, and taking up your own burdens and bearing them bravely. This was Harry King's thought as he strolled on and seated himself again under the basswood tree by the meadow brook, and took from his pocket the worn scrap of paper the wind had brought him and read it again.
When a boy in Virginia I had often helped cut down basswood and maple trees in the spring for the cattle to browse upon, and, sending to the agency for new axes, I armed every man on the ranch with one, and we began felling the cottonwood and other edible timber along the creeks and rivers in the pasture.
The old-fashioned awkward sap-gouge was used in tapping in those days, and the "spiles" or spouts were split out of basswood blocks with this gouge, and then sharpened so as to fit the half-round gash which the gouge made in the tree. The dairy milk-pans were used to catch the sap, and huge iron kettles to boil it down in.
"Oh, I dunno'; that depends," was Sam's more guarded response. "Can you do it?" asked Yan. "Wall, yes, if I kin get the right stuff. Ye see, it ain't every wood that will do it. It's got to be jest right. The Plains Injuns use Cottonwood root, an' the Mountain Injuns use Sage-brush root. I've seen the Canadian Injuns use Basswood, Cedar and dry White Pine, but the Chippewas mostly use Balsam Fir.
'I wouldn't desire, said the latter, seating himself on the end of the table, while his wife superintended a pan of frizzling pork on the coals 'I wouldn't desire, for a feller that wanted to settle down for good, a more promising location than yourn at the Cedars. The high ground grows the very best sorts of hard wood oak, sugar maple, elm, basswood.
When thus set, it may either be left to run its chances, or success, further insured by the following precaution: In winter the principal food of the deer consists of the twigs, buds, and bark of various forest trees, and particularly those of the basswood and maple.
We stopped there to get dinner, and were all at a loss to guess what kind of fresh meat we were eating, and in answer to my inquiry the host said: "That, Mister, is bar meat; I was up on the mounting one day last week, and came upon this varmint eatin' blackberries, and I fetched him home for winter. Don't be afeared; bar meat won't hurt ye more'n liftin' on a stick o' basswood."
A deep and careless incision had been made into each tree, near its root, into which little spouts, formed of the I bark of the alder, or of the sumach, were fastened; and a trough, roughly dug out of the linden, or basswood, was I lying at the root of each tree, to catch the sap that flowed from this extremely wasteful and inartificial arrangement.
Doubtful of its course and of his own, he ascertains the cardinal points of north and south by the thickness of the moss and bark on the north side of the ancient trees. Now descending into a valley, he presages his approach to a river by seeing large ash, basswood and sugar trees beautifully festooned with wild grape vines. Watchful as Argus, his restless eye catches everything around him.
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