United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In some cottonwoods, not far from the camp, they found his hatchet and his bag hanging to a tree. It looked for a time, as though the mystery of Hughie McKeever's disappearance would be one of the unsolved tragedies of the mountains. But a trapper, whose route took him along Thunder Creek that spring, noticed that his dog made a side trip each time, away from the trail.
His straight, iron-gray hair reached below the collar of his coat, curling in long wisps about his ears after the fashion of the pioneer trapper. As he came on toward the shanty the chipmunk noticed that he bent under the weight of a pack basket loaded with provisions.
At the same moment the rifle sounded, two men, the Trapper with his pack, and Wild Bill with his sled heavily loaded, were descending the western slope of the mountain, not a mile from the clearing in which stood the lonely cabin. The sound of the piece brought them to a halt as quickly as if the bullet had cut through the air in front of their faces.
Where the latter extend over many miles it is well to construct bark shanties at the limits. Let each trapper take a certain "spoke," and follow it to its terminus, returning on the adjacent line. On his arrival at the shanty he should immediately set to work skinning the animals taken, and stretching their furs.
A few minutes afterwards the moon lighted up the scene, and then could be observed the dead bodies of the two tigers, stretched along the ground by the water's edge, while the other trapper upon his knees was engaged in bathing with cold water a long scar, which he had received from the claws of the last killed jaguar, and which extended from behind his ear nearly down to his waist.
Immediately afterwards a little Indian boy ran up with a third and somewhat superior horse, and halted beside him. "Ha! that's it at last. The horse for her," said the trapper to himself with some satisfaction; "I knowed that Whitewing would have everything straight even though he is in a raither stumped condition just now."
"Sure as I live, but the beaver slept every night with the trapper, and in the day time, if he left the tent, the beaver would fall to work and make a dam across the floor of the tent, using the chist, skins, arms and everything." "Oh! Jones!" "But, I tell you it is true. Tame a beaver once, and you'll find I'se tellin' a plain statement as true as ever a Padre made."
"Now, if the thing was not morally impossible," cried the trapper, who the reader must have already discovered was not always exact in the use of qualifying words, "if the thing was not morally impossible, I should say, that was the man, who journeys in search of reptiles and insects: our fellow-traveller the Doctor."
When I left Davis Inlet Post of the Hudson's Bay Company with my dog team one cold winter morning, a native trapper told me that he would follow later in the day and probably overtake me at the Moravian Mission Station at Hopedale. We made half the journey to Hopedale that night and spent the night in a native cabin. A storm was threatening the next morning, but, nevertheless, we set forward.
"The rights of hospitality are sacred with my people; let not the young man fear; no harm will come to him," said the guide, indignantly. "One thing is certain, a light is breaking on our path. We have found some of our own race, though under unfavorable circumstances. Yet we may learn from them how to find our homes," said the trapper, encouragingly.
Word Of The Day