Part 16 (1/2)
”Thanks, professor,” said d.i.c.k. ”You must be right, so kindly pa.s.s me another of those trout, and be quick about it.”
It is a truth that both boys became epicures. Their valley furnished so much, and they had a seasoning of hard work and open mountain air that was beyond compare. They even imitated Indian and trapper ways of cooking geese, ducks, quail, sage hens, and other wild fowl that the region afforded. They could cook these in the ashes as they did the trout, and they also had other methods. Albert would take a duck, cut it open and clean it, but leave the feathers on. Then he would put it in water, until the feathers were soaked thoroughly, after which he would cover it up with ashes, and put hot coals on top of the ashes. When the bird was properly cooked and drawn from the ashes, the skin could be pulled off easily, taking the feathers, of course, with it. Then a duck, sweet, tender, and delicate, such as no restaurant could furnish, was ready for the hardy youngsters. At rare intervals they improve on this by stuffing the duck with seasoning and Indian meal. Now and then they served a fat goose the same way and found it equally good.
They cooked the smaller birds in a simpler manner, especially when they were at the bark shanty, which they nicknamed the ”Suburban Villa.” The bird was plucked of its feathers, drawn and washed, and then they cut it down the back in order to spread it out. Nothing was left but to put the bird on the end of a sharp stick, hold it over the coals, and turn it around until it was thoroughly broiled or roasted. They also roasted slices of big game in the same way.
As Albert was cooking a partridge in this manner one evening at the Suburban Villa, d.i.c.k, who was sitting on his buffalo-robe blanket in the doorway, watched him and began to make comparisons.
He recalled the boy who had left Omaha with the wagon train six or eight months before, a thin, spiritless fellow with a slender, weak neck, hollow, white cheeks, pale lips, and listless eyes. That boy drew coughs incessantly from a hollow chest, and the backs of his hands were ridged when the flesh had gone away, leaving the bones standing up. This boy whom d.i.c.k contemplated was quite a different being. His face was no longer white, it was instead a mixture of red and brown, and both tints were vivid. Across one cheek were some brier scratches which he had acquired the day before, but which he had never noticed. The red-brown cheeks were filled out with the effects of large quant.i.ties of good food digested well. As he bent over the fire, a chest of good width seemed to puff out with muscle and wind expansion. Despite the extreme cold, his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and the red wrists and hands were well covered with tough, seasoned flesh. The eyes that watched the roasting bird were intent, alert, keenly interested in that particular task, and in due course, in any other that might present itself.
d.i.c.k drew a long breath of satisfaction. Providence had treated them well. Then he called loudly for his share of the bird, saying that he was starving, and in a few moments both fell to work.
Their fur operations continued to extend. They had really found a pocket, and isolated corner in the high Rockies where the fur-bearing animals, not only abundant, were also increasing. It was, too, the dead of winter, the very best time for trapping, and so, as far as their own goings and comings were concerned, they were favored further by the lucky and unusual absence of snow. They increased the number of their traps--dead falls, box traps, snares, and other kinds, and most of them were successful.
They knew instinctively the quality of the furs that they obtained. They could tell at a glance whether they were prime, that is, thick and full, and as they cured them and baled them, they cla.s.sified them.
Constant application bred new ideas. In their pursuit of furs, they found that they were not quite so sparing of the game as they had been at first. Some of their scruples melted away.
Albert now recalled a device of trappers of which he had read.
This was the use of a substance generally called barkstone, which they found to be of great help to them in the capture of that animal.
The barkstone or castoreum, as it is commercially known, was obtained princ.i.p.ally from the beaver himself. The basis of it was an acrid secretion with a musky odor of great power, found in two glands just under the root of the beaver's tail. Each gland was from one and one half to two inches in length. The boys cut out these glands and squeezed the contents into an empty tin can. This at first was of a yellowish-red color, but after a while, when it dried, it became a light brown.
This substance formed the main ingredient of barkstone, and in their medicine chest they found a part of the remainder. The secretion was transferred to a bottle and the mixed with it essence of peppermint and ground cinnamon. As Albert remembered it, ground nutmeg also was needed, but as they had no nutmeg they were compelled to take their chances without it. Then they poured whisky on the compound until it looked like a paste.
Then the bottle was stopped up with the greatest care, and in about a week, when they stole a sniff or two at it, they found that the odor had increased ten or a dozen times in power.
They put eight or ten drops of the barkstone upon the bait for the beaver, or somewhere near the trap, and, despite some defects in the composition, it proved an extraordinary success. The wariest beaver of all would be drawn by it, and their beaver bales grew faster than any other.
d.i.c.k calculated one day that they had at least five thousand dollars worth of furs, which seemed a great sum to both boys. It certainly meant, at that time and in that region, a competence, and it could be increased greatly.
”Of course,” said d.i.c.k, ”we'll have to think some day of the way in which we must get these furs out, and for that we will need horses or mules, but we won't bother our heads about it yet.”
After the long period of clear, open weather, the delayed snow came. It began to fall one evening at twilight, when both boys were snug in the cabin, and it came in a very gentle, soothing way, as if it meant no harm whatever. Big, soft flakes fell as softly as the touch of down, but every time the boys looked out they were still coming in the same gentle but persistent way.
The next morning the big flakes still came down and all that day and all the next night. When the snow stopped it lay five feet deep on the level, and uncounted feet deep in the gullies and canyons.
”We're snowed in,” said Albert in some dismay, ”and we can't go to our traps. Why, this is likely to last a month!”
”We can't walk through it,” said d.i.c.k meditatively, ”but we can walk on it. We've got to make snowshoes. They're what we need.”
”Good!” said Albert with enthusiasm. ”Let's get to work at once.”
Deep snows fall in Illinois, and both, in their earlier boyhood, had experimented for the sake of sport with a crude form of snowshoe. Now they were to build upon this slender knowledge, for the sake of an immediate necessity, and it was the hardest task that they had yet set for themselves. Nevertheless, it was achieved, like the others.
They made a framework of elastic stripes of ash bent in the well-known shape of the snowshoe, which bears some resemblance to the shape of the ordinary shoe, only many times larger and sharply pointed at the rear end. Its length was between five and six feet, and the ends were tightly wound with strips of hide.
This frame was bent into the shoe shape after it had been soaked in boiling water.
Then they put two very strong strips of hide across the front part of the framework, and in addition pa.s.sed at least a half dozen stout bands of hide from strip to strip.
Then came the hard task of attaching the shoe to the foot of the boy who was to wear it. The ball of the foot was set on the second crosspiece and the foot was then tied there with a broad strip of hide which pa.s.sed over the instep and was secured behind the ankle. It required a good deal of practice to fasten the foot so it would not slip up and down; and also in such a manner that the weight of the shoe would be proportioned to it properly.