Fur trade -- North America; Northwest, Canadian -- History; Northwestern States -- History; Trapping
Night passes. In the morning the man comes to his traps. The meat has
been taken. All else is as before. Not a track marks the snow; but in
midwinter meat does not walk off by itself. The man warily feels for the
hidden traps. Then he notices that one of the stakes has been pulled up
and carried off. That is a sign. He prods the ground expectantly. It is
as he thought. One trap is gone. It had caught the wolverine; but the
cunning beast had pulled with all his strength, snapped the attached
sapling, and escaped. A fox or beaver would have gnawed the imprisoned
limb off. The wolverine picks the trap up in his teeth and hobbles as
hard as three legs will carry him to the hiding of a bush, or better
still, to the frozen surface of a river, hidden by high banks, with
glare ice which will not reveal a trail. But on the river the man finds
only a trap wrenched out of all semblance to its proper shape, with the
spring opened to release the imprisoned leg.
The wolverine had been caught, and had gone to the river to study out
the problem of unclinching the spring.
One more device remains to the man. It is a gun trick. The loaded weapon
is hidden full-cock under leaves or brush. Directly opposite the barrel
is the bait, attached by a concealed string to the trigger. The first
pull will blow the thief's head off.
The trap experience would have frightened any other animals a week's run
from man's tracks; but the wolverine grows bolder, and the trapper knows
he will find his snares robbed until carcajou has been killed.
Perhaps he has tried the gun trick before, to have the cord gnawed
through and the bait stolen. A wolverine is not to be easily tricked;
but its gluttony and curiosity bring it within man's reach.
The man watches until he knows the part of the woods where the wolverine
nightly gallops. He then procures a savoury piece of meat heavy enough
to balance a cocked trigger, not heavy enough to send it off. The gun is
suspended from some dense evergreen, which will hide the weapon. The
bait hangs from the trigger above the wolverine's reach.
Then a curious game begins.
One morning the trapper sees the wolverine tracks round and round the
tree as if determined to ferret out the mystery of the meat in mid-air.
The next morning the tracks have come to a stand below the meat. If the
wolverine could only get up to the bait, one whiff would tell him
whether the man-smell was there. He sits studying the puzzle till his
mark is deep printed in the snow.
The trapper smiles. He has only to wait.
The rascal may become so bold in his predatory visits that the man may
be tempted to chance a shot without waiting.
But if the man waits Nemesis hangs at the end of the cord. There comes a
night when the wolverine's curiosity is as rampant as his gluttony. A
quick clutch of the ripping claws and a blare of fire-smoke blows the
robber's head into space.
The trapper will hold those hunting-grounds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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