The Young Alaskans Part 15

"Anyhow," said Jesse, "I shouldn't mind trying once for a fox. We might get a good one. I've heard they catch foxes sometimes--silver-grays or blacks, you know--that are worth three or four hundred dollars."

"Or even more," added Rob; "but that is when they're very prime, and when they bring the top of the market."

Skookie looked from one to the other, but finally made up his own mind.

He led out on the way toward the barabbara, where very methodically he set to work carrying out his purpose. He rummaged among the _klipsie_ b.u.t.ts in the back part of the hut until he got one to suit him, and then without any hesitation led the way a few hundred yards distant from the hut where, parting the gra.s.s, he disclosed the cache or hiding-place where the owners of the _klipsies_ had secreted the traps; they, in their cunning, not wishing to leave the entire trap in the possession of any stranger who might come to the house.

Fumbling in this heap of narrow sticks, each of which was about as long as a boy's arm, Skookie at last picked out one which suited him. They discovered that the end of it was armed with four or five spikes apparently made of old nails hammered to a point and filed into a barb.

Skookie now took this arm of his _klipsie_ to where he had left the b.u.t.t or hub of the trap, and he loosened up the heavy, braided cord of sinew which pa.s.sed from end to end through the b.u.t.t. He pushed the b.u.t.t end of the arm in between these sinews so that pulling it sidewise twisted the sinews. Then he drove tight the wedges at each end of the hub, so straining the sinews tightly about the arm of the trap. Thus, as the boys readily saw, a great force was exerted when the arm of the trap was pulled back.

"That is what they call 'torsion,' I think," said Rob. "It is like a gate-spring which pushes hard when you twist it. Look at those sinews--thick as your thumb--and even one little sinew is strong enough to hang an ox!"

Skookie went on with his work until he thought the strain on the arm was sufficient. Then he pulled the arm back and caught it under a slight notch which was cut in the side of the hub, which itself was open on one side to allow the pa.s.sage of the arm. When the trap was thus set it lay flat on the ground, and Skookie motioned the boys to keep away from it--something which all were willing to do, for the barbed arm of the _klipsie_ resembled nothing so much as a fanged serpent with its head back ready to strike a terrible blow.

"Natives get caught in these traps sometimes," said Rob; "so the old trappers tell me. Sometimes they get crippled for life. You see, these iron points here strike a man just about at the knee joint, and that's pretty bad when there is no doctor around."

Skookie, going ahead with his work, fumbled in his pocket and fished out a piece of hide cord, which he measured off to a certain length between his arms; then, picking up a bit of stick, he whittled out a pointed peg and attached one end of his cord to this, while he arranged the other so that it would control the trigger which held the arm in place on the farther side of the _klipsie_ bow. Now he stretched out his cord and pushed the peg into the earth as though it crossed a fox path, and made a motion of a fox walking along and touching his leg against the cord.

To do this he took a long stick instead of using his own limb.

Whang! went the _klipsie_, the fanged arm whirling over so fast that the eye could hardly follow it, and burying its points in the ground.

Skookie laughed and danced up and down, showing how it certainly would have killed a fox had the latter been there.

"Come on," said John; "let's go set it somewhere."

"All light!" said Skookie, who understood a great many words from their apparent connection. He took up his trap, with the hub under his arm, and headed off up the beach toward the spot where they had first seen the fox trail two or three hours before.

Following along the faint trail for some distance, but taking care not to step in it, he at length struck it where it pa.s.sed through the tall gra.s.s. Here he squatted down and made some sort of strange pa.s.ses over his trap, mumbling certain words in a strange tongue. Like all of his people, Skookie was superst.i.tious. What he wanted to do now was to wish his trap good-luck. Having attended to this part of his ceremony, he drew his knife and began to detach a square of the thick, matted moss, making a cavity about arm's distance at one side of the path. In this hole he buried the hub of the _klipsie_ and covered it carefully with moss, so that nothing was left to show. The arm, which lay back still farther in the gra.s.s, he covered up lightly so that it also would be concealed from view. Then, carefully, he stretched his trigger string across the path, mixing it up with some of the dried spears of gra.s.s so that it lay a foot or less above the level of the path, or at just about the height at which the fore-legs or breast of the fox would strike it as the animal came walking down the trail. Having bent the gra.s.s above his _klipsie_, and arranged everything so that the place showed no signs of what had been going on, Skookie at last smiled, stood back, and looked cheerfully at his work; then he cast a glance toward the skies, and made a sign with his fingers held downward as though to indicate falling rain.

"Bime-by water!" he said.

"He means that he wants it to rain," said Rob, "so that the scent will all be washed off from the trap and from the ground around it."

"Well," said John, "if the water is about the way it averages, he won't have to wait longer than to-night for his rain." Which, indeed, was the case, for in the night, while they were all safely in the barabbara around the fire, the rain came as usual, sufficient to blot out all trace of their late work on the fox trails.

The following morning the boys at once began to wonder what luck had met their trapping operations. It did not appear to them likely that they would catch anything the first night; but Skookie, it seemed, was of a different opinion. After breakfast he led the way to the place where the trap lay, and without hesitation walked into the tall gra.s.s, stooped down, and at once held up to view a long, dark animal at sight of which the boys uttered a joint whoop of joy!

"We got him!" said John. "We certainly did get a fox, and the very first night, too."

"Yes," agreed Rob, "we did more than that: we got a silver-gray fox, and a mighty good one at that. Was there ever such luck, I do wonder!"

Skookie took it all as a matter of course, but the others were much excited over this discovery. They put the silky, handsome animal upon the ground and began to smooth out its fur. The fangs of the _klipsie_ had struck it in the back of the neck and killed it instantly, so that the coat remained quite smooth and undisturbed by any struggles. It was long and silky--dark, with white-tipped tail, and gray extremities on all the hairs of the back.

"This skin ought to be worth anyhow one hundred dollars," said Rob, critically. "At least that would be my guess at it. The natives don't often get that much, but sometimes a trader will buy a skin for fifty dollars and sell it for five or six hundred. That all depends on the sort of market he finds."

"Anyhow," said Jesse, "it proves that Skookie can trap foxes all right."

The young Aleut was not disturbed by this praise, and proceeded to further prove his ability as a trapper. Having again set his _klipsie_ at a point a few yards farther down the trail, he took up the dead fox and led the way back to the barabbara, where he undertook to carry the carca.s.s in for his skinning operations.

At this Rob demurred, for he had already seen proof of the custom of the native trappers, who nearly always skin out their game at the fireside of the barabbara, and who are very careless where they leave the carca.s.ses.

"No, you don't!" said Rob. "We've just cleaned out that house, and we don't want it mussed up again so soon. Let's go over to the beach and skin our fox."

Skookie, always docile and willing to obey, once more led the way, carrying the fox under his arm. At last he seated himself on the ground, sharpened his knife-blade on a stone, and began to skin out the fox, much as an old trapper would. He made a cut from one hind leg to the other, cut off the tail bone, pulled the tail off clean by the use of two sticks clamped against the bone, and proceeded to remove the skin from the body without splitting it along the belly--"casing" it, as trappers call it. So carefully did he do his work that he did not make the slightest cut around the eyes or ears or nostrils, and even brought off the whiskers of the muzzle without disfiguring the skin in the least.

Next he found a spreader, or tapering board, under the eaves of the barabbara, and over this he stretched his fox-skin, inside out, setting it away in the back part of the barabbara, where it would slowly dry without being exposed to the fire.

"Well, he certainly is a trapper, all right," said John, admiringly.

"Now I believe we could do that sort of thing ourselves. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't get a lot of foxes here, and maybe make some money out of the skins some day."

Rob shook his head. "I don't think so," said he. "Even this skin, although it is not yet rusty from the sunlight, is not perfectly prime, as you can see by looking at the inside of the skin. A really prime skin is white and clear, and you can see that this one is just a little blue along the back. That isn't a good sign to me."

Rob's guess as to the fur soon proved to be correct. For four more nights they watched their _klipsie_ trap without success. On the fifth morning they found another dead fox in the trap, with the barbs through his back. This, however, was only a "cross" fox, and his fur proved so worn and rusty that Skookie scornfully refused to take off the hide.

That ended their fox-trapping, for Rob refused to allow any more foxes to be killed. Skookie, apparently willing to go on with his work, or to stop as they preferred, smilingly took up his _klipsie_, after he had sprung the trap, detached the arm, and restored the separated parts to their original hiding-places.

"Plenty times my peoples come here," he said, smiling.

"That means," said Jesse, "that some time or other, if we have luck, we may be discovered here by his people, even if our own people never find us."

"Yes," Rob added, "but I only hope that may be before winter comes and leaves us unable to get out."

XXI

AN ALEUT GOOSE-HUNT

Although utterly remote from the ordinary haunts of man, our young hunters found their new environment one free from monotony, after all.

The sea was never twice the same, and even the weather was capricious enough to afford variety. As spring wore on the region seemed to teem with wild life, whether on the earth, in the water, or the air. The gulls, crows, ravens, and eagles were continually pa.s.sing, with clouds of s.h.a.gs or cormorants, which nested on the rocks a mile or so down the bay, together with numbers of oyster-birds, whale-birds, and other strange fowl of the outlying coast.

Each night and morning also there pa.s.sed up the lagoon a stream of honking and chattering wild-fowl, the largest of which and most valuable, though least attainable, were the great Canada geese, which frequented this part of the island in large numbers.

"If only we could get hold of some of those fellows," said John, longingly, one morning, as they saw an especially fine flock pa.s.s slowly up toward the head of the lagoon. "I'll warrant they'd be good to eat.

See, some of them can hardly fly yet, they're so young."

"Yes," said Jesse, "if we had only thought of it last week, they probably would not have been able to fly at all--flappers, they call those young birds. Then we might possibly have killed some of them in the gra.s.s at the head of the lagoon."

"We could kill all we wanted now with the rifles," commented Rob; "but, as I said awhile ago, I don't think we ought to use rifle ammunition for killing birds. No one can tell how much we may need our cartridges later on. No, I don't think we will get any geese unless we can catch them with our hands. I haven't much faith in those throwing-cords that Skookie was showing us."

John turned to his friend Skookie. "S'pose you catch-um geese, Skookie?"

he asked.

The Aleut boy surprised them very much by his sudden use of English.

"Sure!" he said. He had perhaps learned this word from a.s.sociating with whites somewhere down the coast.

His prompt reply made them all laugh, but none the less it was of yet greater interest than this.