Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains — Themes and Context

Beaver were growing scarcer, and men were forced to go further for them. So the trapper entered these unknown fastnesses and began his work. He followed up stream after stream, sought out remote valleys, crossed deserts. With rifle in one hand and trap in the other, he endured every hardship and exposed himself to every danger. He swam rivers, climbed mountains, fought Indians, and risked life in his struggle for fur.

They were men of firm courage and stern resolution, those trappers of the early days. About their life and their work there is a romance and a charm that appeal powerfully to the imagination. Jack Danvers was fortunate in that the man who taught him some of the secrets of that now forgotten life was one who had borne a part in the work of subduing the wild west, and in laying the foundations upon which its present civilization is built.

I. A COUNCIL OF WAR 1

II. A PLEASANT SPRING RIDE 9

III. AN EXPEDITION FOR FUR 18

IV. MAKING READY FOR THE TRIP 27

V. THE START FOR NORTH PARK 37

VI. TO LARAMIE AND NORTH PARK 48

VII. A TALK ABOUT BEAVER 60

VIII. THE WATER FOWLS' SUMMER HOME 73

IX. A TROUBLESOME GRIZZLY 83

X. A BIG BEAVER MEADOW 95

XI. INDIAN BEAVER LORE 113

XII. PROSPECTING FOR FUR 126

XIII. A LION'S LEAP 140

XIV. SETTING FOR BEAVER 155

XV. THEY SKIN BEAVER 170

XVI. OFF FOR NEW TRAPPING GROUND 191

XVII. TRAPPING THE MINK 209

XVIII. THE ENGLISH PILGRIMS 228

XIX. THE FIRST BIGHORN 246

XX. DANGER FROM THE UTES 264

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"WE'VE GOT A BEAVER, I RECKON" _Frontispiece_

TWO BOB-CATS PULLING AND TEARING AT SOME SMALL THING ON THE GROUND 106

A BEAVER APPEARED WITH A LONG STICK, WHICH HE PLACED WITH OTHERS ON THE ROOF 130

A BEAR, SITTING ON HER HAUNCHES, WAS LOOKING ALMOST DIRECTLY AT THEM 186

"Well, Jack," said Mr. Sturgis, "I am glad to see you back again."

"Indeed, Uncle George, you can bet I am glad to get back," replied Jack. "I tell you it just made my heart rise up to ride over the prairie to-day; it seemed to me that I never smelt anything so good as the odor of the sage, and the little birds that kept getting up out of the road and flying ahead of the team and alighting again, seemed like old friends. Then we saw some antelope and a coyote or two. I tell you it was bully. It seemed mighty good, too, to see Hugh after all these months."

"Well," said Mr. Sturgis, "it is good to get you back, and I hope you will have a good summer. Have you thought of what you want to do?"

Jack shook his head. "No," he said, "I have not; it is good enough to be back. As soon as this storm is over I want to go out and take a ride and see the country again."

"Oh, this snow won't last long, though it's a pretty rough night now. Where were you on the road when it began to snow?" asked Mr. Sturgis.

"We were just about half through the Little Basin," said his nephew. "Hugh had been looking at the sky for quite a little while back, and said that it was going to snow. We drove pretty fast from the Troublesome until we got into the Big Basin; the snow didn't get very deep until about three or four miles back from here. From there on we had pretty slow driving."

"Well," said Mr. Sturgis, "suppose you go out and see if you can find Hugh, and ask him if he will come in here and sit with us for a little while; I want to talk with you both."

"All right," replied Jack, and he disappeared in the direction of the ranch kitchen.

It was about the middle of the month of May, and Jack Danvers, after a winter of hard work at school in the East, had come out by the Union Pacific Railroad to spend the summer at his uncle's ranch. His old friend, Hugh Johnson, had met him at the railroad station with a team of horses hitched to a spring-wagon, and the greater part of the drive of forty miles out to the ranch had been made in record time. Then it had begun to snow and blow furiously, and the last few miles of the distance had been passed over much more slowly. In these high altitudes in the Rocky Mountains, snowstorms are common in May and June; yet, though the snow may fall deep at such times, it lies on the ground for but a short time.