Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/77

Rh cache every other day until the stuff was all packed up to our winter quarters.

I had my hands full attending to the traps, as the men brought more of them on the second trip, and they set enough of them to make double work for me. One dozen traps is called a "string," and it is considered one man's work, ordinarily, to "tend a string."

The two men brought all the stuff up from the cache in five trips. On the day the last trip was made, I went out early, as usual, to attend to the traps, of which we had thirty-six. That morning I took twenty-three beaver, and seeing that it would be impossible for me to skin them all, I set about to carry them to the dug-out. If ever a boy worked, I did that day, and. had just got through carrying them in when Uncle Kit and Mr. Hughes returned.

After we had got caught up with our work and rested a few days, Uncle Kit said one morning that we must be out early next day and get our work done so that we could go and kill some elk. "For," said he, "we have got to have meat for the winter and we must have some hides for beds."

In those days the trappers made their beds by first constructing a frame or rough bedstand, over which they stretched a green elk hide, securing that by thongs or strings cut from a green deer skin. By lying on these at once, before they are dry, they get shaped to the body and they make a first-class bed for comfort.

We were out early to the traps next morning, and the catch being somewhat smaller than usual, we got