Authors: Scott O'Dell
S
NOW FELL EARLY
in December, as John Longknife had predicted, and lasted for three days. When it ended, there were drifts around the mouth of the cave higher than my waist. The stream still ran, but Long Pond was covered with a sheet of ice that grew deeper every night, until by the middle of December it was a foot thick.
By then I could walk out on the lake without falling through, wearing my new snowshoes. I chopped three holes in the ice and, with the hooks my friends had left me, short lengths of deer sinew, and venison bait, I set lines at each of them. The first day I caught six large trout, two bass, and a pickerel, all of which I buried in a snowbank.
I set the lines every morning, weighing them down with rocks, and went out toward evening to see what I
had caught. After a week I had enough fish to keep me for a month.
The next-to-the-last day I fished the ice, I noticed tracks along the shore where the stream ran out of the lake between two low hills. When I first saw them I thought they were bear tracks, but they turned out to have been left by a man who took large steps and seemed to be in a hurry.
I did not follow the tracks that day, seeing no reason to, but the next morning I discovered fresh ones in the same place. I thought that whoever it was might be fishing at the south end of the lake, which lay out of sight around a bend.
It was a bright day, with the sun glinting on the trees. As I started back home, carrying my lines, a string of fish, and my musket, I saw a flash of light at the edge of the lake a few steps off to my right. I went over to see what it was, thinking that it might be something, a piece of metal, I might use.
To my surprise it was a trap that was shining new, and in it was a muskrat. It had been caught by its two front paws. One of them it had gnawed off, and it was trying to gnaw off the other. There was much blood on the snow.
The animal stopped chewing at itself and bared its teeth at me. I worked my way around until I was behind it. Quickly, with a foot and a hand, I opened the trap. The muskrat took a feeble step and fell on its side.
It had a thick coat of glossy brown fur, but it was an ugly thing, with a pudgy face and whiskers and a funny smell. I had a notion to kill the animal with a blow on the head. Anyway, it was going to bleed to death. I decided not to kill it and walked on. Then I turned back. Somehow, lying there in the snow, alone and bedeviled, it reminded me of myself. Of how I had felt when I first came to Long Pond.
I took off my shawl to protect my hands and picked it up. The animal made a noise, a thin groan, opened its mouth, but didn't try to bite me. I carried it home and put it beside the fire, though I was sure it would die before nightfall.
The muskrat was still alive in the morning. I gave it water, which it didn't drink. Then some of the fish left over from my supper, which it didn't eat. I went back to the lake where the trap was. I hadn't noticed before that it had letters on it, scratched there by a chisel. The letters spelled the name Goshen. It gave me a start. Sam Goshen! Again I saw his long, purplish nose as he grasped me and shoved my body against the wagon wheel.
Farther along was another trap; this one was unsprung. I sprung it. I found a second trap with a dead raccoon in it. I took the animal out. I found two more traps with dead beaver caught in them and ten more traps unsprung. I sprung them all and went home with the two beaver. I did not see Sam Goshen anywhere, but I was breathing hard when I got to the cave.
The muskrat was still alive. It would not eat or drink, but spent the evening licking the stump of its chewed-off paw. Once it got up as if it wanted to flee somewhere, then lay down and went to sleep.
It was uglier than I had thought at first. Its back legs were partly webbed, and it had a flat, thick tail shaped like a flour scoop. But if I could tame it somehow, it would be company. Gabriel, the bat, had gone to sleep when the big snow fell. He hung upside down now in a far corner of the cave, unconcerned about the new boarder or about me.
I barred myself in that night and cocked the musket and set it up handy. I half-expected Sam Goshen to come to the door. If he was around, he would surely see my tracks and follow them to the cave. If he did, I'd be ready.
I stayed up late, but he didn't come. Just before I went to bed I heard sounds outside. I crept over to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out. It was a bear snuffling around in the snowbank where I had put the fish. He came and sniffed at the door for a while. Then I heard him trotting down the hill, breaking the dry crust along the trail.
I
N THE MORNING
I went down to the lake to set my lines. On the way I saw tracks along the stream where the bear had been fishing through the ice.
The tracks cut off across the lower part of the lake and disappeared into the brush. More than likely he was now holed up for the winter. But while I was setting my lines I kept an eye out. For Sam Goshen, also, though I hoped that he had gone off somewhere else to put out a trap line and wouldn't be back for days.
The snowshoes made walking easier, but I was not used to them yet and while I was crossing the lower part of the lake on my way home, with the musket cocked on my shoulder, I stumbled and fell. No one had seen me fall, but I looked around and felt embarrassed.
As I sat there getting my breath, I heard a sound. It was behind me, along the edge of the lake where black sedges stuck up through the ice. It's the bear, I thought. He has come back and is trailing me.
I tightened the straps on my snowshoes and got up. I heard another sound. This time it wasn't the sound of an animal. It was human, a long-drawn-out moan that chilled me.
There was a clump of mountain laurel just beyond the sedges. The sounds seemed to come from that direction. I walked toward them, through the stiff grass and the dark laurel. On the far side, I stopped.
A man was sprawled out in the snow. He was raising his arms over his head and clenching his fists. His head was on one side. Where he was breathing, the snow had melted away and left a grassy place.
I thought that the man had shot himself somehow, but there wasn't any blood around. Then I saw that one of his legs was caught in a trap. It was a big trap, a bear trap, and it had him tight, right below the knee.
The man must have become aware that someone was standing there, for he stopped the moaning. He moved his head around and looked up. His eyes were glassy; then they cleared a little. He opened his lips to say something but didn't speak. I couldn't mistake the eyesâI had seen them closeâand the big purplish nose and the mouth stuffed full of yellow teeth. It was Sam Goshen, lying there with his leg in the bear trap.
There is no way now to tell how I felt. No way at all. I stared at him, holding my breath and staring. I took a step backward and leveled the musket. As I did so, a verse from Proverbs went through my mind. "He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears." Certainly the strife did not belong to me. It belonged to Sam Goshen. It was none of my business if he had got himself caught
in a bear trap. Before long he would die. And that would be the end of him.
I turned away. I walked along the edge of the lake, then stopped when he screamed again. I went back and stood over him. There was no sign that he recognized me. But he knew someone was standing there.
"Help," he said.
The word sounded like a frog croak.
I gathered up a handful of snow, pressed it together, and put it to his mouth. He wanted more, and I got it. Still, there was no sign that he knew who I was. He lay quiet for a while.
"Can you hear me?" I said.
He began to moan.
"Sit up," I said. "I'll help."
The trap was fastened to a heavy chain, and the end of it was wrapped around an elm tree. He had floundered about trying to get himself loose and made a half-circle where there wasn't much snow. I got him on his side so that the trap was between us.
"You pull," I said. "Then I'll pull."
Goshen took hold of one side. His hands were cut and bleeding from clawing at it. The blood was frozen in beads. I took hold of the other side of the trap. It had sawteeth that would have fitted neatly together with the other side if his leg hadn't been caught between them.
With my fingers between the iron teeth, I pulled, using all my strength. We both pulled, but I pulled harder
than he did. Only the jaws on my side of the trap opened. Goshen's fingers turned white. His grip loosened. He fell back and lay still. I thought he was dead.
After a while he roused himself and sat up. He felt his leg where the jaws were biting into it. He had torn his legging away and I could see the rusty teeth half-buried in his flesh.
"It's not broken," he said, "but I feel my blood gettin' poison in it."
"How long have you been here?" I asked, as if we had met in the street and were talking.
"Two hours," he said. "Maybe more. Long enough to get poison."
I thought of asking him how he got himself caught, but didn't.
"Let's try again," he said and moaned.
This time, with him pulling harder, we got the jaws open far enough so that I could jam the butt of my musket between them and slide the trap off his leg.
Goshen let out a yell. He stood up, a freed man. He tried to take a step. He groaned and fell backward in the trampled snow and lay quiet.
He glanced up and said, "I know you. You're the one who got mad with me 'cause I said you were pretty. You camped around here? I've got to rest for a spell. My strength's run thin."
I said nothing and walked away. I crossed the lake and was starting up the stream when I heard the scream again.
It made me remember that I had left my musket back there in the bear trap.
Goshen was on his knees, crawling toward me, when I got back. I pried my musket out of the trap. The pretty walnut stock had two deep scratches on it from the iron teeth. I got mad clear through, thinking that I had taken good care of the musket.
"Get out!" I shouted at him. "I don't want you here."
He was crouched on his knees looking up at me. "I'm tryin'," he said, "but my leg won't work. It hurts somethin' terrible."
"You can get yourself to Ridgeford village."
"It's too far. Too far. I'd never make it with the snow and everything. I can feel the poison creepin' through my leg already."
He tried to get on his feet and fell. He was not putting on. I could tell that. It was very cold, but there was sweat on his face.
"You must have a tent somewhere," I said.
"I been travelin' light. I ain't got none. Just blankets."
"Where's your shaggy dog?" I asked, thinking that it might be sneaking up behind me, getting ready to bite.
"Back in the village," Goshen said. "Chewed up two prime pelts last time I had him out."
I don't know how I got him to his feet, except that he was a spare man, mostly bones. But somehow I got an arm around him and one of his around me, and we started off across the ice. We had to stop every few
minutes to rest. Going up the hill we rested every two or three steps.
Sam Goshen was out of his head now. "I can feel the poison creepin'," he would say. Then he'd say, "It's got into my gizzards," or "The poison's got me, sure."
"What poison? You keep talking about it."
"Poison meat," he said. "Baited the trap with it."
Good enough for you, I thought.
A short piece from the cave he collapsed, and I had to drag him the rest of the way.
I
BUILT A
fire in the far end of the cave, away from mine, put out snow water to heat. I didn't own a kettle, so I had to heat rocks and drop them into a big gourd I had cut in half. Then I laid out one of my mats by the fire and dragged Goshen across the cave and rolled him onto it.
He didn't say anything while I was doing this, though he kept on mumbling some sort of nonsense. I guessed that he must be out of his head with the pain.
I didn't know anything about fixing a leg that had been caught in a bear trap, but I washed out the places where the teeth had gone deep down. He came to before I finished, long enough to say:
"You got any bear grease? That's best for this sorta hurt."
"I have deer tallow."
"Not good as bear."
He spoke as if it were my fault, as if I should go out right away and shoot a bear and make him a pot of grease. I brought the deer tallow and let him put it on. By noon his leg had swollen up about twice the size it should be. By nightfall, however, he said he felt better and that he was hungry. "Had nary a morsel in more than two days' time."
I cooked him a trout and gave him some tea. He fell asleep while he was eating. I put the musket by my side with my hand on the barrel when I went to bed. But I was not afraid to sleep. Goshen's leg was hurting too much for him to bother me.
In the morning I heated water again and helped him soak his leg and use the last of the deer tallow, which I had planned to use to make candles. He slept most of the day, waking up once to crawl out into the bushes and once to ask me what there was for supper.
"I got a hankerin' for a cut of venison," he told me.
The day was cold, with a gray sky to the north and the feel of snow. I went out with my ax and chopped down a birch sapling. I sat by the fire and whittled out a crutch. Mr. Goshen eyed me from his corner, watching the jackknife cutting the soft, white wood.
"What you up to?" he asked me. "I don't remember your name."
"Making a crutch," I said, not giving him my name.
"You want to be shut of me, I can see plain enough."
"A crutch will give you something to get around on."
"I can't move nowhere, the shape I'm in. Crutch or no crutch." He sat up and explored his leg. "Maybe in a week I can get around a little."
The thought of being in the room with Sam Goshen for a week made a big knot in my stomach. His gun was lying down by the tree where he had got himself caught in the trap. I didn't know whether he had a knife or not. Mine I kept hidden. I felt funny about it, but I carried the musket around with me whatever I was doing. I was terrified, but tried hard not to be.