“No, indeed; had hunting and trapping enough on the spot. I had built no fence because I had no cattle, and the bears, deers, and coons were determined to have my corn. Sometimes when I turned out in the morning, I would find a moose or a deer feeding on my grass, or browsing among the trees I had cut last. In a brook about a mile off there were a few otters, and many minks and foxes. I bought a lot of hens and geese, on purpose to tole the foxes, and went to trapping and shooting in good earnest. I made a log-trap for bears and wolves, and once in a while shot a moose or deer, and trapped otters and foxes. I had so much meat lying round that it toled the foxes and wolves; the wolves soon drove off the deer and moose, and then I shot the wolves on bait. Every wolf I killed I got ten shillings bounty and his skin was worth two dollars; and a bear’s skin from sixteen to twenty. That’s what I meant when I said that here I could do two things at the same time. I had built a house, raised corn, potatoes, flax, and hay enough to carry me through the winter, felled five acres of trees, and earned by trapping and shooting more than I had all the summer before, working for my brother, and been at work for myself most of the time. As for the deer, bears, and wolves, I didn’t go after them, and it did not take much time to set the traps, and what was of no less consequence I had got a first-rate birch. There’s nothing like a birch to a wild Indian, or a new settler.”
“I don’t suppose you meant to go on to your place till spring?”
“Didn’t. I pulled my flax and spread it to rot, put my pack, rifle and provisions into the birch and started up-stream. I didn’t go to the Forks where I met the half-breed, but into Sewickly Creek, and paddled up it to within a rod of the road, hid the birch in the woods, took my pack and started for home.”
“It was all that. I told this little woman what I had done, made it as bad as I knew how; told her just what a miserable place she would have to live in, and gave her the choice to go back with me or I would go back alone, trap all winter and come for her in the spring, and before another winter build a more comfortable house; and all her folks and most of mine thought that was the best way.