PREVIEWS FOR 

HAIR AFFAIR

This is a very humorous story, among other Online e-Books in this linep of Historical Fiction Books; by Leonard Hogue is a book for my e-Book Readers. It is the story of a trapper that had become afraid to trap alone and was giving up trapping when he received a letter from a man from New York wanting to hire him for the next trapping season. This, along with Mysterious Emily and Camping in Alaska are all available as e-Book Downloads. The man arrived with four packhorses loaded with everything except the kitchen sink; he had a woodstove, flour and condiments for biscuits and cakes. He was an expert with any weapon, but didn’t want to hurt the Indians that were after them; he wanted to raise his hand and talk to them.

            Harry Watkins was scared; not merely frightened as a person might have a sudden scare and then decide that his fright was unwarranted, but he was terrified. When he had at first awakened he had sensed rather than felt or heard something near him; he almost discounted the feeling as merely being a sensation from suddenly awakening with a start, but that wasn’t merely a sensation, that was something breathing in his ear. On his way out that morning to check his trap-line he was in no hurry because he knew that he would soon have to move his traps to another location. That had been a good location and he had taken a lot of pelts from there but he knew from the sign and from the amount of pelts that he was taking each day that it was about as trapped out as he ever left an  area when he vacated it.

Although he really didn’t want to leave that location because of the unusually warm weather he had been experiencing for the last two weeks and it would probably take him at least three days and maybe more to find another suitable area and move his camp. And then he would need to spend some time to camouflage that location so that no one would know that he had been there and by then it may be back to the cold and windy weather that he had been experiencing during most of the fall and early part of the winter. He knew that trappers, when they left an area, it was usually trapped completely out and they didn’t bother doing anything except getting on their horse and riding away, taking with them only their traps, their pelts and personal property such as camping equipment.

Some of them would leave their garbage that they had not buried but had merely thrown out and had been scattered around by small animals, this being among Historical Fiction Books about the average trapper, but Harry would never do that; he wanted his site to look like it had when he arrived there and started using it.

Of course he could find another place, if he could find one close enough to go there and come back the same day, and set his traps there and leave them, checking them each day while he moved his camp, but that would leave him more vulnerable, not only by being out in the open while he was going from one site to another, but by making a prominent trail that couldn’t be missed by Indians that may pass. And also because it would then take more time to make the move and he couldn’t guard both locations. But that was an option if he could find a secluded spot, even if there were limited beaver dams, which he could safely trap without interference from the Indians, because they had not left the high country for the winter as yet.

He was trying to recall where he had seen a likely spot within a short distance from that location. Then it finally came to his mind that when he was looking for game the year before that he had shot an elk and it had gone into a canyon before it died and while he was dressing it out he noticed some beaver dams, quite a few of them that he could see from there, but he didn’t go up and down the stream to see how good trapping there would be. He decided at the time that he would go there one day and check it to see if he could estimate how many beaver were there. But he had gotten so busy that he had let it slip his mind and had not followed up on his plans.

After checking his traps and finding most of them bare, he thought that since it was such a nice day, it would be a perfect time to find out if the other place would be a likely place to trap and was going in that direction when he passed and noticed that cave.

He wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before because he had been on that trail many times before. It was in an out of the way location and not visible from the game trail that he was on. He would hot have noticed it but he had seen some vague tracks that were not plain enough to identify, merely occasional places where the leaves had been moved, places that only an experienced tracker would notice, and he was following them when he passed alongside the cave entrance but he could not see whether or not the animal had entered the cave. He discounted the idea of it entering the cave as being unlikely, because an animal using a cave during that warm weather was rare; it would be out looking for food. It had a natural camouflage of brush with only a crooked trail entering it from an angle. He thought that it might be an acceptable place to camp out of the weather and since a sudden thunderstorm seemed to be brewing, he noted it’s location but didn’t look inside. But he was thinking that it would be an ideal place to get out of the weather in case the storm began before he was back in camp.

He was then in somewhat of a hurry because after seeing the clouds gathering, before the storm struck he wanted to cross that hill and check out the stream that he suddenly remembered the location of. He found that the stream was over the next hill and found that there was no evidence that it had ever been trapped, unless it had been trapped and the trapper left the area as he had always done; looking like no one had ever been there.          

He found evidence of beaver and that it should be a good place to trap and he decided that the cave that he had discovered that morning would be an ideal place to camp because it was near a seldom used trail, not far across the hill from the creek and there was adequate grazing for the horses in the timber nearby where they would not be readily noticed.

When he was on his way back to the lean-to that he was camped in the thunderstorm had suddenly caught him out in the open near the cave entrance. He had reined his horse to the opening and made haste unsaddling him and putting his saddle inside the cave; he tied his horse in a thicket nearby with enough slack in the rope so he could graze on the little grass that was there, and went about six feet into the cave so the wind and rain wouldn’t bother him. With a couple of blankets over him, he lay with his head on the saddle to wait out the storm before going on to his lean-to. He had no intentions of sleeping there or even going to sleep, because he needed to get to his camp and prepare his evening meal and take care of the three animals that he had caught, but it had been a long day and his eyes would not stay open. This being among my e-Book Downloads of the five Realistic Fiction Books, what happened next should be interesting to any of my e-Book Readers..

His first impulse when he had suddenly awoke and realized that something was indeed smelling his ear, was to jump up and clear out to there, but he calmed himself, knowing very well that the worst thing that he could do was to make any fast moves. He very cautiously reached under the blankets and also very cautiously with no fast moves struck a match as he was taking them from under the covers and contrary to the slow sputtering fire of a normal match during damp weather, it flamed out bright and with a good blaze.

For just an instant, before the fire and light from the match frightened the animal and she left at a high rate of speed, he realized that he was looking deep into the eyes of a black bear. He decided that he should be gone from there in case it was a sow and she had cubs in the cave, and if that was the case she would soon come back for them. While he was saddling his horse he saw two little black spots pass and disappear in the forest. That just confirmed and strengthened his resolve and his thoughts that he was giving up trapping alone. But he was already committed to trapping that season and frightened or not, he would not let anything scare him away until he had enough pelts to support his family the next summer and the following winter until he returned the following spring.

He knew that the chances of that bear coming back, since the cubs had ran into the woods and were probably with her by then, and entering the cave while he was in there were remote at best and he had convinced himself that he was not superstitious but he had already decided to let that bear have the whole cave if she wanted it.

***

Harry had received a letter from Ben Savage from New York wanting to hire him to take him trapping for the following season.. He would be paid one thousand dollars plus keeping all of the pelts. He immediately answered, accepting the offer.

When Ben arrived he not only had the horse that he was riding, but four packhorses, all loaded as heavily as he dared load them. By hanging things down their sides he would have been able to load everything on three, he said, but the man at the livery stable refused to sell him any packhorses unless he bought four because of the weight and awkwardness of the loads that would be involved.

Not only did Harry notice that he had too many horses for a trapping expedition, but instead of having them tied in tandem, one behind the other in a string, he had them on short tethers all abreast and tight to each other. He could imagine what it would be like with four horses not used to working together walking alongside each other  for the twenty odd miles from town to his homestead, nipping and kicking at each other every few steps.

According to Ben the livery man said; “Do you want to go trapping or do you want to spend all of your time shuffling loads back and forth as those horses begin going lame?” He had made such a strong point that when Ben decided that he didn’t just want to sell extra horses, he relented and bought all four, along with packsaddles.

“What do you have on all of those horses?” Harry asked. “I have always made out with two; both to carry supplies and equipment on the way out to the mountains and then one to load the supplies and part of the pelts on and the other one to load the rest of the pelts on for the trip home. If I need more than one horse for pelts, I store some of my equipment in a cave and cover it so no one will notice it. I have never lost anything by using that method. Only once did I have so many pelts that I had to tie some high in trees to keep animals from getting them and go back for them. That time I was lucky that the Indians didn’t find them because it was warm enough for them to already be in the mountains.”

”I brought only the necessities, such as traps, books with pictures of all of the animals, a small stove, a wood burning stove, of course, and short pieces of wood and wire mesh to make rabbit and squirrel traps. I have a bag of ears of corn for the squirrels and a bag of dried apples for the rabbits. For our own comfort I brought canvas, blankets, rain coats, boots and a makeshift tent. I know from reading about life in the wild that we could make lean-to shelters and I have read about Indians making tee-pees and we could make them, but we may want to move in a hurry during bad weather and the tent would then be a necessity. I only brought things that I felt that we would need.

“Oh yes, I brought a sack of flour and a sack of sugar along with all of the condiments needed for cooking and baking. I don’t want to be without my biscuits and cake. And I brought three sides of bacon, three cured hams and a variety of canned goods. If I need any more supplies we can come back here or go to the nearest store and get them. I don’t want to be uncomfortable while we’re out there in the unexplored wilderness.”

“I thought that we were going trapping instead of moving to the country. Are you sure that you don’t have a kitchen sink in there someplace? That seems to be the only thing that you may have left out. If you think that I’m going to bake biscuits every morning, you’re mistaken; I don’t care if you brought a dozen stoves.”

“The stage driver asked some of the same questions, but this is nothing compared to what my mother wanted me to bring. She is used to having all of the comforts and since I insisted on coming here, she wanted me to bring any and everything needed for housekeeping.

“She even said that she could get along without the butler since she had the gardener that could double as butler while I was gone; and she could rough it for the time that I would be gone. But you don’t need to worry about cooking; I ‘m an excellent cook. That’s one of the reasons that I’m here; learning about something except cooking and doing what people call women’s work. I’ll tell you more when I feel more comfortable in your company. I need to get a lot off my chest but there’s no hurry.  I may talk your ear off when I get started.

“For instance, as a start, I’m not here of my own choice. My father and brothers have tried for years to get rid of me because I wouldn’t condone what they do for a living and refuse to associate with them in what they call a business.                                 

“Now that my father is dead my brothers have taken over the business and they want me to be a runner for them. That’s all I will say for the present.”

Harry had heard about butlers but he didn’t believe that they really existed, but if they did, what function would they have in every day life, he wondered. Surely no one would pay a person to stand at the door and remove someone’s coat and hat. And what would a gardener do in a place where the pictures that he had seen showed the houses so close together that you could hardly see between them with some of them joining each other. He remembered wondering how they could even carry on a conversation without the neighbors on both sides hearing; surely they couldn’t discuss things with their hands as his son and daughter had sometimes done when they were younger without disturbing the neighbors. He decided that he would ask his daughter because when she was away at school they had taken what they called a field trip and visited the East Coast Cities as part of her; what she called curriculum. One day he would look that up in the dictionary because he was ashamed to ask her its actual meaning.

“From what I have read about life in New York City and the surrounding area since you mentioned being a runner, I think that you have already said a mouthful. I have read that crooks are so thick that you could stir them with a stick.

“And since I mentioned close, while we’re out there we will constantly be together, and I do mean together. Can you imagine how small a lean-to gets after a few months? We will be breathing the same air and I do hope your feet don’t stink because we could hardly stand two pair of stinking feet.

“Since we’re getting things off our chests and since we will be living together for some months, I may as well tell you that one of the reasons that I took you up on your offer is that I’m running scared. Not deathly afraid, but I’ve had enough trouble with Indians and with aggressive animals that I don’t want to go into the woods alone again, When you said in your letter that you could shoot, those words in themselves were comforting. Are you sure that you could shoot an Indian if the need arose?”

“You mean shoot an Indian; a human being?

“Actually I have never shot at anything except a target, but I‘m a good shot at those. I have never killed so much as a squirrel and I’m not sure that I could kill anything, but time will tell. I’m sure that I will have to kill something out there, but I’m not really ready yet. You will have to give me lessons so I will know where to shoot in case an encounter makes it impossible to avoid. I can normally make friends with any kind of animal; I spent a lot of time in the parks while I was staying out of my family’s hair and I could feed the animals and make friends with them.”
           

“I doubt very much if you will be able to pet a grizzly bear, no matter how many times you feed him. And if I intended to feed one I would want it to be from a great distance; maybe a mile or two. And if you were forced to shoot a grizzly bear that was coming for you, I doubt that you would have a chance to draw a target on him where I told you to aim.”

“Do you mean that there are grizzly bears where we’re going? I have read about people making pets of them and training them to do tricks and I don’t think that I would be any less capable.”

“There will be no bears sleeping in a lean-to while I’m in there. If you want a bear for a bed partner there’ll be two sleeping quarters, far apart.”

What do I do now, Harry asked himself? I have already agreed to take him as a partner and he has already given me the first two hundred dollars, which I desperately needed, that I can’t return because of the needs of my family, so good, bed or indifferent, it seems that I’m stuck with him. Now I find out that he can’t shoot and we could be in real trouble if we’re attacked. It may not be as bad as it seems and for the money involved I can put up with a lot. I’ll keep telling myself that all winter if need be.

      This book, even though it is among the Historical Fiction Books, it is also one of the lineup of Historical Romance Novels.

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