Chapter 3

As soon as he was back at the claim, Tom’s first job was to shift the supplies from the packsaddles into safe keeping. Some of the supplies were hung high in the nearby trees, while others were hung from the rafters inside his cabin. Whenever possible, though, he kept his supplies in metal containers, and he was glad he’d asked the Bartletts to pack as many of his new supplies in those as they could. Of course, that meant he had containers stacked all over the cabin, so he needed to build shelving in order to store things up and out of his way. Before he built any shelves, though, he wanted to shift his little cast iron stove inside the cabin and set up his new chimney.

He was tired of cooking outside because even though he had set up a little fireplace/cum barbeque arrangement under a lean-to roof, the setup wasn’t very satisfactory. Although that roof meant that he could cook his meals without getting wet on rainy days, he’d had no proper mortar to set the stones of the fireplace. Instead of mortar, he’d had to use clay, and that clay had cracked as it dried, often leaving large gaps that leaked smoke. As a result, the area under his little sloping roof would often fill with smoke, especially if the breeze came from the wrong direction.

In the long run, setting up the little stove wasn’t all that much work. He’d checked it over closely when he found it and was thankful that it had been relatively new when the avalanche had struck. Then too, it had been quite well protected underneath the rubble. He’d found it sitting on the inside corner of two of the partially crumpled log walls, so it had been protected from rain and snow by a section of the collapsed roof. Other than some minor surface rust, the little stove was almost completely undamaged. In fact, it didn’t seem as if it had been used much before the avalanche had destroyed the cabin. There weren’t even any ashes in it, which was good because ashes would have eventually eaten through the bottom – wood-ash is not only caustic but it will draw moisture out of the air. Since that long-forgotten prospector had been a neat freak, Tom had a workable pot-bellied stove instead of a pile of rusted iron. All he had to do was set it on a fireproof base, install some stove pipes, and run them through a hole in the roof. Actually cutting and mounting the tapered fitting to allow the stove pipe to safely pass through the roof was the hardest part of setting up the stove. In fact, that part of the job was a pain in the butt.

It might not have been so bad, but he’d built the roof ‘the easy way’ by laying long, straight saplings side by side with both ends of each sapling overhanging the two longest sides of his tiny cabin. Once all the saplings were in place, he’d simply stretched a plastic tarp over the whole roof and lashed it down. Then he’d carefully placed another layer of saplings on top of the tarp to hold it down and prevent it from flapping around in the wind. Now he had to have a frame that would allow him to have an opening in the middle of his roof and yet support the shorter sections of sapling ‘rafters’ above and below it. The job would have been relatively simple if he’d been working with normal ‘dimensional’ lumber, but he was working with small ‘logs,’ none of which were the same size or shape. Another thing that would have helped was a few more nails, but he didn’t have many of those, and most of what he had were roofing nails, all less than half a finger long. He managed to do the job, but he had to tear off his roof and completely rebuild it with new lengthwise supports part way down the slope. Then he had to find a way to seal the plastic tarp to the galvanised steel roof fitting. He eventually used the gummy sap that he gathered from pine trees as glue to caulk all the joints and edges, but he knew that wasn’t a permanent fix. It took him over two weeks to get his cabin set up just the way he wanted it.

Then one day when he was out hunting on the opposite side of the valley from his claim, he looked back toward his cabin and smiled when he saw that it was well hidden in the trees. That’s when he noticed that the opening of the adit had been exposed when he had cleared away the rubble from the slide, and now he could see a gaping hole in the cliff. That opening stood out like a sore thumb, advertising the existence of his mine to anyone who happened to glance that direction. His next few weeks were spent shifting back many of the rocks he had moved away when he’d cleared the avalanche, stacking them into a six-foot-high wall about ten feet away from the opening of the mine. Once the wall hid the adit, he replaced most of the loose rubble he’d moved before, even adding some of the talus from the base of the cliff, piling it against the outer side of the new barrier until he’d built a natural-appearing slope. He even added a few pockets of soil, then transplanted bushes and small saplings to the sloping outer face of that slope until his mine was well disguised from almost any angle.

His job might have been simpler, but even while he was building his wall, he was setting aside much of the flat-sided stone that he found, planning to use it for the foundation of a much larger cabin. He’d already made up his mind that he loved the area and was planning to live there in the future for at least half of the year. There was a section near the cliff which was protected from avalanche danger by a rock outcrop upslope from the cliff face, but the plateau below that section of the cliff was open and relatively level. He decided that was a perfect spot for a larger cabin. Any windows facing the valley would have a wonderful view, and that site faced almost due south, so the cliff behind the cabin would provide protection from the northerly winds of winter as well. Tom simply couldn’t resist the temptation and began laying out a foundation for a much larger cabin.

Every morning he’d get up, eat breakfast, then head into the mine for a few hours. Once he started feeling cramps in his back from working in that confined space, he’d come back outside and spend some time on his normal chores. Then he’d work on his new foundation for a few hours. He knew he had gold fever to some extent because of his constant need to work in the mine each day, but he felt that he had it under control. He also knew that he really should have hiked out to Bear Creek to register his claim, but he kept putting that off for another few days. Still, time flew by, and summer was rapidly passing.

Tom finally finished disguising the barrier in front of the mine, and by early September, he’d finished placing the stone foundation of his proposed cabin. Eventually, he made up his mind that he’d hike out in a few more weeks, probably by early October, planning to spend the whole winter back in civilization.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature and her minions had other ideas about how he was going to spend his winter.

Tom’s problems started in late September when one of his mules was killed. That death came as a complete surprise since he hadn’t heard a sound during the night it had been killed. Tom had habitually spent some time with his mules each day, so he discovered the dead body the next morning. From the wounds on the mule’s carcass and the sign nearby, he knew it had been killed and partially eaten by a bear, so he waited that night, then shot the bear when it came back to feed. Knowing that he was short of fat in his diet, Tom decided to save both rear hams and the loin of the bear, even though he had second thoughts about that idea. After all, to many of his native friends, the very idea of eating the flesh of a bear was taboo, but Tom was a realist - without that meat, he might very well starve. Since he was going to have to open that much of the bear’s hide anyway, he skinned it completely and saved the pelt. At the last minute, he even salvaged the skull, that way he’d have the brains to use for curing the hide - if he had the time to do that before heading out. Then, while he was crafting a makeshift harness for the second mule to haul both carcasses downhill and well away from the cabin, he realized that the mule’s hide would make prime rawhide, so he skinned it too. Taking that mule’s death as a warning, he knew he had to hike out for the winter as soon as possible, but he still had to prepare his mine and cabin so they could be safely left over winter.

That bear’s attack had been a vicious reminder that bears fatten up in the fall, then hibernate through the winter. Unfortunately, his mine was a prime hibernation site, so he had to close the entrance to it as soon as possible. Just in case there was another hungry bear in the neighbourhood though, he kept his remaining mule hobbled on the small plateau near the cabin. He spent two days building a wall of small logs against the face of the cliff and covering the mine opening, bracing that log wall back against his rock barrier. Then, since he didn’t want to waste what supplies he’d be leaving behind when he left, he built a cache high in one of the fir trees near his cabin, spending another day on that job. Of course, that meant he had to spend the following day sorting his supplies and moving any he wouldn’t need on the hike into the cache.

Finally, he was ready to leave, so he loaded a packsaddle with essentials late one afternoon, planning to leave the next morning. Just as dawn was breaking that morning though, he was awakened by the sound of wolves and rolled out of bed to find five of them attacking his last mule. He managed to fight them off with his rifle, killing four wolves, but by the time the last wolf was wounded and limped off, the mule had been hamstrung. Since the mule was in pain and injured so badly that it couldn’t even stand, he had to put it down.

Tom spent most of that day skinning and butchering the mule, and knowing now that he might need the meat for food, he saved both hindquarters and the loin, but kept the hide as well. After hanging both the meat and skin in a tree, he set about skinning the wolves, then cutting up and dragging away all the dead carcasses. He didn’t expect to have the time to cure those hides, but force of habit dictated that he hack off all the skulls and wedge them into the forks of trees, just in case. Those wolves had not only cost him his last mule, but also two more days of cleanup, and they’d drastically reduced his chances of survival.

In less than two weeks, he’d lost both mules and was in a rather desperate state because now he could only pack out what he could carry on his back. He knew what he was up against and was unhappy with the situation, but instead of harping on that, he set out to prepare himself for a rather rough trip. Without any mules, he had to condense his supplies even further to reduce the weight he’d need to carry to a bare minimum. He had no radio, so he couldn’t call for help. He didn’t think he should try to reach Bowman’s Bluff since that hike over the mountains worried him so much, and he didn’t have a canoe or boat to travel on the lake itself. Instead, he decided to prepare to hike out to Bear Creek, but he knew that would be a long, tough hike. If he found that the trail to Bear Creek was too rough, he’d be passing fairly close to Misery Flats, but though that was a possible option, he really didn’t want to spend the winter there.

The weather was cold and clear, and he did have a fair amount of supplies left, but once he was on the trail, he wouldn’t want to take the time to hunt, so he needed to carry meat along. It was cold enough now that the meat hanging in the trees had frozen, but he couldn’t pack it like that; his body heat would thaw the meat in hours, then it would spoil. That meant he had to take the time to dry and smoke some of the meat he had cached, even though it would take several days, but he reasoned that it was still early in the year, and he felt he had time. In only hours, he had improvised a rough smokehouse by draping tarps around the outside of the shelter he’d built around his outdoor fireplace. He spent the rest of the day cutting meat into thin strips and hanging it from the rafters. Then he blocked the chimney and built a smoky fire in the fireplace using large, dry alder log sections covered with moist wood chips freshly cut from dormant alder trees.

Since he had to thaw the meat as well as smoke it, he dug out his travel alarm that evening and wound it for the first time in months. That way, he was awakened every two hours to tend the fire and keep his little smokehouse warm. Keeping it smoky wasn’t a problem; in fact, he had to tend the fire while moving around on his hands and knees. Thankfully, the glowing embers of the fire threw off enough light that he was able to find his way around in the smoke-filled room.

To keep himself busy during the day while he was smoking the meat, he hauled out the hides from the bear, one mule, and the wolves he’d killed. First, he scraped the inner side of the hides clean of all meat and fat, then rubbed in a mixture of crushed brains, urine, and a bit of salt before stretching and hanging them in the smoke. Imagine his surprise to awaken one morning and see a wolverine nosing around the area where he’d been scraping and working the hides. When the wolverine saw Tom, it attacked, and he had to shoot it too, so later that day, he added a wolverine pelt to the other skins he’d already been curing. Even though he knew the pelts weren’t being tanned properly because he was hurrying the job, he was certain he’d be able to use them for something.

Only two days later, he awakened to find that a foot of snow had fallen overnight, then a wind blew up before the morning had passed, turning that fresh snow into a blizzard. Although most of the plateau where his cabin sat was swept relatively free of snow by those strong winds, in less than a week, two feet of snow had settled in the shelter of the trees. Even without the wind, that much snow meant the mountain passes he would have had to travel to reach any decent-sized town would be completely blocked. That early blizzard had effectively trapped him in his cabin because the danger of avalanches made all the mountain trails unsafe and virtually impassable for a man on foot.

He was completely isolated, at least until the ice on Mirror Lake froze several inches thick. However, with a heavy snow cover on the lake, he was sure that several inches of ice would take weeks to form. He knew that ice covered by snow doesn’t freeze as fast because the snow acts as a form of insulation. Since he was thinking of snow’s insulating qualities, he went outside and began to bank the cabin by piling snow against the walls. Not only would that snow add some insulation, but it also cut down on drafts, which reduced the amount of firewood he was going to need just to keep from freezing.

Actually cutting wood became an almost daily task for the first month that he was marooned in his cabin. As it was, he was thankful that he’d planned on building a bigger cabin the next year and had ringed several trees, which killed them and let them dry while still standing. Between normal deadfalls that he found and a few trees he had ringed during the summer, he was able to cut all the firewood he needed. Unfortunately, he never seemed to be able to get very far ahead of the amount he had to use, so there were days when he was forced to cut wood in a full-blown blizzard. That wood warmed him twice, once when he cut and split it, then once more when he burned it in his little cast iron stove. More than once, though, Tom felt extremely lucky that he’d found that little stove in the wreckage of the old cabin. On top of that, he thanked his lucky stars that he’d bought those few pieces of blued steel stove pipe material in Misery Flats so he had a decent chimney and his little stove could draw well.