o have him on hand to
help hang up the deer.

We had worked along now up to about the middle of December with the
various ups and downs that one on the trap line and trail always meet
with. We had killed twelve or fourteen deer, and I think we had
caught six bears and had made a fair catch of fox, mink, marten and
some other furs. There had not been much snow up to this time, when a
fall of 12 or 14 inches came all in one night. Bears had not denned
up to this time, but we were quite sure that bruin would now go into
winter quarters. We concluded to gather up the bear traps and all the
small traps that were not setting in springs that did not freeze, or
those setting in other likely places to make a catch. In nearly the
last bear trap that we went to get, we found a bear, and when we
began to skin it we found that it had lost two toes on one forefoot.
We concluded that it was the same bear that had escaped from Bill's
trap some time before, although it was eight or ten miles from where
the trap was that had held Bruin's toes.

A day or two after the heavy fall of snow we got a letter from a man
by the name of Comstock, living at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, asking
the privilege to come and camp with us and hunt deer until the season
closed, the first of January. He stated that he had never killed a
deer, and that he was very anxious to kill one. We wrote him to come
on, and that one of us would be at Emporium on the following Friday
to guide him to our camp. Friday morning I went to Emporium and found
Mr. Comstock there as agreed. He had paraphernalia enough to equip a
fair-sized army, so we hired a team to take the outfit to camp and
also bring out the saddles of a bear and what venison we had on hand.

For three or four days Mr. Comstock hunted all by himself but had no
luck in the way of killing deer, as he said it took more time to hunt
the shanty than he had to hunt deer, and suggested that we all hunt
in company. We had now been on the ground long enough so that we had
learned all the runways. Bill said that if I would take Mr. Comstock
down to a certain runway, which he had given the name of Fork Point,
and place him on it, he would drive the ridge and see if he could not
drive a deer to Mr. Comstock.

Bill started a bunch of five deer and succeeded in getting a shot and
breaking a foreleg of a large doe. As the doe with the broken leg
soon dropped out from the other deer, he was sure that the deer had
start en