more but take one of our own guns and
that he (father) would take the gun to the gunsmith and have the
locks changed from a flint lock to a cap lock.

You may be sure that this was the best news that this kid ever heard.
I picked up double the usual stone piles that day and went and got
the cows without being told a half dozen times.

Well, as every hunter and trapper who is born and not made is always
looking for taller timber and trying to get farther and farther from
the ting-tong of the cow bells, so it was in my case. I had seen some
whelp wolves that friends of ours (Harris and Leroy Lyman, who were
noted hunters) had got. They had gone onto the waters of the
Sinnemahoning and taken five pup wolves not much larger than kittens,
from their den. The puppies were brought out alive but they killed
the old mother wolf. On their way home they stopped at our house so
that we could see the young wolves.

I heard these hunters tell how they discovered the wolf den; how they
had howled in imitation of a wolf to call the old wolves up; how they
had shot the old female and had then taken the young wolves from the
den; heard them tell of the money that the bounty on wolves would
bring them (there was $25 bounty on all wolves then, the same as
now). All of this made me long for the day when I would be old enough
to do as these noted hunters had done.

I had already found a den of young foxes and had kept five of them
alive, which father finally killed all but one because he said they
were a nuisance. I had seen some Indians bring a live elk in with
ropes, dogs and horses, which they had roped in, after the dogs had
brought it to bay, on a large rock on Tombs Run (Waters of Pine
Creek).

All this made me hungry for the day that I too could hit the trail
and trap line that I might get some of those wolves and with the
bounty money buy traps and guns to my satisfaction.

A number of persons at our place (Lymansville) had gone several miles
into the woods to the headwaters of the Sinnamahoning and taken up
fifty acres of land. An acre or two was cleared off and the timber
from this clearing was drawn and put in an immense pile to be used
for the camp fire. The camp was simply a shed or leanto, open on one
side, and in front of this shed the fire was built of beech and maple
logs. Brook trout and game of all kinds were in abundance. Two or
three times during the summer a party of six or eight persons would
go out to this cl