Mattie Mitchell by Gary Collins

scent of the animals had permeated into the damp soil
where they played. He stopped paddling and let the boat drift
to the water’s edge below the rub. There were no otters to be
seen anywhere, but the rub was dark and wet. Showing below themudslide and traced across the smooth cliff, just above where the
ocean quietly lapped upon the rocks, was a damp water trail. At
least one otter had been here recently.
    Mattie skivvered three of the biggest herring onto the bait
stick inside the lobster pot, lifted the pot carefully out of his
canoe, and placed it into the water. He lowered the pot slowly
with the buoy rope and watched as it sank in the clear water.
He tugged it a couple of times to make sure it rested level on
the bottom just below the otter slide. When it was down and to
his liking he threw the line overboard with the small, wooden,
tapered buoy fastened to one end.
    Just before dark, he paddled into a tiny cove where a small
brook ran through a narrow, crescent-shaped beach. He pulled
his canoe well above the surf line, got a fire going using pieces of
driftwood, placed his flat-bottom kettle over it to boil, and began
cleaning a meal of herring for his supper.
    The following morning, before the wind came to the bay,
Mattie paddled to where the lone lobster buoy tugged and bobbed
on the tide. He reached for the buoy and, pulling in the slack,
was soon directly over the sunken trap. He peered down and was
surprised to see the dark brown body of a dead otter lying half
in and half out of the lobster pot. His trap had worked perfectly.
Over the next few days he pulled eleven otters from four lobster
pots all carefully placed in the water below a fresh otter burry.
When he returned home with the eleven pelts he was asked how
he had done so well in such a short time. Mattie Mitchell simply
replied, with an air of mystery, “I jest use ol’ Indian trick.”

CHAPTER 4
    MATTIE LEFT THE COAST WHEN THE NIGHTS turned cold and
the frost came. He headed for the long, sloping hills and the high
mountain valleys beyond. These were the places he truly loved
best. He had prolonged his winter trapline trip to correspond with
the right travelling conditions.
    Before he had reached all the way into the high country
beyond Bonne Bay, he realized he had waited too long. The
snows were much deeper here, and before the first day of hard
walking was through he had donned his homemade snowshoes.
All of the belongings he would need for the entire winter were
towed behind him on a small wooden sled, or carried on his broad
shoulders in a packsack.
    He spent the first night in a makeshift shelter that he had built
just before the early dark, and dozed through the long winter
night beside a small fire he kept burning. The second night he
sheltered in a temporary tilt situated along his trapline route.
The close of the third snowy day found him at the door of his
wigwam.
    The spoor of game was not as prevalent along the way as he
had hoped. In the coastal valleys he had left behind, many of the
white settlers were augmenting their lean summer fishing withfur trapping. But few white men came here to the mountains.
Many of the places he trapped were exclusive to him alone. He
seldom saw anyone, Indian or white. Still, from his observations
along the way, good signs of the fur-bearing animals he hunted
and trapped were scarce.
    From his pack and sled he carried the scanty provisions inside
his winter teepee. A small bag of tea—which wouldn’t last him
the winter—and a smaller bag of coarse sugar, along with a quart
tin of blackstrap molasses, he put inside and hung from the rafter
poles. These three items, he knew, would be used up first. It was
his one weakness for the white man’s food: Mattie Mitchell had
a sweet tooth. About fifteen pounds of flour and a small bag of
pale white salt crystals that would need some crushing completed
his supply.
    As was his wont, Mattie patrolled around his immediate
camping area