that!” He snapped his horny fingers.
It was hard to believe but all miners told the same stories, men whom we had no reason to doubt, and before it was ended we were convinced packrats are invisible and unbelievably smart. Yet we wanted to be rid of these nimble, resourceful inhabitants of the high country before they multiplied. We set traps but had no luck. We didn’t want to use poison lest they’d go near the house to die.
“Next time I hear them in the woodshed I’ll shoot them,” George declared boldly one day. Knowing he was anything but a marksman with a gun I had my doubts. However, next night, there came a low whisper from the shed: “Shssh! Bring the gun. I can see the eyes of a rat and I don’t want to lose sight of him,” and George prepared for the “kill.”
I had a terrific fear of guns. Nevertheless, I tiptoed to the rarely used pistol and cautiously holding it at arm’s length crept back to where George stood like a statue, glaring at one spot. Fingers stuffed into my ears I backed away, waiting, watching. George raised the gun and pointed it. The pair of eyes had vanished!
He turned toward another corner where eyes were gleaming and aimed again. I waited for the “bang.” Nothing happened. The beady shining eyes were gone before he could pull the trigger. George gave up.
“There’s only one way to catch ’em,” said Charley, the powder-monkey who each morning drove his sled to a small shed nearby to pick up blasting powder for the shifts. “If you’ll do what I say you’ll get rid of them damn things. Cut the top off an oil can and half fill it with water. Then balance two sticks across the top so they overlap a little. Tie the ends together loosely with a piece of cheese on top. How the devil they get up onto the sticks I don’t know, but they do. When they get to the middle they’ll drop in and drown, sure as hell.”
George came home that night, changed his work clothes, and, as usual, set his high leather boots behind the stove ready for the next day. After dinner he painstakingly carried out Charley’s instructions, placing the can in the kitchen. Thank goodness we’d now be rid of the other inhabitants of our shack. We were certain because George tested the sticks with his fingers and they flipped easily at a touch. With the trap all set, we went to bed.
I don’t like to see drowned creatures, even rats, so in the morning I waited for George to dispose of the victim. Then, hearing no cry of triumph, I cautiously looked. George was standing beside the oil can with a look of amazement on his face.
“Look!” he gasped. “The sticks are balanced exactly as I fixed them but the cheese is gone and so is the rat! How could he walk along that tottering stick and not fall in? I give up, I give up!”
Dismayed and discouraged he finished dressing and reached behind the stove for his boots. He shoved a foot into one and it struck a snag. Running his hand down inside the boot to the toe, he pulled out—the missing cheese!
Some weeks after the failure of the rat trap, I invited four friends for afternoon tea, a social highlight in the Savage Basin. That afternoon as I saw Beth coming up the hill pulling her precious Billy in a box on runners, the sled Jim had made, I hurried down to help.
The baby was a picture in his bright red snowsuit with peaked cap and mittens to match, tucked in deeply with a heavy white fur robe, his shining eyes and cold-pinked cheeks framed by the fur.
We chatted about everything over the teacups: cooking, sewing, our families, etc. Everything except styles and fashions. The latest addition to the group was soft-spoken Martha Snyder, wife of the man then establishing a branch of the Y.M.C.A. that we were to boast was “the highest Y in the world.”
“How is the Y getting along?” Beth asked.
“Hal thinks everything will work out nicely,” Martha said. “The company is very cooperative. Mr. Herron is going to put up a small building long enough for a bowling alley. And the national Y will furnish us with a small but good organ and song books. Hal says quite a few men have signed up already.”
We discussed the Y project and then the Sunday School that Grace Driscoll was starting in another month. The roster would contain the names of nine or ten children when the Frazier children returned including little Billy and the Matson baby.
“And mine,” cried Edna Caplinger, laughing and proud of the child within her. “I’ll be going down to the hospital in a few days. I thought I never would get up this hill today.”
Kate Botkin, guarding Thyra from the reaching hands of Billy who was fascinated by the dog’s eyes and nose, kept us entertained with her cheerful witticisms. When we began speaking of families and native states, I wanted to show them pictures of mine in California and George’s in the state of Washington. His parents lived there long before it became a state. The pictures were under the couch on which Beth sat and she rose to let me pull out the box.
Reaching into it I touched something rubbery and jerked back my hand. Reluctantly I held the box of pictures and said nothing but handed out some, commenting on them, until I cleared away enough to see what I had touched—something very obnoxious I was certain.
“Oh, look here!” I shouted.
I had uncovered an accumulation of old baked potatoes, pieces of cheese, and some chocolate. In unison came the shout “Rats!” From experience the girls knew the culprits. It made fascinating conversation until the party broke up. I heard more incredible stories of packrat ingenuity and achievement but no one could tell why the rats hid the food instead of eating it.
The wind had risen and was blowing in strong gusts. Beth tucked Billy into his sled and set out for home, but the minute she stepped on the icy trail she lost her footing and her hold on the sled rope. Like a flash the sled sped down and before our horrified eyes landed upside-down at the foot of the hill.
“Run, Harriet, run!” Beth screamed, waving her arms wildly but her legs unable to move, petrified from fright. “Billy’s been killed!”
Without snowshoes and with my long skirts entangling my legs I lunged down in huge strides through deep snow. My frigid hands pawed for the sled and turned it right side up. I feared and dreaded what I would find. There was Billy, looking up, a bewildered smile on his face, but chuckling happily.
CHAPTER 8
In the high alps of the world, winds become gales. Clouds of every shape and size scuttle overhead just out of reach and are swirled every-which-way by blasts of wind that rapidly gather force. On one such day of gathering fury our unprotected shack shook violently and creaked. I watched George coming up the hill tightly gripping our daily can of water and struggling to make headway. Slowly, planting his feet carefully, he finally reached a packing box and two planks near the house just as the can fell from his shoulder.
My greeting to him was “Do we dare stay in this rickety shack tonight?”
“Oh yes,” he said mildly. “We’ll be all right. It just seems worse up here than down on the flat.”
When we were in bed we could not sleep. All night long in that jittering hovel we listened to the fury and howling of the wind. What kept the cracker box standing I’ll never know.
Crash! What sounded like pounds of glass breaking into bits was only an old cigar box filled with nails that had fallen from a shelf. Even the rats laid low that night, at least we did not hear them. My chattering teeth kept time to the rattling of the old stovepipe fastened by wires to the rafters. The denim “carpet” rose and fell like ocean billows and wind crackled the newspaper padding.
“Please, George, let’s get out of here,” I pleaded.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked me.
“Anywhere down on the flat. Beth will take us in.”
“We can’t wake them up at this time of night.” As if anyone could sleep on such a night.
“What difference does the time make when we may be crushed to death any minute?” I screeched to be heard above the racket. Toward daybreak, George, seeing me so exhausted, said, “Probably Beth