The Trap
By KRISTOPHER KAIYALA

While searching for rabbit holes one afternoon, Luc Laurent found the poor fellow in a most precarious position: stuck like a kite in the branches of a stout subalpine fir, suspended upside down about six feet off the ground. The ruddy Frenchman jumped at the sight—not so much for the vexing way in which the departed had apparently spent his remaining moments on Earth, for Luc had learned long ago to alter his perceptions of normalcy and suffering and survival. No, he was startled for a different reason. It was the first fellow white man he'd seen since the June rendezvous down on the Green River.

It was late August now and the sparkling lakes had finally lost their ice. The cyan sky grew gray most afternoons and cracked with lightning. Wildflowers were still in bloom. The granite was warm to the touch well into dusk when the mosquitoes came out, as if drawn from nests by the evening star. Luc had these treasures, not to mention a head full of lice, to himself. He'd grown terribly jealous of the solitary life afforded a trapper.

There was the occasional interaction with Indians downriver. Some were mockingly abusive toward him and his horse, others traded for bits of silver and treated his mastery of broken French-English-Handgesture with benign disdain. In the high country near his cabin, wildlife was abundant and more curious than alarmed to his presence, though only a trained eye would notice. He'd reluctantly shot a hungry bear. Mice were everywhere—in the cabin floor, in his food stores, even in Luc's sleeping accoutrements.

Luc Laurent was having a good year. The cabin was stocked inside and out with pelts of all sizes. More tellingly, five of his six traps were still working, though the springs on three showed signs of impending ruin. Soon he'd make the trek to Fort Bridger, before the first snows of fall, to trade the pelts for parts and winter supplies. A mountain man yearns longingly for simple pleasures: new bedclothes, working traps, soap, lead bars, an endless supply of castoreum, stronger knives, dried fruits, pistachios. Ah, pistachios...

As Luc stood there on the flowering heather, working a pinch of tobacco and staring silently at the human figure caught in the tree, it occurred to him he now knew who to thank for the cabin. It was soundly built and full of supplies when he first passed by it, but he did not enter despite finding no one home. He stationed himself on the other side of a nearby ridge and occasionally ventured within sight of the small dwelling to survey its owner. Days and weeks passed and nothing stirred in its environs, nor could he detect any comings or goings. Luc decided to pay a visit one morning and found it overrun with ants and mice. It was all the invitation he needed to gather his belongings and move in.

Luc quickly surmised that the unfortunate stranger had perished during winter. The deceased's buckskin jacket and pants were heavily sap- and water-stained. The thick jacket was unfastened and folded over near the man's torso, hanging down loosely over the inverted upper body and arms, obscuring the face and hands. All the better, thought Luc, who figured that time, birds, and other creatures had had their way with any exposed features long ago.

The man seemed anchored to the fir by his legs. Luc felt this a rather odd way to be tangled in a tree. He observed through the branches at least two layers of clothing beneath the buckskin pants. From near the hems protruded slightly torn wool socks which went inside thick traveling moccasins, the kind worn by most trappers. It appeared from the ground that around the moccasins was wound, several times, a kind of braided vine as if to attach something heavy, and that's when Luc saw the wooden planks.

At first he mistook the skis for broken branches, for their tails were shorn off as if by some great tomahawk. But a closer look revealed long tips that nearly stuck through the branches on the other side of the tree. The skis appeared to be hewn of cottonwood, and finished with some kind of tar, perhaps from a local pine species.

It was nearing late afternoon and Luc had yet to find any decent rabbit holes, so he decided to turn his efforts to freeing the body from its evergreen trap. He reached up with the barrel of his rifle and gingerly prodded the figure's waist. It felt unnaturally stiff beneath the soft buckskin. Luc then slowly rocked a lower branch to see what would happen, but the body remained fixed in place. He spit out his tobacco and leaned on one leg. "Not eee-zee," he muttered. He rubbed his week-old beard.

A doe blithely grazed on ground cover behind a nearby bush, its slight movement caught by Luc's eye. In the distance, well above and beyond her, was a rugged spine still holding snow in a steep cirque. He brushed away mosquitoes and spit again into the dirt.

Finally Luc decided to climb the lower branches for a closer examination. Perhaps he could sever the tree limbs that held the victim so firmly. He laid down his rifle and put on his gloves.

The fir's strong, pleasing scent offered some distraction from the proximity of death and decay, not to mention Luc's own need for a good bath. When he was level with the body he saw, from its perspective, just how high above the ground it was and felt that a drop from here would cause severe physical damage. Out of deference for the dead, whose soul Luc considered might still be wandering these parts, he instead decided to unfasten the moccasins from the skis and see if he could gently pull the body down while standing on the ground.

He cut the strands in two places on each foot, careful not to press too hard against the feet and legs. Luc did not want to feel whatever remained inside the clothing. With the unfastening done, he got back on the ground and ran some rope over a larger branch. He softly tied one end of it to the victim's outermost leg and kept one end in his hand to slow the descent if he was able to work him free.

In the ensuing extraction Luc heard at least one bone crack (not his own), but he eventually succeeded in removing the body relatively unscathed. He was hasty to keep the jacket over the departed's face; it wasn't something he wanted to remember in his dreams at night.

On the ground, the body remained fastidiously stuck in its bent-over position. Luc turned it over, then sideways, marveling at its resiliency. Amused, he snorted but then for some reason looked over his shoulder as if someone was there. He quickly untied the rope and picked up his firearm. Rather than try to transport the fellow closer to his former place of residence, Luc decided to bury him right there beside the tree. It seemed a fitting resting place.

He returned at nightfall with a lantern and a few tools and dug a square pit to accommodate the contorted body. The soil was dry and hard at first, but at depth it was moist and easy to move. Luc began to sweat and figured that was good enough, so he stopped and turned to the body.

With his gloves still on, Luc carefully checked the clothes for personal possessions. He easily found the man's possibles bag, and held it aloft in the lamp light. A good flint stone, some bullets, and some glass trade beads. The tobacco was worthless.

With some hesitation Luc felt near the neck. Even with the gloves on it felt strange and sinewy, but he found there was a string around it with a solid piece attached. With his knife he cut it off and held it aloft. The metal piece opened to reveal the small sketch of a pretty young woman, below which was engraved a name: Solveig. A bat flew low near the lamp, nearly knocking it over and setting Luc's heart to racing.

Luc looked at the body transitively and then put the locket in his own pocket. Perhaps at next year's rendezvous someone would recognize it and return it to the man's kin, for no doubt someone somewhere was wondering why they were no longer receiving letters. He briefly thought of his own young life left far behind.

Luc then softly tied the rope around the body's torso and lowered it into the hole as carefully as he'd removed it from the tree.

Luc wasn't particularly religious, but he was superstitious. He uttered the Lord's Prayer in French, or what he could remember of it from his youth in Rambouillet. It seemed so long ago. They were the most words he'd uttered out loud in months, even to his horse. The sound of his voice made him shiver all over. He tossed in the man's tobacco and quickly moved soil over the body and marked the grave with a small cairn, then turned to go as the swinging lamp caught the entire lower portion of the fir in its glow.

The skis were still there.

The night sky held just enough twilight to discern the earth from the heavens. Luc hadn't noticed the open glade that ran nearly from the rocky ridge above him down to the place he now stood. It wasn't terribly steep, but on snow an object would pick up speed. "Not eee-zee," he spoke out loud accidentally, upon noticing the small cliff about halfway down.

Luc held the oil lantern up high in one hand, and with the other he tapped on the tails of the skis with his rifle until they fell out of the tree on the other side. In the distance he heard a moaning. He gathered up the skis along with the straps that the victim had used to attach them to his moccasins. Perhaps in a few months he could use them.

With a fresh pinch of tobacco against his gum he whistled to himself all the way back to the cabin, rifle held ready over his shoulder. In the morning he would bathe in the hot spring before setting his traps, but tonight, among a bounty of pelts and the comforting Wind River loneliness, he toasted the late benefactor of his dwelling place with four shots of bad whisky. He laid down on his pillow, firearm in hand as always, as meteors streaked by, one by one, in the glassy sky overhead.


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