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was another month before Harlan had regained some of his looks and the full use of the mauled left arm and shoulder. The eyebrow had healed beautifully but left a long scar across Harlan’s face. He would live with his signs of battle with the griz’ and carry them proudly when among his own kind at the rendezvous and trading posts.
    As a surprise, Big Eagle and Winter Hawk had labored long and hard over the grizzly bear’s claws while Harlan was recovering. They made the claws into a fine necklace with leather thongs from an elk skin, and the twenty claws looked very distinctive and impressive. When presenting the necklace to Harlan after he had recovered, he was floored by the scope and degree of the gift from a couple of kids who were fast becoming just like the sons he had always wanted.
    From then on, Harlan wore the grizzly-bear claws proudly as a reminder not only of the battle but also of the quiet love he now shared with his boys.
    His scalp was another matter. It had healed badly because of all the tearing and subsequent infection caused by the bear’s slobber. An ugly canine-tooth bite scar ran around the entire top of his head. In fact, it appeared that the boys had sewn the loose scalp on almost backward! It eventually healed, and flattened out in the process like normal skin. But Harlan lost all his hair from the infection! He was now bald as a river rock. But he was alive, and a good wolf-skin cap would keep warm the bald pate that soon came to be known among his peers as his trademark.
     
     
     
    ***
     
    Little remained of that beaver trapping season; soon the ice became too thick to chop, and the beaver take dropped off. Now was the time to trap other valuable furbearers. Harlan worked hard at those activities as well as instructing the boys in the fine art of forest trapping, including the making of deadfalls and snares. Soon the mink, gray fox, bobcat, northern lynx, gray wolf, and coyote hides began flowing into the camp for processing.
    In the evenings, after the work was done and the livestock cared for, the real training began, to the boys’ way of thinking. By the light of the fire in their fireplace, Harlan taught them how to handle, load, repair, and care for a Hawken rifle.
    Soon both were experts at loading, shooting, casting bullets, and caring for their rifles. Harlan modified one of the older Hawkens by shortening the stock so the smaller Winter Hawk had a rifle of his own that he could easily shoot.
    Then came hour after never-ending- hour on how to put an edge on and care for a knife, ax, and tomahawk. That was followed by instruction in how to correctly use a knife for gutting, skinning, and food preparation as well as in defense of one’s life.
    Those lessons were followed by sessions in the proper use and care of a tomahawk and how to use such a weapon in the self-defense or to defend others. Then, came endless hours of practice with a tomahawk and knife at a throwing target in front of the cabin. They also practiced one-on-one knife combat with Harlan when the winter weather was tolerable.
    Last but not least, Harlan worked with Big Eagle on the making of arrow shafts from nearby willows and the knapping of flint and chert arrowheads. They spent hours in bow-and-arrow practice until Big Eagle got quite good—deadly, in fact.
     
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    A Winter Surprise
     
    Leaving the cabin one cold morning to break the lake’s ice and get some cooking and coffee water, Big Eagle came face to face with thirty heavily armed Snake Indian warriors quietly sitting on their horses facing Harlan’s cabin. Without any sign of fear or surprise, Big Eagle summoned Harlan by calling through the open cabin door. Harlan emerged, and Winter Hawk, unseen by the Snakes, picked up his rifle and took up his station at a shooting port inside the cabin, just in case things got out of hand.
    Harlan, showing no fear, raised his hand in the sign of peace. For the longest time no one among the