Show FLOYD GIBBONS adventurers 7 club 0 tiie lions dere den by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter ONCE ance upon a time when I 1 was a kid I 1 read a dime novel entitled eagle eyed zeke the boy trapper of the western plains it was an air out and out piece of fiction in which the boy hero went through everything from being scalped scalded by indians to getting into hand to hand encounters with whole herds of stampeding buffaloes I 1 dont think there was a paragraph in the book in which zeke either being shot at or shooting somebody himself well ive got a letter here from bald eyed jim caddagan Car dagan the boy trapper of the new hampshire nilla hills a true story of a single adventure as it was lived by a new england lad ind in the winter of 1013 1913 and of the two jim cartagana Card Car dagans agana Is by far the most thrilling story jim caddagan Car dagan scalped scalded by indians ue he faced a far more real more terrible fate ile pe run across any herds of buffaloes it was a darned sight worse animal lie he went up against and anybody who says truth more thrilling more exciting than fiction well just plain crazy all jim caddagan Car dagan lives in new york now but when he was a boy he ha lived in grafton N H where the hunting was good and the trapping was even better with his first gun which he had just been given for christmas he was out exploring one day when he saw in the snow the peculiarly shaped tracks of a porcupine there was a state bounty of 20 cents apiece on porcupines so jim followed those tracks ile he trailed them to earth in a sort of den a huge tumbled mass of broken ledges alth smelly holes underneath porcupine tracks branched off kroush the lie snow in every direction apparently there were dozens of those parkies por kles kies and at 20 cents apiece that den held a young fortune jim sets out to trap the porcupines jim went horne home and got together his traps tie he had three of them and he went vent back and set them at various of the holes lie he went out bri bright lit and early the next morning and found a porcupine in every trap lie ile took out the animals nd reset the traps intending to come back the next day the next day at noon he visited his traps again this time there were porcupines in two of them but the third trap a big number four with a jaw spread of nearly seven inches was gone some big animal powerful enough to break the small tree stump around which he e had looped the chain had gotten himself caught in that trap and had carried it away with him it was the biggest and best trap jim had it had cost a lot of money too and he be want to lose it it looked as though some big grandpa porcupine he found himself looking into a pair of blazing eyes had carried it away and although a light snow bad fallen and obscured all the tracks it take jim long iong to figure out that the animal that was wag big enough to break that tree stump would be in the big biggest gest hole in sight panic overtakes him in a bad spot there was a big hole bole just down the hill bill and jim headed for it it had a huge entrance about three feet square and jim set his gun down outside opened his skinning knife and started to crawl inside the first few feet of the tunnel were roomy enough and fairly light but after that it narrowed down so that jim had to flatten out and wriggle through on his stomach and elbows it was tough traveling in that position and on top of that jim suddenly began to wonder what would happen if a porcupine tried to run out past him his face and eyes would get full of quills and maybe hed be blinded and if he were blinded hed stumble around in the snow and freeze to death his heart began to pound and he was seized with a sudden panic this was no mere porky A Wild wildcat catl then all at once he heard the clink and rattle of the trap chain he raised his head and found himself looking straight into a pair of green blazing eyes then before he could even so much as think the cave was filled with the spitting yowling bowling snarls of a wildcat 1 I was frozen with terror jim says as the beast fought to reach me with teeth and claws that would have torn me to pieces I 1 shut my eyes and waited for the end for the knifelike knife like bite of the animals claws on my face but for some reason nothing happened then somehow I 1 realized that the heavy chain had caught or wedged itself among the rocks so that the cat quite reach me but it was so close to me then that I 1 could feel the air that was fanned up by its fighting straining body and the snarls that came from its throat were fairly in my face 1 I dont know how bow I 1 got out when I 1 came to my senses I 1 was a mile away from the spot and headed for home I 1 had my rifle but my knife was none gong I 1 tramped the woods until it was time to go home and right after supper I 1 went to bed and had the most horrible nightmare of my life and on tiie the following day a neighbor came into our kitchen and flung down a 40 pound wildcat my bly trap was on one front foot but the heavy chain was broken that rellow fellow he said would slice a man to ribbons in a jiffy so I 1 say anything about my encounter for fear I 1 be allowed to go trapping any wore and I 1 never did get my trap back service |