It took all day and four trips to get all the meat back to the cabin and stored in the smoke house. The hide was tacked up on the back of the smoke house to dry. It was getting cold so I went in the cabin, started a fire and sat down to relax. The warm fire quickly drove the cold from my body and I was starting to drift off to sleep. Suddenly I was jolted back to consciousness by a blood curdling roar out behind the smoke house. I grabbed the Winchester and ran to the smoke house. I slowly slipped along the wall to the back. As I peaked around the corner there was a female Squatch. She roared again looking at the hide tacked to the back of the smoke house. I brought the Winchester up quickly, took careful aim, and dropped her in her tracks. I went over to her and started gutting her. I have never had one of the creatures trail me back to the cabin before. That is odd behavior for these things. I had better set out some security measures in case more come calling.
It was well after dark by the time I got the female boned and the meat in the smokehouse. I would have plenty of meat to last most of the winter now. That will save me a trip down lower to hunt elk. Tomorrow I will start smoking the meat and cut some more fire wood, and get my security measures set out around the cabin. I went back in the cabin, loaded wood in the fire place, and went to bed.
I awoke to 4 inches of fresh snow around the cabin. I stoked up the fire and put the skillet on the fire to heat it up for breakfast. I started the coffee and went out to the smokehouse to get some steaks. I went back in the cabin and started frying the steaks. I noticed the wood pile was getting low so I went out to get an armload to restock. There were three sets of fresh Squatch tracks by the wood pile. I had built the cabin in this small valley 2 years ago because the Squatch here in the Cascades seemed to avoid it. What were they doing in the valley now? I took the wood in and flipped the steaks. I finished breakfast and went out to start the fire in the smoke house. Once I had that going I got out the big bear traps I had stashed in the wood shed. I had bought them when I got to Morton on my way up into the Cascades, but had never found a use for them. I figured now they would make a good security system. There were three of them. Each one weighed 40 pounds and had steal jaws with four inch long razor sharp teeth on them. The jaws were twenty four inches wide and if a person were to step in the trap it would snap their leg off just below the knee. I cleaned and oiled the traps, made sure the spring were moving freely and that the trigger pan was smooth. I went out and searched around the cabin for more sign of the beasts.I was looking for good places to put the traps to warn me if they came around again.I placed one at the end of the trail where they had come into the clearing last night. The second one I had put at a point in that trail about one hundred yards from the cabin where the trail went between two large rocks. The third I put under the back window of the cabin. By the time I finished placing the traps it had started to snow again so I went back in the cabin for the day.