“No. I was chasing it when I found you. In fact if it hadn’t been for that cub I might never have found you at all.”
“Suppose you take a look and see if you can find it. Now that its mother is dead it’ll likely starve to death.”
But though Jack hunted for more than an hour he failed to catch sight of it.
“Do you suppose it’s gone off far?” he asked as he returned and reported his failure.
“More likely it’s hiding somewhere close by.”
But although Jack made another long search they never saw the cub again.
The swelling in Bob’s leg continued to subside until by supper time it had nearly reached its normal size.
“She’ll be fit as a fiddle by morning,” Bob declared as he took a few steps.
“It was a good thing,” he said a little later after they had finished supper and were sitting beside the fire, “that that wasn’t a regular sized bear trap.”
“Why that is a number four, the smallest size made. Didn’t you ever see a number ten. It’s about twice that size and no man living can set one without a clamp.”
“Then I guess mebby I’m not quite so powerful as I thought I was. Here I’ve been all puffed up thinking I’d sat a full sized trap and then you come along and make out that it’s only a mink trap.”
“Well, you’d have been satisfied to have it no bigger if it had been on your leg last night. But, Jack, one thing I can’t understand is how that trap happened to be there.”
“I don’t think that’s very hard. Probably some trapper set it there and then forgot or lost it.”
“Just what I thought at first but if you’ll stop and think a minute you’ll remember that they don’t set bear traps that way. Don’t you remember two or three years ago Kemertok was telling us how they set them?”
“I don’t seem to recall it. Guess you must have been there without me that time. But how is it? Guess that part of my education has been neglected.”
“Why, they set them in houses. No, I mean it. You see they find a tree which has fallen partly over and then they lean other trees against it and pile boughs on till they have a kind of a little lean-to with a door just large enough for Mr. Bear to enter. In the back part they put the bait, a chunk of meat or fish, and set the trap right in the doorway. Then to make sure that the bear will step on the trap they stick little pieces of wood sharp at both ends in the ground all around it so that he will be sure to step on the right spot.”
