In some of the brooks we drove a couple of sticks into the bank, so that the trap would rest on them, a couple of inches beneath the surface of the water, and fastened the chain up stream. We drove a stick into the bank about ten inches above the trap, and stuck a sweet apple on the end of it. "There, that looks real tempting. A rat will come swimming along, and when he sees that apple, he will jump for it; and if you are lucky, he will fall into the trap."
"Who's that over on the island in the meadow?"
"To kill them off. That's the way the Indians cleared their land. The trees die, and when they are dead, he sets them on fire in the wet season, and burns them up. He was a sea-captain, and married one of the Winship girls, and old Mr. Winship gave them this land."
"Well, let's hurry up and set the rest of the traps. I've got to get home to my chores."
Edmund lived on the further side of the meadows and close to them, and in going to school passed several brooks that flowed into them. I lived above the meadows, and had to go out of my way to reach them. So Edmund looked after nine traps, and I took care of five. Every morning we examined the traps, to see if we had caught anything, and to set them again, and bait them. If a trap was not in sight, we pulled on the chain, and generally found a muskrat in the trap, drowned, with his hair all soaked down on his sides. Sometimes we would find one alive in a trap in their paths, and sometimes only a foot.
Occasionally my little brother David went with me, and while I was baiting a trap, would run on, to see if there was anything in the next one. Once he came back to me, and said, "Benny, some mean fellow has been down here, and stuck a nasty black cat in the trap." The cat turned out to be a mink with a fine fur. After we had examined the traps, Edmund and I used to meet at a spot on Deacon Brown's farm, which was so pretty that folks called it "God's Creation"; and then we went over to the highway together, on our way to school.
We trapped muskrats till April, and got fifty-four muskrats and two mink. Skins are like oysters, good every month in the year that has an _R_ in it.
How many were actually caught in our traps is another matter. A half-breed Indian named Tony lived in a little hut by the edge of the meadows. Frequently we found prints of his moccasins by our traps; and they would be baited with a different kind of an apple from that we used.
