Port had one. In fact, he hunted until he was sick of it, and decided that it was altogether too cold to hunt any longer. It seemed to him that he had been gone from the house a very long time indeed; and he was all but astonished, on his return, to discover that he was quite in season for dinner.

"Didn't you see any thing whatever?" asked Susie. She had felt a little anxiety about him, considering what dreadful things the forest was known to contain, and was even relieved to have him reply,--

"Not so much as one rabbit. You never heard any thing so still as the woods are."

"Didn't know but what you might bring home a few deer," said Deacon Farnham, "or find a bear-tree."

"I'm good and hungry, anyhow," said Port; "and it's the hardest kind of work, looking all around for nothing."

He had not done that. No city boy can spend a morning in the winter forest, with a gun and a dog, without learning something. It is an experience he will not forget so long as he lives.

Those had been great days for Vosh Stebbins. He felt that he had new duties on his hands ever since his new neighbors came, and was more and more inclined to hurry home from school in the afternoon, and get his ch.o.r.es done early. His mother remarked more than once that she had hardly one moment to say a word to him, and that he could split more wood in half an hour than any other boy in Benton Valley. Nevertheless it was at their own supper-table that evening that she said to him,--

"We'd best not go over to the other house to-night, Lavawjer. We've been there a good deal lately, and I like to be neighborly, and it's a good idee to help 'em with their city cousins, and I never seen any that I took to more'n I do to Port and Susie Hudson; but there's reason in all things, and we mustn't be runnin' in too often."

Vosh b.u.t.tered another hot biscuit, and did not make any reply, because he could not think of the right one to make. It was made for him just a little after tea, when he told his mother that every thing he had to do was done. She had cleared away the tea things, and had taken her knitting, and both of them were sitting by their own fireplace.

"Our sittin'-room," she said, "isn't as big as Joshaway Farnham's, and it doesn't call for more'n half so much fire; but it's a nice one, and I wish we had more folks into it. We must ask 'em all to come over some evening, and I'll see if I can't make 'em feel comfortable. I'll make some cake, and we've got a'most every thing else on hand. And that makes me think: I want Judith Farnham's new recipe for makin' the kind of cake she had Christmas and New-Year's; and you can put on your overcoat and come right over with me, and we won't stay one minute, and you mustn't let them get ye to talkin' about any thing." And Vosh was beginning to get ready before she reached that point. She put away her knitting at once, and said there was plenty of wood on the fire, for they were coming right back; and so Vosh piled on two more large logs, and they started. He may have had ideas of his own as to how much wood might burn while he and his mother were walking to Deacon Farnham's and returning.

Some short walks are long ones, if the people who walk them are not careful.

"I'm real glad they've come," said Mrs. Farnham the moment she heard her neighbors at the gate. "They're good company, too, and it must sometimes be kind of lonely for 'em,--only two in the house, and no young people."

Her fireside had no lonely look, and it was all the brighter for those who now came in. It was of no manner of use for Mrs. Stebbins to speak about cake, and say she had not come to stay. Vosh settled himself at once with a hammer and a flat-iron and some hickory-nuts; and aunt Judith pulled up a rocking-chair, remarking,--

"Now, Angeline, don't let us have any nonsense. Sit right down here and be comfortable. I'll make a copy of the receipt for you to-morrow, and I always put in more eggs than it calls for."

"Vosh," said Pen, "you mustn't make too much noise. Father's going to tell a story. It's of a man that got lost in the woods, and made a bear of himself."

"I've known fellows do that, and not go far into the woods either," said Vosh; and Susie thought a moment before she added,--

"So have I. But then, some men can be bears, and not half try."

The deacon laughed, and put down the apple he was paring.

"I don't know if it's much of a story," said he; "but it has one advantage over some other stories, for it's a true one.--Take an apple, Mrs. Stebbins.--Corry, pa.s.s them to Vosh.--Pen, well, keep the cat in your lap if you want her."

"Now," said aunt Judith, "I guess everybody's ready."

"I won't go home till after the story, nohow," said Mrs. Stebbins; "but speaking of bears"--

"Mother," interrupted Vosh, "you've dropped your yarn. Here it is."

"Hem!" said the deacon. "There were more bears all around the country once than there are now, and they did more mischief. It was really worth while to take a hunt for 'em now and then; and there's always a good market for bear-skins, if you cure 'em well. The way my story came about was this:--

"There was one November when the woods were just full of deer, and some young fellows from Benton Valley made up their minds they'd have a good hunt before the real cold weather came. There hadn't been just such an Indian summer for years and years, and camping out in the mountains was no kind of hardship. The nights were cold, but the days were warm; and all four of them were strapping young men, used to taking care of themselves, and brimful of fun.

"They went up beyond Mink Lake, and it looked as if the deer kept away from them all that first day. They'd have gone to bed hungry, if it hadn't been for some fish they caught; and the next morning they made up their minds they'd go out singly, in different directions, and see which of them would do best. What was curious, they didn't have but one dog along, and his owner counted on having the most game, as a matter of course."

"He was the man that got beared," whispered Pen to the cat in her lap; but her father went right on,--

"The man that owned the dog started out from camp right along the slope of Sawbuck Mountain, northerly; and there are little lakes every mile or so, and they're just swarming with fish. He was following an old path that was pretty well marked. Maybe it was an old Indian trail; but white men had followed it in winter, for the trees were blazed, so you could follow it if there was snow on the ground to hide it."

The deacon paused a moment, as if thinking how to go on; and Porter Hudson asked him eagerly,--

"Did he have the kind of luck I had yesterday?"

"Well, not exactly," replied his uncle. "Before it was ten o'clock by his watch, he had killed and hung up three deer. Real fat ones they were, too, and one of them was a seven-year-old buck with horns that were worth having."

"'Pears to me," remarked Mrs. Stebbins, "the deer nowadays don't have the horns they did when I was a gal;" but the deacon went right on,--

"He didn't know just how many miles he might be from camp; and he knew he'd need help in carrying in those deer, unless he should cut up the meat and set out to smoke it right there."

"And good smoked deer-meat is something worth having," said his wife.

"But he walked on for half a mile or so, just as if there was any use in going for another deer that day, till he came out into a sort of open.

The land sloped down to the sh.o.r.e of a little lake as regularly and smoothly as if it had been cleared for a deer-pasture. There wasn't a deer on it just then; but right in the edge of the opening the hunter found something that set him a-thinking. It was the best bear-trap he had ever seen. There was a little ledge of rocks; and about the middle of it was a break that made a square place the size of a small bedroom, only it wasn't much more than six feet high by ten feet deep. The fellows that made the trap had built up the front with heavy upright logs to hang their gate on, and covered the top with logs."

"Please, uncle Joshua," said Susie, "what is the gate for?"

"To let the bears in. Did you ever see a figure 4 rat-trap? That's it.

The gate lifts up, with a strong sapling for a hinge, and the ends of the sapling (that's the roller) are fitted into the logs at the sides.

There's a long pole fitted into the gate to lift it by, and, when that's pulled down flat on top of the trap, the gate is up about level. There was a wooden catch geared through the roof of that trap so nicely, that, when the pole was in the notch of it, the trap was set to spring at any kind of pull on the bait. The lower end of that catch hung away back by the rock, and the whole machine was in prime order."

"It was somebody else's trap," remarked Corry doubtfully.

"Oh, he could see that n.o.body had been there that year. The timber was all seasoned, and there was gra.s.s growing against the gate. There was a good stiff latch, made with a deep notch in the logs to hold that gate after it came down; and, if a bear once shut himself in, there was no possibility of his getting out. The hunter looked it all over, and made up his mind he'd set the trap, and go back to the last deer he'd killed, and get some fresh meat for bait, and see if something could be done with it. It was some time before he could get at the pole so as to bring it down; but he worked it with a grape-vine for a rope, and it came into place perfectly. Then he went to his deer, and got his bait, and hurried back, as if he were afraid some beast or other would get caught before the bait was there to account for it. You use it just as you use toasted cheese in a rat-trap, only you tie it on, so it'll take a hard pull to get it off. A bear is sure to pull, and that springs the trap; a panther isn't so apt to be stupid about it; and a wolf won't, unless he's hungry. They're more cunning than a bear is, anyhow."

"He didn't toast the whole deer, and put him on?" said Pen.

"No, he didn't toast any thing; but he was hard at work, tying all he had taken from the inside of that deer to the catch of the trap, when something happened that he hadn't been looking for."

"Was it a bear?" said Pen.

"Worse than that. He had pulled too hard on the catch, and it had slipped the pole free, and down came the gate with a bang, and he had trapped himself completely. The gate just missed the dog when it fell, but it left him outside. The first thing the hunter did was to laugh.

Then he said he would finish tying the meat on, and go up and set the trap over again. He tied it on carefully, and set out to get ready for bears; but, when he tried to lift that gate, it wouldn't lift. It was made heavy purposely; and it was caught in the notch below, just exactly right, for the man that made that trap knew how. There was nothing about it to laugh at, and the hunter sat down and thought it over: so did the dog, looking at him through the cracks of the logs, and whimpering. It doesn't take a good dog long to understand when things are going badly."

"He could have chopped his way out," said Port.

"Yes," said the deacon, "but he had no axe, and a jack-knife is a poor tool to work with on seasoned timber. He tried it for a while; but it seemed as if he might whittle away for a week, or till he starved to death, before he could make a hole to get out by. He couldn't dig under, for limestone rock is hard digging. He worked a little at the roof, but that had been weighted with heavy stones, so that a bear could not have stirred a log of it. On the whole, it was a pretty tight place to be in; and it was dinner-time, and he was tremendously hungry. He had not a mouthful to eat or drink, and he knew his friends would not be uneasy about him before night, and not much even then. He was uneasy already, and so was the dog. The poor fellow came and pawed at the logs, and whined and whined; then he went back, and stood and barked like mad at the whole concern."

"What a pity he didn't have an axe to chop himself out!" said Pen. "Then he wouldn't have staid there and starved to death."

"He didn't do that exactly," said the deacon. "He sat down and thought about it, and studied that gate, until by and by an idea came to him. It was the middle of the afternoon before it came, but it was a good one.

There were splinters of wood around the floor of the trap, and he had whittled a heap of shavings from the log he had worked on. He gathered them all, and began to crowd them into the c.h.i.n.ks of the logs, away up in both corners of the gate, just under the roller that it swung on.

Soon as he'd got them well packed in, he took out his match-box, and set them on fire. There isn't any trouble about getting dry wood to burn; and it was plain enough, that, if the ends of that roller were burned away, the gate would have to go down."

Everybody around that fireplace felt sure about the burning qualities of seasoned wood, for they all had to pull away a little, and the story went on.