“What, a veteran forest pilot like you not know what a ditty bag is!” Martin asked in mock astonishment. “Then it’s high time for you to learn. A ditty bag is the thing that does for the woodsman what all the pockets in a suit of clothes do for a boy—it carries the forty and one indispensable things that can’t be carried in some other place. You’d better sit over here beside me and make yours up to-night while I am fitting out mine.”
So the boy moved over to the little pile of packages ready for instructions.
The hunter handed him a little bag made of tough water-proof material with a string at the top for tying securely. Then he rummaged through the packages, taking out what he wanted and placing them in the bag. At his suggestion Larry duplicated this selection of things for his own bag, so that in case one bag should be lost they would still have the other. “But,” said Martin, “you must put in some little thing for luck—anything that strikes your fancy, after the other things are in. That’s a hunter’s superstition, like the Indian’s ‘medicine.’”
The first useful article selected was a neat Red Cross package containing a few useful medicines and surgical dressings for an emergency. Next came needles of all sizes, with several skeins of thread, and a wooden handle in which were several awls, neatly stored in a hollow bobbin on which was wound many lengths of strong waxed cord. A can of gunoil found a place, and a small whetstone, rough on one side for sharpening the axes, and smooth on the other for the knives. A tool case, containing a “good-sized carpenter shop,” as Martin explained and made of aluminum after Mr. Ware’s own design, found especial favor; and a broken shell extractor was considered indispensable.
Buttons and skeins of twine of various sizes went into the bag as a matter of course; but when the old hunter selected three packages, each containing a dozen yards of the kind of twisted wire used for hanging pictures of different sizes, the boy burst out laughing and rolled on the blankets. He suspected Martin of trying to play off a quiet hoax on him, and did not intend to be caught in the trap.
Nothing was farther from Martin’s thoughts, however, as Larry discovered when the use of the wire was explained. It was to be used for making the snares for catching small animals, particularly rabbits, the hunter said, and for that purpose was unequaled. And the old man assured him that for securing food on the march in a snow-bound country snares were far more useful than rifles. Indian families in many northern regions depended almost entirely upon their snares for their supply of winter food.
“Rabbits are the bread and butter of the woodsman in the winter,” Martin said. “The rabbits make little narrow paths in the snow—thousands of them, running in all directions—and when they are not disturbed and going about their business, they always follow these paths. Now when the rabbit comes to a fallen limb lying across his path a few inches above the ground, he likes to go under the limb rather than hop over it. This simplifies matters for the Indian. He simply hangs his snare in front of the hole under the limb, and is almost sure to catch the first rabbit that comes hopping along that particular path.
“The snare is just a simple slip-noose made large enough to let the rabbit’s head pass through easily. If the wind is blowing the snare can be held open and in place by tying it with blades of dead grass, which are strong enough to hold it in place until the rabbit gets his head through.
“The other end of the snare string is tied to a limb that is bent down and fastened in a notch cut in a stick or a small sapling if it happens to be in the right place. The notch is cut deep enough to hold the bent limb, but not firmly enough but what it can be jerked loose pretty easily.
“Now when the rabbit comes hopping along the path and starts to go under the limb, he runs his head through the snare. When he feels something around his neck he pulls back to get out of its way; but that tightens the noose about his neck, and he begins leaping about frantically to get loose. In this way he jerks the bent limb out of the notch that holds it down, the limb flies back, and swings him up into the air where he smothers in short order.