“I don’t see any,” said Teddy, gazing around vacantly.
“You’ll see one in a few minutes.”
Finding a spot that suited him, Joel Runnell cleared away some of the snow, which was but a few inches deep. Then, with a hatchet he had brought along, he cut two short sticks and near the top of each cut a sharp notch, the opening pointing downward.
“Now I’ll drive these two sticks into the ground, about eight inches apart,” said he; and put them down until the notches he had cut were less than a foot from the soil. “Joe,” he added, “you cut a strong, flat stick that will reach from one notch to the other.”
While Joe was doing this, old Runnell put down another stick, this time with a sharp upper point. The three sticks in the ground formed a triangle. Then a stick was cut, sharp at one end and blunt at the other. This the old hunter called the catch stick.
Several feet away was a sapling and this was readily bent down in the direction of the imperfect trap. To the sapling Joel Runnell tied a stout cord and to the lower end of the cord fastened a bit of wire in the form of a running loop.
“Now we’ll proceed to set our trap,” he said, and taking the catch stick he placed the blunt end under the stick Joe had put in the two notches and balanced the sharp end on the equally sharp end of the stick in front.
The sapling was now bent over until the loop, or noose, was low to the ground, between the two sticks in the ground and that in the notches. Then the string, just above the noose, was fastened to the blunt end of the catch stick.
“Now all we’ve got to do is to bait our trap and it will be ready for business,” went on Joel Runnell, and around the sharp stick in the ground fastened some extra tender twigs of brushwood he had found on the way. “You see, the minute Mr. Rabbit begins to eat the twigs, he’ll shake the stick. That will make the catch stick slip down at the sharp end. Up will fly the blunt end and so will the noose, with Mr. Rabbit dangling in it by the neck or by the body.”
“But he may go at the bait from the back,” said Bart.