"Well," said Jack, "I never saw a big dead-fall built, but it must be a lot of work to make one. You see, a bear is a powerfully strong animal, and a very heavy weight would be needed to crush it. I have seen quite a number of grizzly bears, and it seems to me that they're the most powerful animal that there is. I believe that a grizzly bear, nine times out of ten, would be able to kill a buffalo, and a buffalo is about the biggest and strongest thing that we have in this country."
After the four had eaten, Hugh and Jack quickly washed up the dishes, and then Hugh said to Jack, "Son, let us go and look at those mink traps of ours. You and Henry can go ahead, if you like, and Mr. Clifford and I will follow. If you find anything in the traps, reset them, and if the bait is gone, get some more and I will bring the medicine along."
Hugh got his bottle of beaver medicine and hung it around his neck, and then the two older men followed the boys, who had started off. When they passed the Cliffords' camp, their packer was seen sitting under the shade of a bush, and when the boys came in sight he walked over to meet them, and said, "Well, I'm glad to see you again. I tell you it's been a mighty lonely morning, with nothing to do and nobody to see."
"Come on with us," said Jack. "We're going to look at some traps we've set along the creek."
"I'd be right glad to," said the young man, and the three walked briskly along. At the first dead-fall the bait was undisturbed, but in the second a mink was found. Jack stopped and explained the principle of the dead-fall to Henry, illustrating it by what was now before their eyes.
While they were talking, Hugh and Mr. Clifford came up and the lesson had to be gone over again, this time by Hugh, for the benefit of the older man. Hugh took the mink, and, slitting it across from one heel to the other under the tail, skinned away a little bit from the hams, and cutting out the two glands about which he had warned Jack when they first began to skin minks, he cut one of them open and smeared it over the bait. The odor of the cut gland was very offensive, but Hugh declared that it was the best kind of medicine for mink.
A round of the traps gave them two more mink, and Hugh declared that mink must be pretty plenty, since, during the morning, three had gone into the traps. By midafternoon they had made their rounds, and on their way back to camp stopped at the Cliffords' tent, and here Mr. Clifford and Henry asked them in, showed them a number of things that they had brought with them from England, among them a huge knife nearly a foot long, which to Jack seemed to have a hundred blades and implements. Mr. Clifford gave Hugh a package of tobacco, and Henry presented Jack with a volume which contained six books of Homer's Iliad. Then the two Americans went on to their tent, having promised to come back and eat supper with the Cliffords.
"That was a wonderful knife Mr. Clifford had, wasn't it, Hugh?" said Jack, as they approached their tent.