Jack had watched closely what Hugh had done and understood why most of the operations that he had gone through with had been performed, yet there were many questions that he felt like asking.
"Now, son," said Hugh, after they had reached the upper end of the meadow, "let us go into this little piece of pine timber of yours and cut some more float-sticks; it is worth our while to carry some of them along with us. I don't know whether in trimming those sticks you intended to leave those branches sticking out as long as you did, but whether you meant to do it or not, it was just the right thing."
"Yes, Hugh," said Jack, "I understood from what you had told me what you wanted those sticks for, and of course I could see that you wanted them fixed so that the chain in the trap would not slip either way."
"That's it, exactly," said Hugh; "and I'm glad you listened so carefully and understood so well. Now, of course, if we couldn't find sticks with the branches just right, as those two sticks had, we might have to cut a notch in the float-stick, or we might have to try to bind the chain to it in some way or another. But there's work enough about beaver trapping at best, and if you can find the right kind of sticks, always better use them."
In the pine timber there were plenty of dead young trees, from which they selected four which made good float-sticks.
"I don't know, Hugh," said Jack, as they were hanging the sticks on their saddles, "just why you take a dry stick."
"Well," said Hugh, "there are two or more reasons for that. In the first place the beaver, if they happen to find the dry float-stick, are less likely to try their teeth on it than they would be if the stick were green. If you used a green cottonwood or willow or birch stick for your float-stick, very likely the beaver might carry it and your trap off into deep water before they got near the trap. Besides that, if a trapped beaver dives for deep water and manages to pull up your float-stick and it floats away, a dry one will float higher than a green stick and will be more easily seen and recovered."
"Yes, I see," said Jack. "That's plain enough. I suppose that you kept your hands under water so much in order to wash away the human scent."
"Yes," said Hugh, "that is so. There are lots of men who will never hold the trap or the bait-stick or anything connected with the trap, so that the wind will blow from them to it. They believe that the human scent will stick to anything, and that the beaver can smell it. I don't go quite as far as that, but I do know that if there were a hard breeze blowing I'd always get to the leeward of the trap and of all the things I left near the trapping ground."
"Well," said Jack, "I wondered as I saw you setting those traps to see how awful careful you were about everything you did."