But although Jack made another long search they never saw the cub again.
The swelling in Bob’s leg continued to subside until by supper time it had nearly reached its normal size.
“She’ll be fit as a fiddle by morning,” Bob declared as he took a few steps.
“It was a good thing,” he said a little later after they had finished supper and were sitting beside the fire, “that that wasn’t a regular sized bear trap.”
“What do you mean, regular sized?”
“Why that is a number four, the smallest size made. Didn’t you ever see a number ten. It’s about twice that size and no man living can set one without a clamp.”
“Then I guess mebby I’m not quite so powerful as I thought I was. Here I’ve been all puffed up thinking I’d sat a full sized trap and then you come along and make out that it’s only a mink trap.”
“Well, you’d have been satisfied to have it no bigger if it had been on your leg last night. But, Jack, one thing I can’t understand is how that trap happened to be there.”
“I don’t think that’s very hard. Probably some trapper set it there and then forgot or lost it.”
“Just what I thought at first but if you’ll stop and think a minute you’ll remember that they don’t set bear traps that way. Don’t you remember two or three years ago Kemertok was telling us how they set them?”