"Get out! You don't think I'm such a ninny as that, I hope," answered Steve, indignantly. "Hey, take a look at that shell, and this one, too, will you? Know why that black cross is on them? Course you don't. Well, I'll tell you."
"H-h-hurry up then and t-t-tell me."
"They're buckshot shells," declared Steve. "Each one's got just twelve buckshot inside, all as big as pistol bullets. And at short range they're calculated to bring down a deer like fun. I'd be willing to take my chances against a black bear, given a good opening to hit him back of his foreleg. Now you know a heap more'n you did before, Toby Jucklin."
"S-s-sure," answered the other, nodding his head good-naturedly.
"But remember," said Jim at this juncture, "a good bearskin is worth all the way from five to twenty dollars to me. But after you've made a sieve out of it with twelve or twenty-four buckshot from that scatter gun, why, I hardly think I could give it away."
"So Steve, please restrain your bear-killing feeling just now," said Max. "Whether we get him in a trap or shoot him on the run the bear steaks will taste just as good; won't they, Uncle Jim?"
"I reckon you're right," replied the trapper, without any great animation; for doubtless he had found bear meat pretty tough eating, and given his choice would any day have much preferred the porterhouse steak which Steve had so often at home that he turned up his nose at it.
When they arrived at the marsh where the countless muskrats had their homes, a new species of interest was aroused.
Jim showed them how he had to employ entirely new tactics when dealing with the muskrats than in connection with the mink. The former were banded together in colonies, and the trapper had to be constantly on the alert lest in capturing one prize he frighten the whole family away.
"But I learned my business many years ago," the old trapper declared, with considerable pride, "when beaver lived in the North Woods. There never were more wary little animals than those same beaver, and the man who could circumvent 'em had a right to call himself smart."