“Say,” he exclaimed suddenly, after the Boy had prodded him with a searching jibe. “If ye’ll let up on that snore, now, I’ll take a day off from my cruisin’, and show ye somethin’ myself.”
“Good!” said the Boy. “It’s a bargain. What will you show me?”
“I’ll take ye over to one of my ponds, in next valley, an’ show ye all the different ways of trappin’ beaver.”
The Boy’s face fell.
“But what do I care about trapping beaver?” he cried. “You know I wouldn’t trap anything. If I 84 had to kill anything, I’d shoot it, and put it out of misery as quick as I could!”
“I know all that,” responded Jabe. “But trappin’ is somethin’ ye want to understand, all the same. Ye can’t be an all-round woodsman ’less ye understand trappin’. An’ moreover, there’s some things ye learn about wild critters in tryin’ to git the better of ’em that ye can’t learn no other way.”
“I guess you’re right, Jabe!” answered the Boy, slowly. Knowledge he would have, whether he liked the means of getting it or not. But the woodsman’s next words relieved him.
“I’ll just show ye how, that’s all!” said Jabe. “It’s a leetle too airly in the season yit fur actual trappin’. An’ moreover, it’s agin the law. Agin the law, an’ agin common sense, too, fer the fur ain’t no good, so to speak, fer a month yit. When the law an’ common sense stand together, then I’m fer the law. Come on!”
Picking up his axe, he struck straight back into the woods, in a direction at right angles to the brook. To uninitiated eyes there was no trail; but to Jabe, and to the Boy no less, the path was like a trodden highway. The pace set by the backwoodsman, with his long, slouching, loose-jointed, 85 flat-footed stride, was a stiff one, but the Boy, who was lean and hard, and used his feet straight-toed like an Indian, had no fault to find with it. Neither spoke a word, as they swung along single file through the high-arched and ancient forest, whose shadows, so sombre all through summer, were now shot here and there with sharp flashes of scarlet or pale gleams of aërial gold. Once, rounding a great rock of white granite stained with faint pinkish and yellowish reflections from the bright leaves glowing over it, they came face to face with a tall bull moose, black and formidable-looking as some antediluvian monster. The monster, however, had no desire to hold the way against them. He eyed them doubtfully for a second, and then went crashing off through the brush in frank, undignified alarm.
For a good three miles the travellers swung onward, up a slow long slope, and down a longer, slower one into the next valley. The Boy noted that the region was one of numberless small brooks flowing through a comparatively level land, with old, long-deserted beaver-meadows interspersed among wooded knolls. Yet for a time there were 86 no signs of the actual living beavers. He asked the reason, and Jabe said: