On the return of the other bearing his apparatus Elmer was up and outside getting the fire started. It needed no question on his part to decide that some sort of success had come to the ardent photographer.
“He visited the trap, Elmer, for a fact!” Amos was saying, his face showing signs of considerable satisfaction. “The flashlight had burned; and then too the fish-head bait was gone. I think he managed to work it clear of the cord; but he deserved it, sure he did, the cunning little varmint. Oh! I’m fairly wild to see what I got out of it!”
“Hold your horses until we’ve had breakfast, Amos,” the other advised him. “Then you can have the cabin to work in, when you start developing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find you’d made a big hit.”
“I used to think once I cared a heap to wander the fields with a gun, and if I could only fetch home some game in my bag, a rabbit, partridge, gray squirrel, or quail I felt might proud of my skill; but I can plainly see I’ll never again find any happiness in killing. This sort of hunting with a camera has got it all beat to a frazzle.”
“The beauty of it is,” remarked Elmer, “that you can still be on friendly terms with the little animals of woods and swamp, and at the same time secure your greatest triumphs. If that picture turns out good, I reckon you’ll take ten times as much pleasure showing it, than if you’d trapped the mink, and had taken his poor little pelt to sell for a few dollars.”
“Oh! I’m sure of that, Elmer. And I can see that there are really unlimited possibilities about this wonderful game. Just think how proud a man might be if he had an album crowded with such pictures, which he had collected all over the world, showing animals and birds in their native haunts, yes, telling how they lived, and reared their young. I guess the disease has got a firm hold on me, and I’ll never go back to hunting with a gun again.”
Other boys than Amos Codling have discovered the same thing; and many an innocent little creature living in the haunts of the wilderness owes its continued existence to the lure and fascination to be found in hunting with a camera.
When Amos came out of the cabin, after being shut up there an hour or more, he was looking decidedly pleased.
“It turned out gilt-edged, Elmer!” he exclaimed, holding up something with an air of considerable pride. “And, believe me, this negative is so strong it’s bound to make a splendid print. You can see what looks like an expression of surprise on the mink’s phiz when that dazzling flash came. Yes, and he’s tugging at the string we tied the fish-head to, for all that’s out!”
Each of the others took a look, and decided that it was indeed a prize negative. Considering the fact that it had been secured under such strange conditions, the contrasts were remarkably clean cut.