The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound Part 18

"What else have you been doing besides catching that dandy mess of fish?" asked the scout-master, voicing the curiosity of the entire crowd.

"Say! did you shoot some game, too--a deer, a wildcat, or maybe a big black bear?" demanded Bobolink, eagerly.

"No, the gun was never fired," continued Tom. "But we've got a right to turn our badges over for this day, because we performed a Good Samaritan act."

"Go on and tell us about it!" urged Sandy Griggs.

"We heard groans, and weak calls for help," said Tom, unable to keep back his news any longer, though he would have liked very much to continue tantalizing the others, "and after we had kicked off our skates and hung our packs in a tree, we went over into the woods and found----"

"What?" roared several of the curious scouts in unison.

"Who but our fellow townsman, Sim Jeffreys, whining and groaning to beat the band," continued the narrator. "It seems that he had got caught in a trap, and expected to be frozen to death to-night, or starve there to-morrow."

"A trap, did ye say?" asked Tolly Tip. And Paul noticed a sudden look of enlightenment come into his face.

"Tell us what sort of a trap, Tom?" urged Bobolink.

"A regular bear trap!" replied the one addressed.

"Oh, come now! you're trying to play some sort of trick on us, fellows," cried Spider s.e.xton. "How ever would a real bear trap come there?"

"Ask Tolly Tip," suggested Paul.

"That's right, lads, I know all about that trap," admitted the old woodsman, as he grinned at them. "I had an ole bear trap that had lost its grip and wasn't wuth much. I sot the same in the woods, but nothin' iver kim nigh it, and so I jest forgets all about the same.

But bless me sowl I niver dramed it'd be afther grippin' a lad by the leg. All he had to do was to push down on the springs, and he'd been loose."

"I could see that plainly enough," admitted Jack. "The trouble was Sim fell into a panic as soon as he found himself caught, and all he could do was to squirm and pull and shout and groan. It shows the foolishness of letting a thing scare you out of your seven senses."

"But do you mean to say there are real, live bears around here, Tolly Tip?" demanded Bobolink, his eyes nearly round with excitement.

"There's one rogue av a bear that I've tried to git for this two year, but by the same token he's been too smart for the likes av me."

"That interests me a whole lot," remarked Paul; "and I mean to devote much of my spare time to trying to shoot that same bear with my camera in order to get a flashlight picture of him in his native haunts!"

CHAPTER XIX

NEWS OF BIG GAME

"Faith and would ye mind tillin' me how that same might be done?"

asked Tolly Tip, showing considerable interest. "I niver knowed that ye could shoot a bear with a shmall contraption like that black box."

Some of the boys snickered, but Paul frowned on them.

"When we speak that way," he went on to explain, "we mean getting an object in the proper focus, and then clicking the trigger of the camera. We are really just taking a picture."

"Oh! now I say what ye mane," admitted the woodsman; "but I niver owned a camera in all me life, so I'm what ye'd call grane at it. Sure 'tis a harmless way av shootin' anything I should say."

"But it gives a fellow just as much pleasure to get a cracking good picture of a wild animal at home as it does a hunter to kill," Phil Towns hastened to remark. Tolly Tip, however, shook his head in the negative, as though to declare that for the life of him he could not see it that way.

"If you can show me a place that the black bear is using," Paul continued, "I'll fix my camera in such a way that when Bruin pulls at a bait attached to a cord he'll ignite the flashlight cartridge, and take his own photograph."

At that the woodsman laughed aloud, so novel did the scheme strike him.

"I'll do that same and without delay, me lad," he declared. "I've got a notion this very minute that I know where I might find my bear; and after nightfall I'll bait the ground wid some ould combs av wild honey."

"Wild honey did you say?" asked Jud, licking his lips in antic.i.p.ation, for if there was one thing to eat in all the wide world Jud liked better than another it was the sweets from the hive.

"Och! 'tis mesilf that has stacks av the same laid away, and I promise ye all ye kin eat while ye stay here," the woodsman told them, at which Jud executed a pigeon-wing to express his satisfaction.

"And did you gather it yourself around here, Tolly Tip?" he inquired.

"Nawthin' else," acknowledged the old trapper. "Ye say, whin Mister Garrity do be staying down in town it's small work I have to do; and to locate a bee tree is a rale pleasure. Some time I'll till ye how we go about the thrick. Av course there's no use tryin' it afther winter sets in, for the bees stick in the hive."

"And bears just dote on honey, do they, the same as Jud here does?"

asked Frank.

"A bear kin smell honey a mile away," the woodsman declared. "In fact, the very last time I glimpsed the ould varmint we've been spakin'

about 'twas at the bee tree I'd chopped down. I wint home to sacure some pails, and whin I got back to the spot there the ould beast was a lickin' up the stuff in big gobs. Sure I could have shot him aisy enough, but I had made up me mind to take him in a trap or not at all, so I lit him go."

"So he got his share of the honey, did he?" asked Jud.

"Oh! I lift him all I didn't want, and set a trap to nab him, but by me word he was too smart for Tolly Tip."

"Then I hope you salt the ground to-night," remarked Paul, "and that I can set my camera to-morrow evening and see what comes of it."

It was not long before they were sitting down to the first real game supper of the excursion. Everybody spoke of it as "Bobolink's venison treat," and that individual's boyish heart swelled with pride from time to time until Spider s.e.xton called out:

"Next thing you know we'll have a real tragedy hereabouts."

"What do you mean?" demanded Phil Towns.

"Why," explained Spider, "Bobolink keeps on swelling out his chest like a pouter pigeon every time somebody happens to mention his deer, and I'm afraid he'll burst with vanity soon."

"And when the day's doings are written up," Bluff put in, "be sure and put in that another of our gallant band came within an ace of being terribly bitten by a savage wild beast."

"Please explain what it's all about," begged Tom. "You see Jack and I were away pretty much all day. You and Sandy went off with Tolly Tip, didn't you, to see how he managed his traps? Was it then the terrible thing happened?"

"It was," said Bluff, with a chuckle. "You see Tolly Tip kept on explaining everything as we went from trap to trap, and both of us learned heaps this morning. Finally, we came to the marsh and there a muskrat trap held a big, ferocious animal by the hind leg."

"You see," Sandy broke in, as though anxious to show off his knowledge of the art of trapping, "as a rule the rat is drowned, which saves the skin from being mangled. But this one stayed up on the bank instead of jumping off when caught in the trap. Now go on, Bluff."

"Sandy accidentally got a mite too close to the beast," continued the other. "First thing I knew I heard a snarl, and then Sandy jumped back, with the teeth of the muskrat clinging to the elbow of his coat sleeve. An inch further and our chum'd have been badly bitten. It was a mighty narrow escape, let me tell you."

"Another thing that would interest you, Paul," Bluff went on to say, "was the beaver house we saw in the pond the animals had made when they built a dam across the creek, a mile above here."