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Updated: May 14, 2025
The Indian explained: "Every fox that travels near will come and smell the stone to see who of his kind is around, so this is a good place for a fox-trap; a steel trap, of course, for no fox will go into a deadfall." And slowly Rolf learned that these habits are seen in some measure in all animals; yes, down to the mice and shrews.
"Tharupon Bloojacket wheels on the half-breed who runs the deadfall an' who's standin' still an' scared, an' says: "'How much does he owe? Then he pays Hardrobe's charges for antelope steaks an' what chuck goes with it, an' at the close of these fiscal op'rations, remarks to the half-breed who ain't sayin' no more'n he can he'p, 'Don't touch belt nor buckle on him; you-all knows me! An' I can see that half-breed restauraw party is out to obey Bloojacket's mandates.
Once at the top of the ridge Dick climbed a tree. He did this, not so much in expectation of seeing the water-courses themselves, as to judge by the general lay of the country where they might be found. In a bare open space under hemlocks Sam indicated a narrow, high, little pen, perhaps three feet long by six inches wide, made of cut saplings. Dick examined it. "Marten deadfall," he pronounced.
Them traps save the trapper going round so often, but they're expensive, and heavy to carry, and you have got to be awful hard-hearted before ye kin use 'em. I tell ye, when I thought of all the sufferin' that Mink went through it settled me for steel traps. Since then, says I, if ye must trap, use a deadfall or a ketchalive, one or other; no manglin' an' tormentin' for days.
"Was there no more merciful way of catching them than by this trap?" asked Miss Laura. "Oh, yes, by the deadfall that is by driving heavy sticks into the ground, and making a box-like place, open on one side, where two logs were so arranged with other heavy logs upon them, that when the bear seized the bait, the upper log fell down and crushed him to death.
"I hope his bankin' efforts won't git tangled up in some of his deep plannin'. Logan will git his bank started all right; but when this depression lifts en things git goin' Adot will still need a bank; this one will turn out to be 'Logan's Tradin' Post' er 'Logan's Deadfall. Ye can revive a bank by man-made laws, but hit takes more than a slicker to keep hit goin'. Have you two settled the hay trade?"
He visited five traps before dark, and ate the five baits without springing a pan. The sixth was a deadfall. He circled about this until he had beaten a path in the snow. Then he went on into a warm balsam swamp and found himself a bed for the night. The next day saw the beginning of the struggle that was to follow between the wits of man and beast.
He had felt the cruel pain of steel jaws; he knew better than the shrewdest fox what a deadfall would do when the trigger was sprung and Nepeese herself had taught him that he was never to touch a poison bait. So he closed his teeth gently in the rabbit flesh and drew it forth as cleverly as McTaggart himself could have done.
But Archer, despite all his gloomy manner, was really a sentimentalist, who practised what he felt. "Christmas is a season of peace on earth," he had told himself, while demolishing the logs of a sinister deadfall with his axe; and now the remembrance of his quixotic deed added a brightness to the fire and to the rough, undecorated walls of the camp.
At the other end of the portage I waited for Simmo to come round the bend, and took him back to see the work, denouncing the heartless carelessness of the trapper who had gone away in the spring and left an unsprung deadfall as a menace to the wild things. At the first glance he pronounced it an otter trap. Then the fear and wonder swept into his face, and the questions into mine.
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