contrary. After looking around for another
partner which I was unable to find as no one wished to go and stay
longer than a day or two (what we call summer trappers), I again
packed my knapsack and went back to camp. The next morning, after
catching a good lot of trout for coon and mink bait, I began the work
of setting the hundred or more deadfalls that pard and I had built.
As soon as I had all the deadfalls set I hunted up good places to set
the traps that we had. I was so busy all the time that there was no
chance to get lonesome. Every day there were coon and mink to skin
and stretch. Now and then a big, old coon was so strong that he would
tear the deadfall to pieces and I would be compelled to build it all
over and make it stronger.

What a difference there is now with the many styles of traps and the
H-T-T to guide the young hunter and trapper. If I could have had a
couple dozen of the No. 1 1/2 Victor traps made as at the present
time, I would have been as proud as a small boy with a new pair of
boots, although I think what was lacking in modern traps was fully
made up by the number of furbearing animals.

I had been so busy during the two weeks I was in camp that I had
forgotten the day of the week; neither did I take time to kill a deer
or to go up to the road to see if anyone had written, to see if I was
dead or alive. There was a stage passed over the road twice a week. I
had nailed a box with a good tight lid on a tree by the road so that
I could send a line out home for anything I wanted or my family could
write to me.

I had two or three traps set for foxes up towards the road along the
edge of a laurel patch where there were plenty of rabbits and the
foxes worked around to catch rabbits. I thought I would go to the
road and be there about the time the stage passed along and see if I
could hear anything from pard and the folks at home and then I could
tend the traps on my way back to camp.

[Illustration: WOODCOCK AND SOME OF HIS CATCH.]

I was at the road shortly before the stage came along and was
surprised as well as delighted to see a neighbor boy by the name of
Frank Curtis aboard the stage as he had said he would come over and
stay a day or two with me in camp. Frank had not been allowed to
spend much time with a gun or traps, but like most boys, he liked a
gun. My mother died before I was eleven years old and father allowed
me to trap and hunt about as I liked.

When we got down near the