nd the square and squawked.

"Now, aren't they silly?" exclaimed Albert. "With the door to
freedom open, they won't take it."

"I wonder," said Dick philosophically, "if we human beings are
not just the same. Perhaps there are easy paths out of our
troubles lying right before us and superior creatures up in the
air somewhere are always wondering why we are such fools that we
don't see them."

"Shut up, Dick," said Albert, "your getting too deep. I've no
doubt that in our net are some ducks that are rated as
uncommonly intelligent ducks as ducks go."

They forgot all about philosophy a few moments later when they
began to dispose of their capture. They took them out, one by
one, through a hole that they made in the cell and cut off their
heads. The net was soon full up again, and they caught all the
ducks and geese they wanted with such ridiculous ease that at the
end of a week they took it down and stored it in the cabin.

They jerked the ducks and geese that they did not need for
immediate use, and used the feathers to stuff beds and pillows
for themselves. The coverings of these beds were furs which they
stitched together with the tendons of the deer.

They began to be annoyed about this time by the depredations of
mountain lions, which, attracted by the pleasant odors, came down
from the slopes to the number of at least half a dozen, Dick
surmised, and prowled incessantly about the cabin and Annex,
taking the place of the timber wolves, and proving more
troublesome and dangerous alike. One of them managed at night
to seize the edge of an elk skin that hung on the roof of the
cabin, and the next morning the skin was half chewed up and
wholly ruined.

Both boys were full of rage, and they watched for the lions, but
failed to get a shot at them. But Dick, out of the stores of his
memory, either some suggestion from reading, or trappers' and
hunters' tales, devised a gun trap. He put a large piece of
fresh deer meat in the woods about a quarter of a mile from the
cabin. It was gone the next morning, and the tracks about showed
that the lions had been present.

Then Dick drove two stout forked sticks into the ground, the
forks being about a yard above the earth. Upon these he lashed
one of their rifles. Then he cut a two-foot section of a very
small sapling, one end of which he inserted carefully between the
ground that the trigger of the rifle. The other end was
supported upon a small fork somew