“Buck fever, Mr. Tucket—or, as some call it, gun jaw. Most people get it the first time they think about shooting anything bigger than a rabbit. Usually it only hits a man once or twice—and then only if he’s had time to think about it. You’re lucky.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause some get it before they shoot. They can’t even pull the trigger. I watched one man—and this is pure gospel—stand up against a bear that didn’t like him at all, and all he did was aim his rifle and say, ‘Bang.’ ”

“You mean he didn’t shoot?”

“Nope. Didn’t even draw his hammer. If I hadn’t been there to kill the bear, that man would have been nothing in a second or two. Unless the bear could understand English. Hah!”

But Francis couldn’t laugh at the joke. He remembered shaking all over, and he hoped that when the time came—if it came—for him to face something dangerous, he wouldn’t do something dumb like saying “Bang.”

By the end of the week the hoops were finished, and Mr. Grimes had gathered all the bait sticks. Next came the traps. There were fifty of them—big, double-springed traps with bait-pan trips. They all had to be smoked over a low fire of green aspen to take away the smell of man. So Francis was put in charge of the smoking fire, working ten traps at a time. They were hung over the fire with a long pole and taken off with a forked stick. Once smoked, they could not be touched by human hands.

After the traps were smoked, they were hung three to a stick, so that Mr. Grimes could carry them to the individual ponds without touching them.

About halfway through the second week of working, as if on demand, cold settled in and held for a few hours. The next morning, Mr. Grimes reported that they’d start trapping that day.

“There’ll be ice on the ponds,” he said. “That makes it easier. The beaver sort of give themselves away by cutting holes in the ice. All you have to do is drop a trap in the hole and wait. They come right into it. Even if the ice melts off—and it probably will before the day is out—they still use the same place. Sort of like you’d use a hallway in a house.”

While he talked, he was working, lashing bait sticks and trap sticks to a long aspen pole. This pole, with twenty-one traps, he handed to Francis. Then he made another one, just like the first.

They rode out toward the first pond well before noon. Francis was almost excited. All this labor, and now he would actually see what they’d been working toward. And, he thought, just maybe, the back-breaking labor would slack off a bit.