Both boys were ready to start out when the others left to make a round of
the traps. They had received final instructions from Trapper Jim.

"Got your compass, Max?" asked his cousin.

"It's O.K.," replied the other, touching his pocket, suggestively.

"D-d-don't forget your g-g-grub," said Toby.

"Both of us got the snack of lunch stowed away," Steve made answer, as he
pointed to the bulging side of his khaki hunting coat that had a game
pocket running all the way around inside, "big enough almost to stow a
deer in," Steve had laughingly declared.

"But I hardly think Max would ever need a compass," Bandy-legs observed.
"You know he never yet was lost in the woods."

"Glad to hear that, son," remarked Trapper Jim.

"Sure thing," Bandy-legs went on to say, "Max, he can tell the points of
the compass by the bark or the green moss on the trees, by the way the
trees lean, and lots of other ways; can't you, Max!"

But the other only smiled, as though he thought there was no need of his
wasting breath when, as Steve declared, he could have a loyal chum "blow
his horn" for him.

"All ready here, Max," announced Steve, anxious to start.

So, with a few parting words the two hunters left the vicinity of the