“Looks a whole lot like a deadfall trap, such as they use in most places to get bears in,” he went on to say.

Obed chuckled as though pleased at the answer to his look of inquiry.

“Just what it is built on the pattern of, Steve, if yuh want to know it,” he admitted.  “The only difference is that in the regular deadfall the log comes down and smashes the poor bear by its sheer weight.  Now, I’ve tried to rig my trap up so it’ll simply make a prisoner o’ the creeper.  I’ll show yuh just how it works.  I’ve got a dummy here, too, that I use to test things.  Yuh see there’s always just a little chance it might go wrong; and I don’t want to get caught, and made a prisoner, with nobody around to let me loose.”

With that he demonstrated his idea.  The trap was sprung just as he meant it should be, and if the dummy had really been a man, he would have found himself caught tightly in the log trap, with but a poor chance of ever getting out again, unless external assistance came along.

“Any more tricks like these two up your sleeve, Obed?” asked Steve, after they had further examined the deadfall, and Max had pronounced it skillfully constructed.

“Well, I’m afraid I reached the end o’ my rope when I hatched up this second idea, Steve,” the other remarked, in a sort of apologetic tone.  “Of course I might think up a few more if I reckoned it’d be necessary.  But I’ve got a hunch that one o’ the lot is agoin’ tuh grab that thief, providin’ he does come around here.  Besides, when yuh git right down to brass tacks, thar isn’t as much danger o’ my bein’ robbed in the night-time, as in the day.”

“And why not, Obed?” further asked Steve; “I’d think that was the very time you’d feel scariest, when it was dark, and you couldn’t see if anybody was prowling around the farm.”

“Stop an’ think how foxes have holes in the ground, into which they c’n burrow when scared the least mite,” explained Obed, readily, “and yuh’ll see how hard it’d be for a stranger to lay hands on them.  Now, in the daytime, if they came along, with me away from the place, a man with a rifle could knock over my pets as easy as turnin’ his hand.  But, all the same, I’ve fixed my traps.  For one thing I’d like to find out jest who the thief is.”

Max noticed what emphasis he put on that last remark.  He could see the customary twinkle in Obed’s eyes give way to a sterner look; as though he had brooded more or less over this same subject.  And Max himself nodded his head as though he might in a measure understand just how Obed felt.

So they returned to the house.  Bandy-legs at least rejoiced because with all those clever contraptions set, and waiting to give the intended thief a warm reception, it did seem as though there would be hardly any necessity for them to waste their precious time in sitting up and keeping watch, when they would be so much better off enjoying “balmy sleep,” as he called it; and all sleep was along that order, according to the mind of Bandy-legs.