John Belden was still ten yards from the trap when he knew that it was sprung. The twisted wire that he had carefully buried on the bank now stretched tautly from the trunk of an aspen sapling into one of the black pools of Spatterdown Creek. Frost-brittle grass cracked under the soles of his knee-length rubber boots as he strode forward along the creek bank. He knelt by the aspen, grasped the wire in a gloved hand, and tugged gently. The wire coiled about his knees as he brought it in. On the end of the fifteen feet of wire, a five-pound boulder with the trap chain snug against it came into view. Trailing the boulder on its twenty inches of chain was a steel trap with a drowned mink fast in it. John pressed the spring down and took the mink from the trap. He ran his hands along the little animal to wring the water from its fur, and held it up by the neck. The mink, he saw, would grade number one medium and its fur would sell for about seven dollars and a half. He grinned. That put him seven dollars and a half closer to the Ranger School at Tankota. John dropped the mink into a canvas gunny sack containing two muskrats he had taken from other traps, and stepped down to re-set the trap. He knew that if there was another mink in the vicinity, it would be attracted by the scent of the one he had already caught.