Following along the faint trail for some distance, but taking care not to step in it, he at length struck it where it passed through the tall grass. Here he squatted down and made some sort of strange passes over his trap, mumbling certain words in a strange tongue. Like all of his people, Skookie was superstitious. What he wanted to do now was to wish his trap good-luck. Having attended to this part of his ceremony, he drew his knife and began to detach a square of the thick, matted moss, making a cavity about arm’s distance at one side of the path. In this hole he buried the hub of the klipsie and covered it carefully with moss, so that nothing was left to show. The arm, which lay back still farther in the grass, he covered up lightly so that it also would be concealed from view. Then, carefully, he stretched his trigger string across the path, mixing it up with some of the dried spears of grass so that it lay a foot or less above the level of the path, or at just about the height at which the fore-legs or breast of the fox would strike it as the animal came walking down the trail. Having bent the grass above his klipsie, and arranged everything so that the place showed no signs of what had been going on, Skookie at last smiled, stood back, and looked cheerfully at his work; then he cast a glance toward the skies, and made a sign with his fingers held downward as though to indicate falling rain.
“Bime-by water!” he said.
“He means that he wants it to rain,” said Rob, “so that the scent will all be washed off from the trap and from the ground around it.”
“Well,” said John, “if the water is about the way it averages, he won’t have to wait longer than to-night for his rain.” Which, indeed, was the case, for in the night, while they were all safely in the barabbara around the fire, the rain came as usual, sufficient to blot out all trace of their late work on the fox trails.
The following morning the boys at once began to wonder what luck had met their trapping operations. It did not appear to them likely that they would catch anything the first night; but Skookie, it seemed, was of a different opinion. After breakfast he led the way to the place where the trap lay, and without hesitation walked into the tall grass, stooped down, and at once held up to view a long, dark animal at sight of which the boys uttered a joint whoop of joy!
“We got him!” said John. “We certainly did get a fox, and the very first night, too.”
“Yes,” agreed Rob, “we did more than that: we got a silver-gray fox, and a mighty good one at that. Was there ever such luck, I do wonder!”
Skookie took it all as a matter of course, but the others were much excited over this discovery. They put the silky, handsome animal upon the ground and began to smooth out its fur. The fangs of the klipsie had struck it in the back of the neck and killed it instantly, so that the coat remained quite smooth and undisturbed by any struggles. It was long and silky—dark, with white-tipped tail, and gray extremities on all the hairs of the back.
“This skin ought to be worth anyhow one hundred dollars,” said Rob, critically. “At least that would be my guess at it. The natives don’t often get that much, but sometimes a trader will buy a skin for fifty dollars and sell it for five or six hundred. That all depends on the sort of market he finds.”