After a few weeks of assiduous trapping, however, Kane felt bound to acknowledge that this modest ambition of his seemed remote from fulfilment. Every kind of trap he could think of, that would take a beast alive, he tried in every kind of way. And having run the whole insidious gamut, he would turn patiently to run it all over again. Of course, the result was inevitable, for no beast, not even such a one as the Gray Master, is a match, in the long run, for a man who is in earnest. Yet Kane’s triumph, when it blazed upon his startled eyes at last, was indirect. In avoiding, and at the same time uncovering and making mock of, Kane’s traps, the great wolf put his foot into another, a powerful bear-trap, which a cunning old trapper had hidden near by, without bait. The trap was secured to a tree by a stout chain—and rage, strain, tear as he might, the Gray Master found himself snared. In his silent fury he would probably have gnawed off the captive foot, for the sake of freedom. But before he came to that, Kane arrived and occupied his attention fully.
Kane’s disappointment, at finding the splendid prize in another trap than his own, was but momentary. He knew his successful rival would readily part with his claims, for due 125 consideration. But he was puzzled as to what should be done in the immediate emergency. He wanted to go back home for help, for ropes, straps, and a muzzle with which he had provided himself; but he was afraid lest, in his absence, the trapper might arrive and shoot the captive, for the sake of the pelt and the bounty. In his uncertainty he waited, hoping that the trapper might come soon; and by way of practice for the serious enterprise that would come later, as well as to direct the prisoner’s mind a little from his painful predicament, Kane began trying to lasso him with a coil of heavy cord which he carried.
His efforts in this direction were not altogether successful, but the still fury which they aroused in the great wolf’s breast doubtless obscured the mordant anguish in his foot. One terrific leap at his enemy, resulting in an ignominious overthrow as the chain stopped him in mid-air, had convinced the subtle beast of the vanity of such tactics. Crouching back, he eyed his adversary in silence, with eyes whose hatred seemed to excoriate. But whenever the running noose at the end of the cord came coiling swiftly at his head, with one lightning snap of his long teeth he would sever it as with a knife. By the time Kane had grown tired of 126 this diversion the cord was so full of knots that no noose would any longer run.
But at this point the old trapper came slouching up on his snowshoes, a twinkle of elation in his shrewd, frosty, blue eyes.
“I reckon we’ll show the varmint now as how he ain’t no loup-garou!” he remarked, lightly swinging his axe.
But Kane hastily intervened.
“Please don’t kill him, Dave!” he begged. “I want him, bad! What’ll you take for him?”
“Just as he stands?” demanded the old trapper, with a chuckle. “I ain’t a-goin’ to deliver the goods to yer door, ye know!”
“No,” laughed Kane, “just as he stands, right here!”
“Well, seein’ as it’s you, I don’t want no more’n what his pelt’ld fetch, an’ the bounty on his nose,” answered the trapper.