"It can't be a Trap," he mused; "nothing has walked where the eating is, that much is certain. François can smooth the white ground-cover down, but can't put a crust on it. Starvation Year! but that Meat smells good--I haven't eaten for two days. I wish it were a Trap--then I should know what I was about. It looks mighty suspicious--must be the White Powder; think I had better leave it alone. If there were only a Trap in sight I would tackle it quick enough; it's easy to spring one of those things and get the Bait."
He trotted away twenty yards, meaning to go home and not risk it. Suddenly he stopped, sat down once more and thought it all over again, his determination weakened by appetite. His lean stomach clamoured for the Meat--it was full of nothing but the great pain of hunger.
"Forest Devils!" muttered the hesitating Fox; "I believe I'm losing my nerve--am afraid because there isn't anything in sight but the Meat. I'd never hear the last of it if Carcajou, or Pisew, or any of them came along, saw my trail, and then, having more pluck than I've got, went and ate that free eating. I wonder what it is? Smells like a cut of Muskrat, or a piece of Caribou; it's not Fish."
He walked back cautiously, irresolutely, and took a look from the opposite side. "I have a notion to try it; I can tell if there's White Medicine about when I get it at the end of my nose," he said, peering all about carefully; there was nobody in sight--nothing! "Women Foxes!" but he was nervous. His big "brush" was simply trembling with the fear of some unknown danger. He laughed hysterically at the idea. It was the unusualness of Meat lying on the snow and no evidence of why it should be there: there was no appearance of a Kill near the spot. How in the world had it come there? There was no track leading up to nor away from it; perhaps Hawk, or Whisky-Jack, or some other bird had dropped it. It was the most wonderful problem he had ever run up against.
But thinking it over brought no solution; also his stomach clamoured louder and louder for the appetizing morsel. Rising up, Black King crept cautiously towards the fascinating object. His foot went through the snow crust. "This wouldn't bear up a Baby Lynx," he thought. "Neither François nor any other Man can have been near that Meat."
He took another step--and another, eyes and nose inspecting every inch of the snow. He could almost reach it; another step, and as his paw sank through the crust it touched something smooth and slippery. There was a clang of iron, and the bone of his left fore-leg was clamped tight in the cruel jaws of a Fox Trap.
Poor old Black King! Despair and pain stretched him, sobbing queer little whimpering cries of anguish in the snow. Only for an instant; then he realized that unless help came from his Comrades his peerless coat would soon be stretched skin-side out on a wedge-shaped board in François's shack. Shrill and plaintive his trembling whistle, "Wh-e-e-he-e-e-, Wh-e-e-he-e-e!" went vibrating through the still Forest in a supplicating call to his companions for succour.
Then an hour of despairing anguish, without one single glint of hope. Every crack of tree-bark, as the frost stretched it, was the snapping of a twig under François's feet; every rustle of bare branches overhead was the shuffling rasp of his snow-shoes on the yielding crust.
Excruciating pains shot up the Fox's leg and suggested grim tortures in store when François had taken him from the Trap--perhaps he would skin him alive; the Indians and Half-breeds were so frightfully cruel to Animals. If only Carcajou, or Whisky-Jack, or dear old Mooswa could hear his whistle--surely they would help him out. Suddenly he heard the rustle of Jack's wings, and turned eagerly. A big, brown, belated leaf fluttered idly from a Cottonwood and fell in the snow. There was no Whisky-Jack in sight--nothing but the helpless, shrivelled leaf scurrying away before the wind.
At intervals he barked a call, then listened. How deadly silent the Forest was; his heart thumping against his ribs sounded like the beat of Partridge's wing-drums at the time of mating.