warm weather his health and strength were fully restored, and to a
casual glance he bore no mark of his dreadful experience in the
steel trap.

VIII

During that same winter I caught many wolves and foxes who did
not have Bingo's good luck in escaping the traps, which I kept out
right into the spring, for bounties are good even when fur is not.

Kennedy's Plain was always a good trapping ground because it was
unfrequented by man and yet lay between the heavy woods and the
settlement. I had been fortunate with the fur here, and late in April
rode in on one of my regular rounds.

The wolf-traps are made of heavy steel and have two springs, each
of one hundred pounds power. They are set in fours around a
buried bait, and after being strongly fastened to concealed logs are
carefully covered in cotton and in fine sand so as to be quite
invisible. A prairie wolf was caught in one of these. I killed him
with a club and throwing him aside proceeded to reset the trap as I
had done so many hundred times before. All was quickly done. I
threw the trap-wrench over toward the pony, and seeing some fine
sand nearby, I reached out for a handful of it to add a good finish
to the setting.

Oh, unlucky thought! Oh, mad heedlessness born of long
immunity! That fine sand was on the next wolftrap and in an
instant I was a prisoner. Although not wounded, for the traps have
no teeth, and my thick trapping gloves deadened the snap, I was