Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/189

1904] had gone away. But when he went down to his grouse snares, and saw where the fox had rushed in and devoured the bird, he was glad. A new idea came to him, and he chuckled and laughed to himself. Then beneath a fallen log, where the water had washed out a little channel just large enough for a fox to crawl through, he buried a steel trap ever so carefully, and he left it there two days, so that all the scent of his hands would die away.

On the third day he caught a grouse and tied it by the leg under the log, a little way back from the trap—and he tied it in such a way that it would flutter and be more certain to attract attention. It was a cruel thing to do, but the old man wanted to catch Silver-gray, and he was willing to do anything if he could only fool him at last.

It was all silent in the great mountains when Silver-gray, the old fox, trotted out across the white snow that glistened in the moonlight and passed along the hillside where the snares were set for grouse. It was a great joke to catch the trapper’s birds before he could use them for bait; and at the thought of the tender bird that he had eaten, old Silver-gray turned aside and went up to the snares. A sudden wind roared through the swaying tops of the black pine-trees, and he stopped to listen. Silver-gray did not know it, but the wind was singing a warning song. He was about to be caught.

There was nothing in the snares—yet, as he listened, he seemed to hear, even above the moaning of wind in the trees, a faint flutter—the flutter of wings. Alert, he stood there with the moonlight shining on his beautiful fur, and he pricked his ears to catch the sound.

Whks, whks, it whispered very faintly—but it came from the log on the hill. Eagerly the wily fox crouched down and glided silently toward it; then, with one foot raised, he stopped and listened, snuffing the air ever so lightly.

Whks, whks, whispered the wings again, soft as the rustle of a mouse.

Then Whrr and Whrr in a storm of anguished fluttering, for the grouse had heard his step and knew that he was coming.

Sngrr snarled Silver-gray, and rushed toward it.

Chuck! went the steel trap beneath him, and the strong jaws seized his foot in a grip that nipped like death. Bite and struggle as he would, the cruel iron, the iron which smelled of man and had once been his deadly fear, still clutched him by the leg—and only the hands of man could make it loose its hold.

With the cold body of the grouse beside him, Silver-gray lay moaning and snarling, while he waited for his captor to come. But even in his agony he bowed his head in shame, to think that he was caught. He had pitted his cunning against the cunning of Old Ransome—and now, in the grip of icy steel, he had learned the last thing about traps.