ime Bingo. But when
the spring came he began to gain strength, and bettering as the grass
grew, he was within a few weeks once more in full health and vigor to be
a pride to his friends and a nuisance to his neighbors.

VII

Changes took me far away from Manitoba, and on my return in 1886 Bingo
was still a member of Wright's household. I thought he would have
forgotten me after two years' absence, but not so. One day early in the
winter, after having been lost for forty-eight hours, he crawled home to
Wright's with a wolf-trap and a heavy log fast to one foot, and the foot
frozen to stony hardness. No one had been able to approach to help him,
he was so savage, when I, the stranger now, stooped down and laid hold
of the trap with one hand and his leg with the other. Instantly he
seized my wrist in his teeth.

Without stirring I said, "Bing, don't you know me?"

He had not broken the skin and at once released his hold and offered no
further resistance, although he whined a good deal during the removal of
the trap. He still acknowledged me his master in spite of his change
of residence and my long absence, and notwithstanding my surrender of
ownership I still felt that he was my dog.

Bing was carried into the house much against his will and his frozen
foot thawed out. During the rest of the winter he went lame and two of
his toes eventually dropped off. But before the return of 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 t