rap-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 firmly caught across the hand above the
knuckles. Not greatly alarmed at this, I tried to reach the trap-wrench
with my right foot. Stretching out at full length, face downward, I
worked myself toward it, making my imprisoned arm as long and straight
as possible. I could not see and reach at the same time, but counted on
my toe telling me when I touched the little iron key to my fetters. My
first effort was a failure; strain as I might at the chain my toe struck
no metal. I swung slowly around my anchor, but still failed. Then a
painfully taken observation showed I was much too far to the west. I set
about working around, tapping blindly with my toe to discover the key.
Thus wildly groping with my right foot I forgot about the other till
there was a sharp 'clank' and the iron jaws of trap No. S closed tight
on my left foot.

The terrors of the situation did not, at first, impress me, but I soon
found that all my struggles were in vain. I could not get free from
either trap or move the traps together, and there I lay stretched out
and firmly staked to the ground.

What would become of me now? There was not much danger of freezing for
the cold weather was over, but Kennedy's Plain was never visited by the
winter wood-cutters. No one knew where I had gone, and unless I could
manage to free myself there was no prospect ahead but to be devoured by
wolves, or else die of cold and starvation.

As I lay there the red sun went down over the spruce swamp west of the
plain, and a shorelark on a gopher mound a few yards off twittered his
evening song, just as one had done the night before at our shanty door,
and though the numb pains were creeping up my arm, and a deadly chill
possessed me, I noticed how long his little ear-tufts were. Then my
thoughts went to the comfortable supper-table at Wright's shanty, and I
thought, now they are frying the pork for supper, or just sitting
down. My pony still stood as I left him with his bridle on the ground
patiently waiting to take me home. He did not understand the long delay,
and when I called, he ceased ni