fox had the latter been there.

"Come on," said John; "let's go set it somewhere."

"All light!" said Skookie, who understood a great many words from their
apparent connection. He took up his trap, with the hub under his arm,
and headed off up the beach toward the spot where they had first seen
the fox trail two or three hours before.

Following along the faint trail for some distance, but taking care not
to step in it, he at length struck it where it passed through the tall
grass. Here he squatted down and made some sort of strange passes over
his trap, mumbling certain words in a strange tongue. Like all of his
people, Skookie was superstitious. What he wanted to do now was to wish
his trap good-luck. Having attended to this part of his ceremony, he
drew his knife and began to detach a square of the thick, matted moss,
making a cavity about arm's distance at one side of the path. In this
hole he buried the hub of the _klipsie_ and covered it carefully with
moss, so that nothing was left to show. The arm, which lay back still
farther in the grass, he covered up lightly so that it also would be
concealed from view. Then, carefully, he stretched his trigger string
across the path, mixing it up with some of the dried spears of grass so
that it lay a foot or less above the level of the path, or at just about
the height at which the fore-legs or breast of the fox would strike it
as the animal came walking down the trail. Having bent the grass above
his _klipsie_, and arranged everything so that the place showed no
signs of what had been going on, Skookie at last smiled, stood back, and
looked cheerfully at his work; then he cast a glance toward the skies,
and made a sign with his fingers held downward as though to indicate
falling rain.

"Bime-by water!" he said.

"He means that he wants it to rain," said Rob, "so that the scent will
all be washed off from the trap and from the ground around it."

"Well," said John, "if the water is about the way it averages, he won't
have to wait longer than to-night for his rain." Which, indeed, was the
case, for in the night, while they were all safely in the barabbara
around the fire, the rain came as usual, sufficient to blot out all
trace of their late work on the fox trails.

The following morning the boys at once began to wonder what luck had met
their trapping operations. It did not appear to them likely that they
would catch anything the first night; but Skookie, it seemed,