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Updated: May 16, 2025
Skookie now took this arm of his klipsie to where he had left the butt or hub of the trap, and he loosened up the heavy, braided cord of sinew which passed from end to end through the butt. He pushed the butt end of the arm in between these sinews so that pulling it sidewise twisted the sinews.
In truth, they very probably did the very best that could be done in such circumstances. There might have been serious trouble from a wound from an old klipsie barb. Surgeons have died from poison received from knives used in post-mortem work.
Skookie smiled and walked on a little farther and showed them several other such places a few yards apart. He held up the fingers of one hand. "Five klipsie," he said, and then swept an arm around toward the face of the mountains, remarking: "My peoples come here." "Oh," said Rob; "he means that here is where his family come to set their klipsie traps for foxes.
When the trap was thus set it lay flat on the ground, and Skookie motioned the boys to keep away from it something which all were willing to do, for the barbed arm of the klipsie resembled nothing so much as a fanged serpent with its head back ready to strike a terrible blow. "Natives get caught in these traps sometimes," said Rob; "so the old trappers tell me.
Skookie, going ahead with his work, fumbled in his pocket and fished out a piece of hide cord, which he measured off to a certain length between his arms; then, picking up a bit of stick, he whittled out a pointed peg and attached one end of his cord to this, while he arranged the other so that it would control the trigger which held the arm in place on the farther side of the klipsie bow.
Now he stretched out his cord and pushed the peg into the earth as though it crossed a fox path, and made a motion of a fox walking along and touching his leg against the cord. To do this he took a long stick instead of using his own limb. Whang! went the klipsie, the fanged arm whirling over so fast that the eye could hardly follow it, and burying its points in the ground.
Having again set his klipsie at a point a few yards farther down the trail, he took up the dead fox and led the way back to the barabbara, where he undertook to carry the carcass in for his skinning operations.
The fangs of the klipsie had struck it in the back of the neck and killed it instantly, so that the coat remained quite smooth and undisturbed by any struggles. It was long and silky dark, with white-tipped tail, and gray extremities on all the hairs of the back. "This skin ought to be worth anyhow one hundred dollars," said Rob, critically. "At least that would be my guess at it.
"A piece of an old klipsie was lying out in the grass, and it has cut through my shoe and gone into my foot." Rob sat up on the blanket where he had been nursing his own crippled hand. "An old nail!" he said. "Lucky if it wasn't worse! No telling what the point of it might do toward poisoning the wound.
A really prime skin is white and clear, and you can see that this one is just a little blue along the back. That isn't a good sign to me." Rob's guess as to the fur soon proved to be correct. For four more nights they watched their klipsie trap without success. On the fifth morning they found another dead fox in the trap, with the barbs through his back.
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