Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 28, 1928 — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

500 were well placed, and the ridges, hog- backs and swamps were dotted with figure fours and deadfalls, as well as cubbies and dens; for Toon combined the primitive methods of his fathers with the modern school of steel jaws and manufactured scent; and signs in- dicated a bumper season. The tang of frost was in the air one day when, delayed by a tripped dead- fall, he decided to camp at a lean-to shelter on Cuperlax Falls, rather than brave the dreaded white water of the “ Horserace,” where a slight miscal- culation meant swamping and the loss of his rifle and canoe. While waiting for his black kettle to come to a boil for his pouchong, he set his pan of bacon and venison on the birch griddle over the fire and proceeded to sprea his blanket. ‘ Evidently some one had camped there recently, for the bed was piled high with fir boughs, and it looked so inviting that he couldn’t resist the temptation to stretch out for a mo- ment. No sooner did his head touch the raised pile of bough tips that an- swered for a pillow than there was an ominous click, and he felt his head - caught just in front of the ears. With a startled yell he fought to a sitting position, to be brought up short by an eight-foot chain. Even before he looked around he knew what had happened—he was caught in a bear trap! A No.5 Newhouse, he judged, by the size of the spring that jutted above his head like a grotesque horn; a steel ma- chine that would defy the strength and weight of a full-grown bear. But for the thick folds of his blanket and the mink skin cap he wore, the snap of the double springs might have crushed his skull. With all his strength he tried to spread the jaws apart, but even before he tried it he knew how futile the effort would be. He had set too many No. 5’s not to know the tre- mendous strength executed by those ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. great springs of tested steel. He’d need a skid lever, the use of both hands and his weight to release those jaws. The situation was desperate for a lone man in the woods. He stifled the moan that rose to his lips and closed his eyes against the pain, then frantically he clawed away the boughs to find that the heavy chain was fastened to a tree root by a three- eighths staple. Evidently set by some fool amateur. An experienced trapper would have used a clog. Damn fool! He tore away the flimsy sides of the rude shelter the better to reach the staple, then wound the chain around his arm, and with his wrists, jacked by the leverage of his knees, he strained and yanked until black spots floated before his eyes, then lay back panting from the exertion and pain. A dozen ways and means of escape flitted through his mind to be discarded be- cause he had no adequate means of put- ting them in operation. He remembered that once he had seen a strong man in a circus break a chain by folding the links and twist- ing them apart. He tried this, but it was no go. Hell! If he could only reach his ax—but his ax, knife, tumpline, gun, buckskin shirt and knapsack lay on the other side of the fire. With his belt he made a loop on the end of the longest pole of his lean-to frame and tried to hook it over thé handle of his ax, and only succeeded in knocking the ax behind the stump, out of sight and hopelessly beyond reach. In his anger and disappointment he fought the diabolic jaws for ten min- utes with a strength born of despair, unmindful of the sticky, crimson stream that flowed. from his lacerated scalp. No use! In his excitement he shouted at the top of his voice, then grinned sheepishly. The Upper Cuperlax was off the beaten trail of the main river; the set- tlement was forty miles away, and the nearest trapper’s cabin lay over Big COPMICGLOOOKS (E@