er much as the old buccaneer carried his
cutlass--thrust through his belt. Somehow or other, I never could
associate Oo-koo-hoo's big wooden-handled auger with his gun and
powder-horn, and all the while I was curious as to what use he was
going to make of it. Now I was to have my curiosity satisfied.

First he selected an evergreen tree about a foot in diameter--this time
it was a pine--and with his axe cut a horizontal notch one to two
inches deep; then he blazed the tree six or eight inches down to the
notch, in order to form a smooth, flat surface; then he took his big
auger and bored down into the tree, at an incline of about twenty
degrees, a hole of two inches' diameter and nine inches deep. Allowing
at that spot for two feet of snow, he had bored the hole about thirty
inches above ground. Then taking two inch-and-a-quarter, thin,
sharp-pointed nails he drove them obliquely into the tree just above
the hole, so that about three quarters of each protruded into the hole.
He did the same with two other nails below the hole, but this time
drove them upward until they, too, protruded into the hole. Both sets
of nails were driven in about an inch and a quarter apart. The bait
used was a duck's head placed at the bottom of the hole. The idea was
that when the marten scented the bait, he would crawl into the hole to
secure it; but when he tried to withdraw, he would find himself
entrapped by the four sharp-pointed nails that, though they allowed him
to slip in, now prevented him from backing out as they ran into his
flesh, and held him until the hunter, placing two fingers of each hand
over the four nail-points, seizing with his teeth the animal's tail,
and throwing back his head, would draw his victim out. But such work
is rather risky, as the hunter may be bitten before he has a chance to
kill the marten.

Though it is a very recent mode of trapping--only about thirty-five
years old--it is now considered the best of all ways for taking marten,
as the traps not only remain set all winter, but they last for years.
Later I learned from a chief factor that it was invented by a Saulteaux
Indian named Ke-now-keoose, who was at one time employed as a servant
of the Hudson's Bay Company, where he learned the use of carpenter's
tools--later, when he left the service, he hunted and trapped along the
Athabasca, the Slave, and the Mackenzie rivers. Sometimes twenty-five
to thirty such traps are set by a hunter in a single