For four days the two continued to set deadfalls. The last two days they packed their sleeping bags, camping where night overtook them, and the evening of the fourth day found them with an even two hundred traps and thirty lynx snares set, and a trap line that was approximately fifty miles long and so arranged that either end was within a half mile of the cabin.
"We go over de snare line in de swamp tomor'," said 'Merican Joe, as they sat that night at their little table beside the roaring sheet-iron stove, "an' next day we start over de trap line."
"About how many marten do you think we ought to catch?" asked Connie.
The Indian shrugged: "Can't tell 'bout de luck—sometam lot of um—sometam mebbe-so not none."
"What do you mean by a lot?" persisted the boy.
"Oh, mebbe-so, twenty—twenty five."
"About one marten for every eight or ten traps," figured the boy.
The Indian nodded. "You set seven steel trap an' catch wan marten, dat good. You set ten deadfall an' ketch wan marten, dat good, too."