CHAPTER XIII-FISHING THROUGH THE ICE

As is usually the case in Minnesota, the fine outdoor skating came to a close toward the end of November through storms and snow-falls.

If the lads had not lived in company with such men as the trapper and Tatanka, time would have hung heavily on their hands. On many days the weather was very cold and the snow had become so deep in the woods that traveling was very difficult.

After they had been shut up in the cabin for three days by a bad storm, Tatanka one morning began to carve something out of a piece of soft ba.s.swood.

"What are you making?" Tim asked.

"Watch and see," said Tatanka, as he continued slowly to cut away small white shavings.

Soon the boys saw that Tatanka was making a wooden fish about six inches long. When the figure was ready, the Indian cut small pieces of tin out of a tobacco-can and these he tacked to his wooden minnow to serve as fins.

"There, my little brothers," he uttered with a smile, "you have a good minnow. He will fool the pickerel and the ba.s.s when they are hungry. I put a little piece of lead on him and you pull him up and down in the water, and pickerel and ba.s.s think he is a real fish. They come to eat him. May be you catch them."

After Tatanka had made two more wooden minnows he and the lads went to a deep quiet place in a slough to fish.

At first they cut a small hole in the ice. Then, by the aid of a few poles and some blankets, Tatanka built a small dark tent over the hole.

"Now, then," he said, "we go in and fish. May be we catch them, may be not. If the fish don't come, we go home. May be they come to-morrow."

The tent was entirely dark, but the boys were surprised to find that after their eyes had adjusted themselves to the darkness in the tent the water did not appear dark, but was pervaded by a soft light, enabling them to see clearly even insects and small fish which swam past, and they could plainly see their decoy minnow to a depth of four feet.

Tatanka took the string of the decoy in his left hand. In his right hand he held a spear, and the three fishermen seated themselves on a log.

"You sit still," Tatanka told them. "Don't jump. Fish have no ears, but they can feel every little noise in the water."

It seemed a long time to the boys before anything happened. Then Tatanka bent over quickly, thrust his spear into the hole and brought up a large flapping pickerel.

"May be we caught him," he spoke with a laugh. "Now, Bill, you catch him. This is the way Indians catch plenty fish in winter when they cannot find deer."

Again Bill waited a long time. At last he saw some big fish. With a beating heart he dropped his spear and would have lost it, if it had not been tied by a string to his arm, but he caught no fish.

Tatanka laughed. "You get much excited," he said, "like white man. Keep cool like Indian. May be you catch him next time."

The next time Bill showed that he could keep cool, and he brought up a fine large ba.s.s. The fish were getting more numerous and Bill added another and another to his catch. Sometimes several fish or even a small school of them came together. Very soon Bill could tell when a school was coming, because their bodies shut out a part of the light before they reached the hole and made the water look dark, as if a cloud were pa.s.sing over.

After Bill had fished a while, Tim also learned to fish like an Indian and brought up several fine fish.

"Now we go home," Tatanka suggested, after a while. "I think Tim is hungry."

That night each man ate for supper a big ba.s.s, which Barker had fried in bacon fat and corn meal.

After this day, the boys often went fishing by themselves and supplied the camp with all the fresh fish the four men cared to eat. They found that all the fish, ba.s.s and pike, pickerel and suckers, tasted remarkably good, for all fish are good if they have been caught in cold, clear water.

One warm morning, the genial old trapper took down the gill-net.

"You lads come with me," he said. "I can catch more fish in a day than you and Tatanka can catch in a week. Yesterday you fished all day and caught one little sunfish."

"No, Mr. Barker, it was a big one," Tim piped out.

"It was only a poor sunfish," Barker replied. "We'll starve if I don't help you catch fish. Take both axes and our shovel."

When they arrived at the spot Barker had selected, he stepped off a line and told the boys to shovel the snow from half a dozen spots, while he and Tatanka began to cut holes through the ice. The first hole he cut about eight feet long and then he cut smaller holes about ten feet apart, but all in a straight line.

When the holes were cut, he asked the boys to shovel the slush out of them as much as possible, while he went and cut a long straight pole.

"I know, I know how he is going to do it," Tim exclaimed. "But we'll have to make all the holes longer, so they will run together."

"You wait," said Bill. "I won't cut any more holes."

When the long pole was ready, Barker tied one end of the net to it and pushed pole and net into the first long hole and under the ice toward the second hole.

To the other end of the net a rope was attached.

"There," he told Bill, "you take hold of this rope and see that the net does not get tangled."

When Bill had taken charge of his end of the net, the trapper pushed the pole under the ice to the next hole and in the same manner he pushed and pulled it along to the last opening. Here he pulled the pole out and drove the end of it into the soft bottom.

"Now, Bill," he suggested, "you had better tie your rope to a log, so they can't run away with your end of the net. You know there are some big fish in the Mississippi."

As the men had nothing to do for a while, they sat down under a warm sunny bank, where Barker built a fire, under the dry stump of a stranded cottonwood.

"White man's fire," Tatanka muttered good-naturedly, as he backed away from the growing heat.

"Yes, white man's fire is what we want to-day," the trapper replied.

"The Great River furnishes us plenty of big wood, but the little dry sticks are buried under the snow."

Then to the delight of the boys the trapper drew a small tin pail out of his pack-sack, together with some cornbread and a big piece of bacon for each one.

"There, lads," he said, "you warm the cornbread and fry the bacon while I make tea."

It took some time before enough snow was melted for tea, for even on a big fire snow and ice melt very slowly.

"I forgot to dip water out of one of our net-holes," the trapper remarked, "but we have plenty of time to melt snow and ice."

The boys cut some green maple twigs, and on these as an improvised grate they heated the bread and fried the bacon.

"I'm glad you brought something to eat, Mr. Barker," Tim remarked thankfully. "I was getting very hungry. You called us so early this morning."

"I did," replied Barker, "because the fish run most during the warm part of the day."

"Do they know when the air is warm!" asked Bill. "How can they know down in the water?"