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 basswood.
“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 tacked2 to his wooden minnow to serve as fins3.
“There, my little brothers,” he uttered with a smile, “you have a good minnow. He will fool the pickerel and the bass1 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 bass 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 slough4 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 entirely5 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 pervaded6 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 bent7 over quickly, thrust his spear into the hole and brought up a large flapping pickerel.
“May be we caught him,” he spoke8 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 bass. 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 passing 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 bass, 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, bass and pike, pickerel and suckers, tasted remarkably9 good, for all fish are good if they have been caught in cold, clear water.
One warm morning, the genial10 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 shovel11.”
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 tangled12.”
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 stump13 of a stranded14 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 maple15 twigs16, and on these as an improvised17 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?”
“Can’t tell, lads,” Barker smiled. “You lads ask a lot of hard questions. I reckon they can tell whether it is storming or whether the sun is shining.”
After the meal, Tatanka smoked in silence, with a far-away look on his face.
“What is it our brother is thinking of?” Barker asked him in Sioux. “His face is sad and his eyes heavy.”
“I was thinking of my people,” Tatanka replied, after a few moments of silence. “Not long ago they lived on this great river. Now they are driven away from their river, Minnesota, where deer used to be plentiful18, and where elk19, ducks, and geese live still in great flocks, and the muskrats20 build many little houses.
“But my people will never come back. They must now live in the country of short grass and small trees on the River Missouri. A few more years they will hunt buffaloes22, but the white people are fast killing23 all the buffaloes and making robes out of their skins.
“When the buffalo21 are gone, we shall starve or become beggars, or we must learn to live like white men.
“A spirit tells me I ought to return to my people.”
“You cannot return now,” Barker told him in Sioux. “We need you. If the bad white men find us, they may steal the boys and kill me, if you leave us. You must stay with us and go with us to the city, where the white people have the big war.”
“I shall stay with you,” Tatanka promised, after a pause, “but I’m homesick for my people.”
A flock of chickadees had been attracted by the smoke and the fire. They hopped24 boldly on the ground and picked up the crumbs25 of bread, and one even took a bath in a little pool of snow-water collected under the bank by the combined beat of the fire and the sun.
“The little birds bring good luck,” remarked Tatanka. “May be the big guns will not kill us, when we go south,” he added pensively26.
When the fishermen approached their net, they saw by the movement of the poles that they had made a good catch. The net was fairly alive with pickerel, pike, bass, and suckers, but they caught no gars or paddle-fish.
“Why don’t we catch some of those queer fish?” Bill asked.
“Don’t know,” replied the trapper. “You never see those in winter. May be they go south to live in warmer water.”
In the evening, the men dressed all the fish they had caught. They did not smoke them as they had done with the fish caught in warm weather, but they placed them on frames of sticks in a brush shed. This shed was their store-house. The brush protected the frozen fish from thawing27 in the sun, and in this way the men kept a good supply of fresh fish always on hand.
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1
bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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2
tacked
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| 用平头钉钉( tack的过去式和过去分词 )； 附加，增补； 帆船抢风行驶，用粗线脚缝 | |
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3
fins
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| [医]散热片；鱼鳍；飞边；鸭掌 | |
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slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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8
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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11
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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12
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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13
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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14
stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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15
maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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16
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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17
improvised
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| a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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18
plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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elk
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| n.麋鹿 | |
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muskrats
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| n.麝鼠（产于北美，毛皮珍贵）( muskrat的名词复数 ) | |
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21
buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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22
buffaloes
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| n.水牛（分非洲水牛和亚洲水牛两种）( buffalo的名词复数 )；（南非或北美的）野牛；威胁；恐吓 | |
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23
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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24
hopped
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| 跳上[下]( hop的过去式和过去分词 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花 | |
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25
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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26
pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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27
thawing
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| n.熔化，融化v.（气候）解冻( thaw的现在分词 )；（态度、感情等）缓和；（冰、雪及冷冻食物）溶化；软化 | |
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