“Have you anything like a long pole or stick in the cabin?”
“Nary,” said the girl, opening her big eyes and shaking her head with a simulation of despair, which was, however, flatly contradicted by her laughing mouth.
“Nor any cord or twine?” he continued.
She handed him a ball of coarse twine.
“May I take a couple of these hooks?” he asked, pointing to some rough iron hooks in the rafters, on which bacon and jerked beef were hanging.
She nodded. He dislodged the hooks, greased them with the bacon rind, and affixed them to the twine.
“Fishin'?” she asked demurely.
“Exactly,” he replied gravely.
He threw the line in the water. It slackened at about six feet, straightened, and became taut at an angle, and then dragged. After one or two sharp jerks he pulled it up. A few leaves and grasses were caught in the hooks. He examined them attentively.
“We're not in the creek,” he said, “nor in the old overflow. There's no mud or gravel on the hooks, and these grasses don't grow near water.”