Everybody was willing to rest, so we ran ashore and drew up the navy. The boathouse wasn’t at the water’s edge like you might think, but stood back on the sand, maybe twenty feet from the water. It looked as if it had been washed there by the flood-water in the spring. The other shanty, a little thing about four feet square, was a fish-shanty, Mark said. It didn’t have any floor in half of it. The other half was mostly seat and sheet-iron stove.
“They p-pull it onto the ice,” says Mark. “Then they chop out a h-hole and sit there and spear fish. It’s dark in the shanty, so they can s-s-see down into the water.”
It looked easy. All the man who owned it had to do was sit on that seat and wait for a fish to swim past him, then he up with his spear and let her go. I bet it was fun.
We went to the boat-house next, and there, sure enough, was the woodchuck’s hole. It was at the far end of the house and went down at an angle into the side of the bluff.
“Poke him out,” says Collins.
“Nothin’ to poke with,” says Mark.
Jiggins came crowding in to see what there was to see, and he said to go out and get a pole or something.
“Not much chance,” he says. “Hole too deep. Try, though. Woodchuck’s good to eat. Fat.”
Mark motioned to me, and we both went outside.
“B-B-Binney,” says Mark, his little eyes twinkling like they always do when he’s excited. “It l-l-looks like we got ’em.” My, how he stuttered!