It kept up all that night and part of the next day. The campers were on short rations, as regards meat, though there was plenty of canned baked beans, and enough hardtack for some time yet, while there was flour that could be made into biscuits. But they needed meat, or something like it, in that cold climate.
It was late the next afternoon when Jack, looking from the tent, announced:
“Hurrah, fellows! It’s stopped snowing, and the wind has gone down. Now for some fish through the ice. Long Gun, come on and show us how.”
The Indian got some lines and hooks ready, using salt pork for bait. Then the whole party went down to the river, traveling on snowshoes, for there was a great depth to the snow, and it was quite soft.
It was no easy task to scrape away the white blanket and get down to the ice that covered the river, but they managed it. Holes were chopped in the frozen surface of the stream, and then they all began to fish. They had good luck, and soon had caught enough of the finny residents of the Shoshone to make a good meal.
“Um-um!” exclaimed Bony, as they sat down to supper a little later. “Maybe this doesn’t taste fine!” and he extended his plate for some more of the fish, fried brown in corn meal, with bacon as a flavoring.
The next day Jack, Nat and Sam went out and killed some jack-rabbits, and this served them until two days later, when Jack killed a fat ram and Will a small deer.
All danger of a short food supply was thus obviated, and, the damaged tent having been repaired, the boys prepared to resume their hunt.
“We’ve only about three weeks more,” announced Jack one night. “If we stay much longer we may get snowed in and have to stay until spring.”