CHAPTER XV
THE SMOKE-HOUSE
“I do not know what made the dog mad,” said Ganawa, when they had returned from the pool. “Perhaps he smelled a bear or a wolf, or a moose came to the river to drink. Some dogs do not know enough to leave a porcupine alone, and then they get mad when they smell one. Or it may be that the dog smelled an Indian, although I do not know why a good Indian should have run away when the dog came. If it had been a bear, I think the dog would have held him at bay and would have done much barking, and a young bear would have climbed a tree. If it had been a moose, I think the dog would have followed his trail a long time, perhaps all night. So I think it was either a wolf or an Indian. One dog cannot fight a wolf, and an Indian might have gone down the river in a canoe. But now, [[122]]my sons, you must take care of the fish you caught.”
The trout had all been cleaned in the evening, and Bruce had laid them in a big basin of birch-bark and put just a very little salt on them. Bruce had taken along about a peck of salt, because he knew that it is hard for most white men to learn to like meat and fish without salt. The lads had planned to smoke the fish, so that they would keep indefinitely. Then they could take smoked fish on trips when they would have no time to hunt or fish, or when they would have no luck with hunting or fishing.
The lads proceeded to smoke the fish in a way which any campers or fishermen may follow. It is a method which the Indians discovered long ago and it is well known to many white campers and hunters.
Bruce drove some stout poles into the ground so they made a rectangle about three feet wide and six feet long. Then he tied two slender green poles to the uprights, one on each side of the rectangle. [[123]]
Ray quickly cut a number of thin green sticks and laid them crosswise on the poles which Bruce had tied to the uprights. When Ganawa saw what the lads had done, he said, “My sons, you have made a good scaffold for smoking the fish.”
“We shall make it better,” Bruce replied. “We shall make a little smoke-house, so they will be smoked more evenly than on an open scaffold. Go and get some large pieces of bark, Ray; any kind of bark you can find.”
In a short time the lads had enclosed three sides of their smoke-house with pieces of birch-bark and other bark. Then Bruce dug a shallow trench in the ground, and in this he built a small fire of sticks and chips. As soon as this fire had a good start he covered it with damp birch punk, rotting birchwood, which he gathered from a dead birch that had been lying on the ground for several years. The wood had rotted to such an extent, as birch on the ground always does, that one could have dug it out with a stout shovel. [[124]]
The fish had all been split along the back, and Ray had carefully spread them out on the frame above the fire, from which a thick smoke now began to rise.