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 remarkably good, for all fish are good if they have been caught in cold, clear water.
One warm morning, the genial 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 shovel.”
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.