“Why, John,” said Rob, laughingly, “the morning isn’t half gone yet, and we’ve just had breakfast.”
VI
FOLLOWING MACKENZIE
“
Well,” said Alex, “now we’ve got all these fish, we’ll have to take care of them. Come ahead and let’s clean them, Moise.”
The boys all fell to and assisted the men at this work, Moise showing them how to prepare the fish.
“How are we going to keep them?” asked John, who always seemed to be afraid there would not be enough to eat.
“Well,” explained Alex, “we’ll put them in between some green willow boughs and keep them that way till night. Then I suppose we’ll have to smoke them a little—hang them up by the tail the way the Injuns do. That’s the way we do whitefish in the north. If it weren’t for the fish which we catch in these northern waters, we’d all starve to death in the winter, and so would our dogs, all through the fur country.”