Neils and I set our net and settled down to fishing in good style.
We soon found that the lake abounded in worms, or small insects, and these would cling to the net, and if the net was left long in the water, would destroy it, so we had to take it up very often; and this with the drying and mending and setting of nets, and making of sticks and hanging of fish, kept us very busy. So far north as we were, and down in the valley, with hills all around us, and at the short-day season, our days were very short, and we had to work a lot by camp-fire, which also entailed considerable wood-cutting.
Our isolation was perfect. We were twenty-five miles from Mr. Woolsey; he and Glad were sixty from White-fish Lake and 120 from Edmonton, and both of these places were out of the world of mail and telegraph connection, so our isolation can be readily imagined.
Many a time I have been away from a mission or fort for months at a time, and as I neared one or other of these, I felt a hungering for intelligence from the outside or civilized world; but to my great disgust, when I did reach the place, I found the people as much in the dark as myself.
But this isolation does not agree with some constitutions, for my Norwegian Neils began to become morbid and silent, and long after I rolled myself in my blanket he would sit over the fire brooding, and I would waken up and find him still sitting as if disconsolate. At last I asked him what was the matter, when he told me it was not right for us to be there alone. "You take your gun and go off. If a bear was to kill you?" (We had tracked some very big ones.) "You will go out in the boat when the lake is rough; if you were to drown, everybody would say, 'Neils did that—he killed him.'" On the surface I laughed at him, but in my heart was shocked at the fellow, and said, "If anything was to happen to you, would not people think the same of me? We are in the same boat, Neils, but we will hope for the best, and do our duty. So long as a man is doing his duty, no matter what happens, he will be all right. You and I have been sent here to put up fish; we are trying our best to do so; let us not borrow trouble."
For a while Neils brightened up, but I watched him.
CHAPTER XL.
Lake freezes—I go for rope—Have a narrow escape from wolf and drowning—We finish our fishing—Make sleds—Go home—Camp of starving Indians en route.
All of a sudden the lake froze over, and our nets were under, and we had no rope to pass under the ice. So, leaving my gun with Neils, for he had none, and whistling the dogs to me, I set out on a run for home; and as it was only twenty-five miles, my purpose was to be back in camp the same night, for I could conveniently make a fifty-mile run in those days. Down the valley and over the hills, through the dense forest we went—the ten dogs and myself. Presently, as we were coasting along the shore of a lake, we met a huge, gaunt timber wolf. Ah, thought I, if I only had my gun! I set the dogs on him, but he very soon drove them back, and came at me. I remembered seeing some lodge-poles a little way back on the trail, and I retreated to them, and securing one, came on to the attack again. Between the dogs and myself, we drove the wolf on to a little point jutting out into the lake, and he took to the ice. I foolishly followed him out, hoping to get a whack at him with my pole, but suddenly I awoke to the fact that the ice was giving way with me and the water was deep. Down I dropped, and stretched out, and leaned with the most of my weight on the pole, which, covering a good space of ice, fortunately held me up; so crawling and pushing, and anxiously looking through the transparent ice for the bottom, I made for the shore. How thankful I was when I did see the bottom, and presently was ashore once more!