Those who really love the woods never pass through city streets, and get a whiff of hard-wood smoke, but what they draw in a big breath, and immediately picture the camp fire burning, with good chums seated around enjoying a tempting meal; and the boardinghouse spread looks less appetizing than ever after that glimpse into Paradise.
"I hope all of you have brought some lines and hooks along," said Max, after the first edge had been taken from their hunger, and they felt disposed to talk more or less; "because, while the bass season won't open until the end of next month we might pick up some big pickerel in that pond I spoke of. I've heard tall yarns about their size there, and the savage way they take hold."
"Fresh fish wouldn't go bad," Steve went on to say, reflectively, as he took a second helping of fried potatoes from one of the fryingpans, and then fished out another nicely browned sausage from the other.
"But seems to me it's pretty early to expect 'em to take hold," Bandy-legs ventured to say, as he filled his tin cup from the coffee pot, and then added some condensed milk of the kind known as evaporated cream, because it has not been sweetened in order to keep it.
"W-w-what, for p-p-pickerel?" exclaimed Toby. "Why, they're ready to b-b-bite any old t-t-time, ain't they, Max?"
"I never knew the time when they wouldn't grab at bait," the other replied. "You know they're built on the order of a pirate, and that's what a pickerel or a pike is, a regular buccaneer. Why, I've been out on the ice on a big lake in winter where dozens of little cabins and tents had been built, each sheltering a pickerel fisherman, who had as many as a dozen lines rigged through holes cut in the thick ice."
"I've heard something about that kind of fishing, but never had a chance to see how it was done," Steve went on to say.
"Tell us some more about it, won't you, Max?" Bandy-legs pleaded as well as a fellow could who was swallowing his supper in gulps.
"If ever you eat p-p-pickerel like you're chokin' things d-d-down right now," Toby hastened to say, "you'll have a n-n-nice lot of pitchfork b-b-bones stuck in your throat, b-b-believe me, Bandy-legs."
"Oh! guess I've eaten pickerel lots of times," retorted the other, indignantly; "I always go slow when I'm on a fish diet, and don't you forget it. But, Max, tell us about what you saw that time. We don't get such fishing around here."