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.
“I know, I know how he is going to do it,” Tim exclaimed. “But we’ll have to make all the holes longer, so they will run together.”
“You wait,” said Bill. “I won’t cut any more holes.”
When the long pole was ready, Barker tied one end of the net to it and pushed pole and net into the first long hole and under the ice toward the second hole.
To the other end of the net a rope was attached.
“There,” he told Bill, “you take hold of this rope and see that the net does not get tangled.”
When Bill had taken charge of his end of the net, the trapper pushed the pole under the ice to the next hole and in the same manner he pushed and pulled it along to the last opening. Here he pulled the pole out and drove the end of it into the soft bottom.
“Now, Bill,” he suggested, “you had better tie your rope to a log, so they can’t run away with your end of the net. You know there are some big fish in the Mississippi.”
As the men had nothing to do for a while, they sat down under a warm sunny bank, where Barker built a fire, under the dry stump of a stranded cottonwood.
“White man’s fire,” Tatanka muttered good-naturedly, as he backed away from the growing heat.
“Yes, white man’s fire is what we want to-day,” the trapper replied. “The Great River furnishes us plenty of big wood, but the little dry sticks are buried under the snow.”
Then to the delight of the boys the trapper drew a small tin pail out of his pack-sack, together with some cornbread and a big piece of bacon for each one.
“There, lads,” he said, “you warm the cornbread and fry the bacon while I make tea.”
It took some time before enough snow was melted for tea, for even on a big fire snow and ice melt very slowly.
“I forgot to dip water out of one of our net-holes,” the trapper remarked, “but we have plenty of time to melt snow and ice.”