SNOW-SHOES AND FISH
Around the great log fire that night Pat told Doctor Merriam about his
trip and his impressions of city life, winding up with the emphatically
expressed conviction that while it might be a good place to do business
it was no place in which to live, and that he would rather have a cabin
in the shadow of Old Baldy than a palace on Riverside Drive.
"So you don't envy Hal?" laughed the doctor.
"I do not!" roared Pat. "I wouldn't give the poorest muskrat pelt I ever
took to change places with him."
"Oh, you young savage!" cried the doctor. "Still, I share in a measure
your feeling. I have lived in many cities, but you see here I am buried
in the woods, and some of my friends wonder why. I'll tell you. It is
because here I can live simply, unaffectedly, true to myself and to God.
Here," he swept a hand toward the book-lined walls, "are my friends
ready to give me of inspiration, comfort, advice, knowledge, whatever I
demand or may need. They are not dead things, these books. They are
living personalities, which have enriched and are enriching the world.
When you boys listen to me you are not listening just to an audible
voice. You are listening to an expression of that invisible something
that we call the spirit--the true personality. And so it is that the
writer of a great or good book never dies. His spiritual expression is
there on the printed page just as much as if he were giving expression
to it in audible speech. So with all these great and wonderful men and
women constantly about me how can I ever be lonely? And then when I step
out-of-doors it is directly into the temple of God. His nearness and
presence are manifest in every phase of nature. The trees are alive,
some of them sleeping, but alive nevertheless, and others not even
sleeping. Sometimes I wonder if the very rocks are not alive. The
elements seemingly war with one another, but there is nothing mean or
petty or base in the mighty struggle, as there invariably is in the
conflict of human passions. The Indian sees the Great Spirit in the
lightning, and hears him in the rushing wind and the thunder, and is not
afraid, but bows in reverence. He has a sense of nearness to the creator
and loses it when he is confined in the man-made world of brick and
stone and steel and is eager to get back. It is elemental in him. In
nature he sees God made manifest. We call him a savage, but I sometimes
wonder if he is not more nearly a true child of the Father of all than
many so-called civilized men who win the plaudits of the world and seem
to forget whence they came and whither they will go.
"But I didn't mean to preach a sermon, but just to give you an idea of
why Pat and I prefer to be savages, if you please, and spend our lives
with nature. Now, Pat, what are your plans? When do you start in for
camp? Haven't heard a word since you left from"--he paused at a warning
wink from Pat, and then finished--"your partner. Big Jim was down from
the lumber camp this week and reported seeing a silver gray. If you
could catch a couple of those fellows that problem of going away to
school would pretty nearly settle itself."
"What's a silver gray?" asked Hal, whose knowledge of fur bearers was
rather limited.
"A color phase of the common red fox," replied the doctor, "and if not
worth its weight in gold it is worth so much that a single skin is often
worth twice over the whole of a season's catch of other furs. Why it
should be called silver I don't know, for the only silver about it is
the tip of the tail. The color is black, and single skins have sold as
high as $2,500 and more and $800 to $1,500 is not at all unusual. So
valuable are the skins that black fox farming has become an established
industry and a pair of black foxes for breeding purposes are worth from
$1,000 up. So you see, Jim saw considerable money running loose when he
saw that fox."
"Phew!" exclaimed Hal with a low whistle of astonishment. "I didn't
suppose there was anything on four legs except blooded live stock worth
so much money. Wouldn't it be great if Pat could catch three or four
this winter!"
Pat threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Make it a dozen while
you're about it, son," said he. "Don't be so modest. I've lived in these
woods some years, but I never yet have seen a live black fox, and I've
known of only two being caught. If Jim says he saw one he did. There's
nothing the matter with Jim's eyesight. I guess I'll have to have a look
around the neighborhood where he saw it. As for our plans, Doctor, we
are going to spend to-morrow with you and give these tenderfeet a few
lessons on snow-shoes. We'll hit the trail for camp bright and early the
next morning."
The next day dawned clear and cold and after a hearty breakfast the
snow-shoes were brought forth. First Pat explained the tie in common use
and showed just how to adjust the rawhide thongs to give free play to
the ankles and yet prevent the toes from creeping forward to the
crossbars. With the thongs properly adjusted the shoes could be easily
kicked off or put on again without untying the knots.
"The chief thing to remember," said he, "is to take a long stride with
the toes pointed straight ahead. If you take a short step you will be
almost certain to step on the tail of one shoe with the toe of the
other and over you go. Now I'll show you how, and you fellows can
practice a while out here in front where the snow has been cleared away
until you get the hang of the thing. Then we'll make a little trip out
into the woods and visit some of the old places, so you can see how
different they are from what they were last summer."
"I have a suggestion to make," said the doctor. "While Mother puts up a
lunch, you get these youngsters so that they can keep right side up.
Then we'll all take a short hike and show Muldoon how real woodmen can
have a hot meal when there is three feet of snow in the woods."
"Hurrah!" shouted Hal. "That will be bully! Come on, Walt, and let's see
your paces."
For the next fifteen minutes the three boys tramped back and forth in
front of the cabin, the shoes clacking merrily amid a running fire of
chaff and comment from Pat. Once Sparrer stepped on one of Upton's shoes
and sent him headlong, to the huge delight of the others. Again Hal did
just what Pat had warned them against, took a short step and tripped
himself up. But at the end of a quarter of an hour they had pretty well
"got the hang of the thing," as Pat expressed it, and were eager to try
it on deep snow.
"There's nothing to it," declared Hal. "I thought there were something
to learn, like skating, but this is a cinch. I could keep it up all
day," and by way of emphasizing his remarks once more tripped himself
up, and sat down abruptly.
"Sure, it's no trick at all," chaffed Walter. "When you can't keep up
sit down, and when you're down stay down. There's nothing to it." For
Hal, forgetting the width of his present underpinning, had no sooner
scrambled to his feet than he had gone down again, because of the
overlapping webs.
The doctor and Mrs. Merriam now joined them, for the latter was an
expert on shoes and had no mind to miss the outing. Pat and the doctor
swung to their backs the packs wherein were the supplies and dishes, and
they were off, the doctor in the lead, Mrs. Merriam next, then Sparrer,
Hal, Upton and Pat in the rear to keep the tenderfeet from straggling
and to pull them out of the snow, he explained.
For a short distance a broken trail was followed. Then the doctor
abruptly swung off among the trees where the snow lay deep and unbroken.
The three novices soon found that progress here was a very different
matter from walking on the comparatively hard surface of the packed
trail. The shoes sank in perhaps a couple of inches and it was necessary
to lift the feet more, to step high, which put more of a strain on the
muscles. Also there was a tendency to step higher than was at all in
good form, and to shorten the stride by so doing, losing the smooth easy
forward roll from the hips.
Still, all things considered, the three novices were doing themselves
proud until in an unguarded moment Hal stepped on the stub of a broken
branch of a fallen tree buried in the snow. It caught in the tail of the
shoe just enough to break his stride. He took a short step to catch his
balance, stumbled and took a beautiful header. At Pat's roar of laughter
the others turned to see two big webs wildly waving above the snow and
nothing more of the unfortunate Hal. Now being plunged head first into
deep snow with a pair of snow-shoes on your feet is a good deal like
being thrown into the water with a life preserver fast to your feet--you
can't get them down. For a few moments the others howled with glee as
they watched the frantically kicking legs and listened to the smothered
appeals for help from the luckless victim. Then Pat reached out and
loosened the shoes, gripped Hal by the ankles and drew him forth, red in
the face from his exertions and spitting out snow. He looked so wholly
bewildered and withal so chagrined and foolish that he was greeted with
a fresh peal of laughter, to which he responded with a sheepish grin as
he tried to get the snow out of his neck and from up his sleeves.
"There's nothing to it, nothing at all!" jeered Walter.
"I didn't know but you thought you heard that black fox down there and
were trying to get him," said Pat.
At that instant Upton involuntarily stepped back, a thing for which
snow-shoes were never designed, and a second later had measured his
length in the snow. Falling at full length he did not disappear as Hal
had done, but he was hardly less helpless. Every effort to help himself
by putting his hands down was futile. He simply buried his arms to the
shoulders in the yielding snow without finding anything on which to get
a purchase. Hal was jubilant.
"When you're down stay down!" he yelped. "Laugh at me, will you?"
Walter had by this time managed to kick his shoes off and once free of
these was soon on his feet and was enjoying the joke as much as any one.
Both he and Hal were up to their hips in the snow, for here among the
evergreens it had not packed and flounder as they would they could not
get out.
The doctor's eyes twinkled as he picked up Hal's shoes and handed them
to him. "Well, boys," said he, "it's high time we were hitting the trail
again. Suppose you put your shoes on, and we'll make up for lost time."
Hal took the shoes and then looked helplessly across at Walter, who had
just secured his, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the
doctor's remark was not so guileless as it seemed.
"How in thunder are we going to?" he demanded, vainly trying to force a
shoe down to meet an upraised foot half-way, in the doing of which he
once more lost his balance.
"I thought I showed you fellows just how to put your shoes on this
morning. A good Scout ought not to have to be shown twice how to do a
simple thing like that," said Pat, without cracking a smile. "What kind
of Scouts are you, anyway, crying for help the first time you tumble in
a little bit of snow?"
"Who's crying for help?" demanded Upton, vainly striving to get a shoe
down where he could get his foot into the fastening. "I wouldn't take
any help now if I thought I'd got to stay here all day. Take that and
that!"
He began to dig furiously with the shoe, throwing the snow with malice
aforethought full in Pat's face. Hal instantly took the cue and there
was a hasty retreat on the part of their tormentors, in the midst of
which Sparrer came to grief and had his turn at the snow-shoer's
baptism. In a few minutes Walter had dug away enough snow to get his
shoes under him and walked forth in triumph, followed by Hal. Sparrer,
anxious to prove himself a good sport, refused all aid. Being small and
light he had not sunk in as the others had and managed to get one shoe
under him. With this for a support he soon had the other fastened. It
was the work of a moment to adjust the first one and he was ready to
take his place in line.
There were no more mishaps and as they tramped on through the great
still woodland the wonder and the beauty of it silenced them, for it
seemed like a vast cathedral in which the human voice would be a
profanation of the solemn hush. Upton knew every foot within a radius of
two miles of Woodcraft Camp, and for five miles in the direction in
which they were heading, and yet not even to Sparrer did the
surroundings seem more strange, such is the alchemy of the snow king to
make the familiar unfamiliar, the commonplace beautiful. So it was that
when at the end of three miles they emerged on the shore of a frozen
sheet of water Walter at first failed utterly to recognize it, and it
was not until Pat made some reference to the huge pickerel Walter had
caught during his first summer at Woodcraft that it dawned on him that
this was the very setback where he had discovered Pat's secret fishing
grounds and on the shore of which he had given Pat his first lesson in
boxing and in the meaning of the word honor.
"I've come over here because Mother insists that a dinner in the woods
is no more complete without a fish course than it would be in a New York
hotel, and because to tell the truth I have a hankering for a taste of
fresh fish myself. Pat, I hope that spring is still open where you put
the minnows last fall. Suppose you take this net and pail and see what
you can find." He opened a small folding net as he was speaking. "I take
it for granted that you youngsters have your belt axes with you, as good
Scouts in the woods should. One of you can run over to that alder
thicket and cut a dozen straight sticks about three feet long and as
thick as my forefinger. The other two can chop holes in the ice. They
don't need to be very big, you know, not over a foot across. I suggest
that you scatter them pretty well. It adds to the fun to have them some
distance apart, and it multiplies the chances of a good catch. While you
are doing that I will start a fire and get things started for lunch."
Sparrer, having no axe, but a stout Scout knife, volunteered to cut the
alder saplings while Hal and Walter attended to the holes in the ice.
Hal was radiant. This was one of the things he had counted on, and he
had brought from New York a dozen type, as the modern tip-ups for
fishing through the ice are called. But when they had started out that
morning he had not dreamed that he would have a chance to use them on a
snow-shoe trip, and so they were neatly rolled in his duffle bag at the
camp.
"Wonder what kind of a rig the Big Chief has got, and how he's going to
use those sticks," said he to Upton as he came up to where Walter was
making the ice fly in glittering chips.
"Don't know, but whatever it is you can bet your last dollar it is all
right," replied Walter. "How many holes have you cut?"
"Five; I'm going to chop one more over there toward the north shore. How
many have you?" replied Hal.
"Six. That ought to be a good place over there, and that will make the
dozen. Here come Sparrer and the Big Chief, and I guess we'll soon see
what the idea is. Pat must have found the spring open, for Sparrer has
the pail."
The guess was a good one, for when he peeped in the pail Walter found
that it contained a couple of dozen minnows. Together the three walked
over to where Hal was just finishing the last hole. The doctor took from
under his arm a bundle of short pieces of lath, each about eighteen
inches long, tapering toward one end, to which was fastened a bit of red
flannel. Two inches from the other end was a hole big enough for one of
the alder sticks to pass through freely. Fastened close to the end, and
neatly wound around it, was a short length of stout line on the end of
which was a hook with wire snell. Unwinding one of these lines the
doctor passed one of the alder sticks through the hole in the lath,
baited the hook with a lively minnow and dropped it through the hole in
the ice. The alder stick was placed across this so that the lath came in
the middle and lay on the ice at right angles. A pull on the line would
drag the end of the lath down, making it stand upright with its little
red signal on the end, and that was all there was to it.
It was simple in the extreme, but quite as effective as Hal's more
elaborate type could have been, as was presently demonstrated. They were
just preparing to set the last tip-up when Hal, glancing over to the
first one set, saw the red signal and with a wild yell of "We've got
one! We've got one!" started for it at top speed. The others paused to
see what the result would be, and saw him yank out a flapping prize.
"It's a beaut!" he panted as he rejoined them, holding out a handsome
pickerel. "Bet it weighs five pounds if it weighs an ounce. Say, this is
great!"
The fish was already stiff, but much to their surprise the doctor told
them it was not dead, frozen fish often retaining life for some time
after being taken from the water. He now left the tip-ups to the care of
the three boys, warning them to make frequent rounds of the holes to
break the ice as it formed and keep the lines free. The fish he took
with him to where Mother Merriam was busy beside the fire, for which Pat
was chopping wood.
Pickerel were numerous and hungry, to judge by the way they bit. It was
novel and exciting sport to the three city boys. There would be a yell
of "There's one!" and then a wild race to see who could reach it first.
At first they almost invariably forgot in their excitement to take along
the bait pail, which meant a second trip for one of them to rebait the
hook. Sometimes the signal would drop before they reached it and they
knew that the fish was off. Several times there were two signals waving
at once and one time there were five. By the time the doctor's welcome
hail of "Din-ner!" came ringing across the ice the bait pail was empty
and they had fourteen fish, none under three pounds, and from that up to
six. With the first one caught they had a total of fifteen. The doctor
smiled as he scanned the eager faces of the young fishermen and then
looked at the long row of fish laid out on the snow.
"Enough is plenty," said he, "and I guess this will do for to-day. We
want to leave some for the boys next summer. We'll take the lines up
after dinner."
How good that dinner did smell to the hungry boys with appetites
whetted by exercise in the keen air! The snow had been shoveled away
nearly to the ground for the bed logs for the fire and ample space
cleared in front and spread with balsam boughs on which to sit. There
was a steaming kettle of pea soup and a pot of hot chocolate. The
pickerel had been split and, broiled in halves pinned to pieces of
hemlock bark, stood before the fire and basted with bacon drippings.
There was a venison steak done to a turn, for the doctor had hung a deer
in his ice house at the end of the open season. There were potatoes
boiled in their jackets. There was a brown johnny-cake baked in a
reflector oven, and to cap all a plate of the doughnuts for which Mother
Merriam was famous.
"And you call this a lunch!" cried Walter when he had eaten until he had
to let out his belt. "No wonder it required two packs to bring it here.
Well, is there anything to beat this in New York?"
"Not in a tousand years. Oi'm going to run away and live here," declared
Sparrer, and while the others laughed he stared with dreamy eyes into
the leaping flames of the huge fire Pat had built, and who shall say
but that in them he saw the symbols of new hopes and ambitions springing
from the colorless, sordid drudgery which until this time had been his
life.
After the meal was finished and the dishes washed there was an hour of
story-telling by the doctor, ending with the singing of America under
the towering snow-laden spruces and then the homeward trip. Thanks to
their experiences on the outward trip and the watchfulness resulting
therefrom there were no further mishaps, and when they reached camp and
kicked off the big webs once more the boys were ready to vote their
first day in winter woods all that they had dreamed it would be and
more. Also they were quite willing to second and carry by unanimous vote
the motion that they seek their beds early in preparation for an early
start the next day.