SERGEANT WILLIAM PATTERSON. 313 



encircle the appetite. Though not a taxidermist, I have 

 stuffed several thousand first-class appetites, but never 

 could preserve one. 



Henry sat down and helped us out on the dinner, and 

 told how he had thrown the villagers off the track by 

 saying that we had killed two deer and a bear, and needed 

 a sleigh to bring them in. A mink trotted down along 

 the shore to the hole where he usually fished, stopped 

 short of it, looked over at us and took the back track. 

 Henry said: "That mink made a mistake, and thought it 

 was Friday. When he saw us eating sausage the fact 

 that it was Thursday dawned on him, and he left for the 

 landing and Chapman's chicken house." 



We sorted the fish, throwing all gars, dogfish, red- 

 horse and other poor kinds aside, and loaded the sleigh- 

 box with bass, pike and crappie, and my two companions 

 started down the river on the ice for Dubuque, la., some 

 dozen miles below, and after waiting a while I got a team 

 which had brought pig lead to the landing to take up a 

 good lot of fish and our traps to the village. Besides 

 these things there was a bag with about a bushel of young 

 fish of many kinds, which had been seined out of the 

 spring by the mosquito netting which Henry had 

 brought. None of these were over two inches long, and 

 I was in doubt what they were intended for until Bill 

 said: "You spread these little fish out so that they don't 

 heat nor freeze, and when we get back I'll have 'em 

 cooked as the Mexicans used to cook 'em down in So- 

 nora. I've seen lots of things out there that you fellows 

 never dreamed of, and here I am wasting my time in 

 these old lead mines. What's lead worth? Thirty dol- 

 lars a thousand! I mined for gold worth $20 an ounce. 

 Say, when you get them fish to Potosi and go to dividin' 

 'em, just lay out some o' the best for old John Jamison 



