480 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 5, 1896, 
blood. Going back to the ridge, about 50yds., I looked 
the range over and. then found where the bullet had cut 
a twig and then raked up the snow half way to the spot 
where the deer jumped, no doubt when it was several 
rods on its journey. 
"Who'd think there was a deer lyin' down in that 
thicket?" asked Bill. "Why, I s'posed we'd have to track 
'em after we found where they'd been." 
"If they're not afoot you never know when you may 
jump one along a ridge," said I, "for they seldom lie in 
the hollows, and you can look for 'em on the sheltered 
side of a ridge 'most anywhere. Now let Old Poppy 
Knight rest and keep still for a while. Your shot has 
been heard by every deer within three miles, and it may 
have put some of them afoot, but you will have to tramp 
before you see one, We're nearing the river now; the 
ridge forks here; you take the left hand one and we'll 
come together at the river." 
After going about half a mile and seeing no track I 
heard Bill's shot from the western ridge, stopped and 
cocked my rifle. A buck came dashing down the hill 
and I slipped behind a tree. Great bounds he took and 
up the hill on my side he came, panting with the effort. 
Gaining the ridge, he stopped, turned to look back, and 
presented a full broadside view to me at not over 100ft. 
As I fired he leaped into the brush, but the great spurt of 
blood on the snow told the tale. I gave a whoop and 
got an answer, then called, ''Come over here!" and sat 
down on a log. It seemed hours before Bill made the 
journey across the valley that the buck had made in a 
very few minutes, if he really consumed any time at all. 
We took the track and down by the river we found the 
deer, dead. Bill's bullet, shot on the jump, had grazed 
just back of the shoulder, cutting the Jtiair and marking 
the skin, an excellent shot at a jumping deer, for no 
doubt it jumped before Bill saw it. 
The buck was a fair-sized four-pronged one. We dressed 
it and then went to a spring, washed, and ate our 
luncheon, for it was far past the noon hour. As we 
lighted our pipes Bill remarked: "We'll divide that deer 
when we get up and it's about all we will want to carry 
home. Under the rule that the first bullet hole takes the 
hide it's mine, but you can have the head if you want 
it." 
"All right, Bill, show up the hole and take the hide, 
that's the rule." 
"Didn't I make a hole in his belly just behind the 
shoulder? Do you mean to say I didn't hit him?" 
"There's a scratch there that a jury might decide was 
made by your bullet or might have been made by a pine 
knot when the deer stepped over a log. I don't want the 
hide; Charley Mallett wouldn't give over $1 for it any- 
way. I am sure your bullet made the mark, for there 
was fresh blood there and the cut was across the breast, 
not lengthwise, as it would have been done when the deer 
was on the run. Take it, I only spoke in that way be- 
cause of your claiming the hide so promptly." 
"Now, see here," said Bill, "I don't want that hide. I 
ain't no hog! All I thought of was that I didn't miss that 
deer slick and clean as I did the other one, and I wanted 
you to know it. I'll tell you what we'll do; let's give a 
quarter of the deer and the hide to old John Jamison, 
who has been sick all winter and hasn't earned a dollar; 
send a quarter to that widow up there on the British Hol- 
low road, I forget her name, but her husband died before 
you got back from the North. Ttien we'U keep the rest, 
and if Old Poppy Knight would like a steak — no, I'll feed 
it to Charley Guyon's coon dog first. Say ! I wouldn't let 
that old pelican have a smell of it. No, sir, not by a mill 
privilege." I put my friend's remarks in quotations, as 
though they were just what he said, but have taken the 
liberty of twisting his two last words into more refined 
language, His charitable proposition was carried out; we 
had our hunt and all the meat we needed. It's not hard 
to give away what you don't need, the difficulty often 
occurs in deciding what it is that you don't need when 
your neighbor is destitute and is in desperate need of 
things which you don't — here I get off the track and go to 
moralizing over what struck me as a good streak in the 
nature of Bill Patterson, who took good care that no one 
should discover that he had what he would have con- 
sidered a weak spot. He would have fought me for that 
deer skin, but you see how it went. 
February had come and Henry Neaville's feet had got 
over their October freeze. He drifted into my house one 
day on a south wind when Bill was profanely reciting his 
adventures in Sonora and New Mexico, and said: "There's 
a lot of Gah in a pond hole down by the river and they're 
all a-crowding up to a tlittle spring that keeps an open 
place and gives 'em air. There's a lot o' bass, pike, dog- 
fish and all the other kinds, an' you can just dip 'em up by 
the scoop full; what do you say about going down and 
getting some?" 
"All right 1" said Bill, "we'll go in the morning. I've 
got a dip net that only wants a handle, and I'll put one 
on in the morning, Come down after breakfast and 
we'll go, I haven't had a fresh fish this winter and have 
forgotten just how they taste." 
Our outfit consisted of a dip net, or a landing net of 
coarse mesh strung on a 14in. ring with a rake handle at- 
tached; an axe, a spear or "gig," and some mosquito net- 
ting which Henry brought. What the latter was for I 
had no idea, but then I had not seen the place. It was 
snowing a little, with hardly any wind. The pool, or 
pond hole, as Henry called it, might have covered two 
acres and had been washed out of the soft soil by the 
great river some time when it overflowed its banks, and 
in summer it was dry. A spring came in its eastern edge 
and kept the ice from making up to the shore. Thou- 
sands of large fish crowded to this opening for air and I 
never saw such a sight before nor since. There must 
have been many thousands of the different fishes which 
inhabit the Mississippi River crowded into a small space, 
those in the rear pushing up to the open place and forc- 
ing the others to the shore and around to the rear, as if 
they said: "You have had your chance to breathe, now 
make way for us." 
I stood in amazement at the scene. Bill took the axe 
and cut the opening larger until the thin ice at the mar- 
gin was gone and we could stand at the edge. I took the 
net and dipped up a few fish, trying to select my favorite 
crappies and small catfish. 
"Let me take that net," said Bill, and he proceeded to 
lift the fish by the netful. The spear was of no use, it 
would only mar the fish and we could take all we wanted 
with the net. 
After a while, when there was about lOOlbs. of fish on 
the ice, I thought it time to quit, and mentioned the fact 
that we had all we could carry and enough for ourselves 
and friends. There seemed no use to kill more. 
"I don't intend to stop short of a ton," said Bill. "Hen- 
ry, you go back to the village and get a team from Jo 
Hall and a bob-sled and we'll take a load of the best of 
these to Dubuque, and if they take well we'll give 'em 
another load this week. Keep it still, or there'll be a big 
gang down here to take a share in the fish." 
This was taking a commercial view of the fishing, and 
I said to Bill, after Henry had gone: "I never liked to see 
men rob the woods of game and the waters of fish to send 
to market, and I only thought to come down and get a 
few for our own use. It's this wholesale slaughter for 
market that has made the East barren of fish and game, 
and I've talked against it there and I don't want to en- 
gage in it here. Fur is a different thing from game, and 
I could trap for a living easy enough, but somehow it 
doesn't seem right to take advantage of those fish and 
market them, when if we take what we want and leave 
the rest to breed there will always be plenty for us." 
Bill's remarks, carefully expurgated, were something 
like this, hut contained more adjectives, for in his ordi- 
nary conversation he "swore like our army in Flanders:" 
"Look a-herel What ar' you chinnin' about anyhow? 
I've been all over Sonora, New Mexico and Californy, and 
fished in more rivers than you ever see, but these Missis- 
sippi bottoms are different. It's this way; In the spring 
and fall there's a heap o' water comes down this valley, 
an' it overflows all these bottom lands and the fish come 
up close to the bluffa to keep from being swept down in 
the current. When the water falls they get trapped in 
these holes and there they are." 
"Yes, but when the spring freshet comes don't they 
swim out and go to their breeding grounds, and so keep 
the river stocked?" 
' 'Not by," and he referred to a place where a mill 
might be placed. "These ponds freeze over tight and 
the fish die. They die in thousands of just such holes all 
along the river, and they have died in this hole year 
after year. This spring water coming in here is a new 
thing, it wasn't here last winter, and it may stop or' cold 
weather may close it; I don't care whether it does or not, 
there's a chance to send a sleigh load of fish to Dubuque, 
and that's all there is of it." 
I saw it was as he said. I cut into some of these pond 
holes later in the winter and found a stench of decaying 
fish. Within the past few years the U. S. Fish Commis- 
sion, through the urgent requests of Col. S. P. Bartlett, 
of the Illinois Commission, has sent a car up the river 
and seined the imprisoned fish from these holes and re- 
turned them to the river; as good a work as hatching 
millions of fish eggs; perhaps better, for it saves the 
parents and allows them to breed next spring. 
Henry came with the team and found us on the shore 
cooking fish and frying sausages for dinner. Bill thought 
he was as good a camp cook as I, but we differed on that 
point. Without discussing the question, I feel impelled 
to go off the track to say: Our open-air appetites, whether 
in the woods or on the waters, make camp cooking seem 
superlative. Benedick says in "Much Ado about Nothing": 
"—But doth not the appatite alter? 
A man loyes the meat in bis age that be cannot endure in bis youth." 
This leads me to say that after many years' experience 
in all kinds of dining, strike me if you will, it is now my 
mature judgment that t-king a dinner in the abstract, 
without any of the poetical surroundings of the chase and 
the sentiment which hovers about game killed and cooked 
by yourself, a grand dinner served by a competent chef to 
gentlemen in evening dress has a charm for me that 
increases with age. Not that I have lost all taste for an 
aZ/resco feast in camp style; but there are pleasures of 
many kinds and they are not always comparable. I only 
draw the line at those messes called clam chowders, fish 
chowders and the nightmare provoking clam bake. These 
may be classed as coarse feeding, but I have had as 
delicious trout, venison and other game serve i in camp 
as ever tickled a tongue. Yet a service in courses, the 
varied products of the vineyards, the fruits and desserts — 
I like all good things, but the best of all is good company, 
whether in evening dress or flannel shirt; yet I can't 
admit that camp cookery excels the best hotel cookery, 
taking each on its merits outside of sentiment. We 
deceive ourselves in this: we come in hungry enough to 
eat a bear before his skin is off, and "hunger is the best of 
sauce." 
You have often come into camp with a string of trout 
and had to clean and cook them before you could eat 
supper. You stuck a stick in the gills with a bit of pork 
in the mouth and stood them up before the fire and 
turned them when necessary. When you thought they 
were done you sat down and ate them half raw and half 
burned, and your hunger prompted you to say that you 
never ate such trout before in your life. If trout cooked 
in that same way were set before you in a restaurant you 
would reject them as unfit to eat. But the memory of a 
camp dinner with an appetite only six hours old, but very 
large for its age, has a halo around it that should properly 
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, redhorse 
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 Sin. 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 Mexi- 
cans used to cook 'em down in Sonora. 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 dollars a thousand 1— I I 
mined for gold worth ,|'iO 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 and the widow on 
the British Hollow road. "We'll be back to-night or to- 
morrow, and if this trip pays we'll do her again. Good- 
bye." 
The team I found at the landing was from British Hol- 
low, and the driver gladly went over to the fishing place. 
I told him to pick out all the fish he wanted and put 
them in front so that they couldn't be given away, I had 
the fish assorted for the different people, and delivered 
them all except the last two lots. We stopped at Jami- 
son's, and at my call a man came out to know what I 
wanted. 
"I've a lot of fish for John that Bill Patterson has sent 
up to him; Bill knows John well, and here they are; I 
s'pose you're John, and you will rpmember that we sent 
you up some venison about the New Year," 
The man took the fish and said: "John died early this 
morning, but his children may use them, and no doubt 
will be glad of them, for John left nothing, he's been an 
invalid so long. As a friend of the family, I thank Mr. 
Patterson and you—" but I had started the horses on, say- 
ing to the driver: "Get out of this quick! We can't do 
any good and — let the horses go." 
A few rods brought us to the cabin of the widow. She 
came to the door in response to a knock, and I stepped in 
and explained my errand. Something in her manner 
made me lower my voice, and she began to cry. By the 
light of a tallow candle I saw that she was a poor, thin, 
careworn woman, and I fumbled the cap in my hands 
awkwardly, hardly knowing how to get out of the house 
without indecent haste. She was prematurely old, and it 
was doubtful if she had ever been even passably good- 
looking. Poverty and care were stamped in every line of 
her face. She might have been thirty, but looked to be 
twice as old. Her little girl, an only child, was very ill. 
Would I look at it? 
I followed her to a back room and found a child of 
about six years lying on a bed and apparently asleep, but 
twitching violently. Then came a muscular spasm which 
doubled the little sufferer up, and I was alarmed. 
"Has a doctor seen the child?" 
"No, I thought she'd get over it without the expense of 
a doctor, for I am very poor. My husband was hurt a 
year ago by a fall down a shaft, and died last October, 
I've worked when I could get work, but have not been 
strong enough to do much. It's a hard world, for the poor 
and weak, and if my little girl goes from me I want to go 
too." 
I don't know that it did any good, but I took the girl 
in my arms and walked the floor with her, trying to help 
her unconscious struggles. When the spasm passed I laid 
her on the bed and went out to find some one to go for a 
doctor. I found a man going to Potosi on foot, and told 
him to send Dr. Gibson out at the earliest moment, and 
returned to the house. If the doctor would only come, 
and let me get out. The time passed so slowly. I was 
not fitted by nature to be either a doctor or an under- 
taker, and suffering which I could not relieve was a thing 
to be left to itself, but I could not leave it. The child 
had several spasms, and the night passed over a little 
cabin with sorrowing mother and a dying child in 
the arms of a rough, untrained fellow, who would help 
both if he only knew how to do it, but who wished him- 
self 1,000 miles away. 
It had never occurred to me that I would be missed, so 
busy was my mind with the misery in the cabin, and 
when a jangle of sleighbells stopped in front of the cabin 
long after midnight I mentally said: "There comes the 
doctor." 
I was walking the floor with the child in my arms 
when the door opened and the doctor came in, followed 
by Bill Patterson, Henry Neaville, Mrs. Patterson, and a 
doz'>n other men and women. 
"What had kept me so long?" "Why didn't you come 
home?" Bill said: "When we sold them fish in Dubuque 
for less than we've got to pay Jo Hall for the team, I said: 
'I'll be blessed* if I ever take another load of fish to Du- 
buque.' If you've got them little fish all in good order 
we'll have 'em fried at Johnny Nicholas's restaurant to- 
morrow night, and I tell you they'll be fine. Hellol 
What's the matter?" 
While he was talking to me the mother of the child 
dropped fainting to the floor, for she had seen the women 
take the child from my arms— dead! Fbed Mather. 
* It's hard to recall the exact expression after the passage of nearly 
forty years, still It may have been "blessed" that Bill said. I can't, 
for the life of me, think of any other word that would fit in here. 
THE RANGELEY FISH SUPPLY. 
Senator Frye writes to the Rangeley Lakes concerning 
the trout supply : 
My attention has just been called to certain criticisms 
by om- guides and others touching an alleged statement 
attributed to me, to the effect that ten years would be 
the end of fishing in the lakes, etc. Of course I never 
said anything of the kind, for my interest in that locality 
is too profound to permit me to decry its merits, and I 
know that in some of the lakes the game flsh are increas- 
ing rather than diminishing, notably in Rangeley, from 
two causes other than propagation: first, an open pathway 
from Mocselucmeguntic, coupled with the temptation of 
its clear spring water, wonderfully alluring especially to 
the salmon; secondly, because the difference between high 
and low water is slight. So that the favorite haunts of 
the fish continue the same from year to year. 
The only talk I ever had with anyone relative to this 
subject was with Miss Crosby last fall at my camp, and 
that conversation was confined to the effect of summer 
bait fishing in the Big Lake. From time to time my at- 
tsntion has been called to the fact that in the heat of the 
summer, when the trout had sought the spring holes for 
cool water, they were captured by deep fishing with 
worms and minnows, in enormous quantities, all of them 
killed, many wasted. That this murderous slaughter, in 
which, I am happy to say, no sportsman participates, has 
had a serious effect, I have no hesitation in affirming, 
and my knowledge of those waters is certainly equal to 
that of any other person. 
