Li Long made another detour to the team leader Xu Chengjun's house and told him about renting a horse cart the next day. Xu Chengjun waved a hand.
"No problem." When Li Long got home, he found that Li Jianguo had already loaded the Scoop Net, Pickaxe, crowbar, shovel, and urea sacks onto the Sled, ready and waiting for him. Li Juan and Li Qiang were sitting on the Sled too, smiling at him.
"You're all going?" Li Long asked.
"Yes, let's all go," Li Jianguo said. "With more people taking turns, we can scoop out more. In less than ten days, once the snow melts, we won't be able to catch fish anymore."
The four of them headed toward Little Haizi together. Before they were halfway there, Tao Daqiang caught up.
He took the Sled rope from Li Jianguo and pulled it forward with long strides. Li Juan and Li Qiang sat on the Sled, laughing and playing happily.
Some snow had already melted on the sunny northern shore of Little Haizi, exposing the black soil beneath. Li Long and the others went out onto the ice and found the hole they had cut before. The snow covering it had been cleared away; someone had clearly used it. Whoever had used the hole had left without covering it with snow, causing the water below to freeze layer by layer. Now the ice over the hole stood higher than the rest of the surface. It was useless.
"Let's cut new ones," Li Long said. "The ice shouldn't be as thick now."
Tao Daqiang took the Pickaxe from the Sled, chose another spot, and started hacking.
Li Long took the shovel and crowbar to a spot forty or fifty meters away, cleared a patch of snow, and began breaking the ice.