From my outlook under the shade of the old pine I see a familiar and
massive pile of granite over fourteen thousand feet high, and a bit of
the range, with patches of last winter’s snow glistening in the
sunlight. The brown and gray of the lofty peaks are contrasted with the
mist-covered blue of the lower mountains. Then comes the furthest
glimpse of the beautiful river rolling out from the beautiful cañon of
lava cliffs. Then the meadow for a foreground, its rich green tinted
here and there with the gold that denotes the coming sickle time. Then
the quiet, straggling village of log houses, with its tavern perched
upon a hillside, and down by the river bank the smith’s shop, where
seems the only sign of life. The ring of the “ten-pound-ten,” as it
comes up to me clear and resonant upon the pure air, does not mar the
harmony of the river’s melody, nor taint the romance of the scene. But a
boy, taking his afternoon nap astride a shingle horse on the shady side
of a cabin, does; he is suggestive of some of the realities of life, and
is recuperating for my benefit. That shingle horse is to him a bed of
roses, and the hard log of the old cabin a pillow of down. He can sleep
standing on his head, I believe; I know he can crosswise or tangled up.
I am not near enough to see, but I know that his cheeks are red, his
face tanned to russet, his hands dirty, his clothes ragged, and—his
pulse regular. I know exactly what he will do when he awakes; he’ll
whistle, whistle for me, but not for my benefit. If he’d only whistle
Put Me in My Little Bed, Yankee Doodle, or other soul-moving melody, his
music would not be so much a burden. But he cannot distinguish between
Gray Eagle and the Doxology; he could whistle a stave from a barrel
sooner than a bar from an opera. He whistles to make a noise; and, not
content with ordinary methods, he sticks his fingers in his mouth, and
awakens the echoes down the cañons until you would think the Utes had
escaped from the Reservation and were round hunting scalps.
How did I come by him? Why, through his mother, of course; did you ever
know of a boy being round to make life a joy forever, without his mother
being at the bottom of it? I had an interest in the boy; his mother is a
near relative of mine, and hearing that I was to have a short vacation
in the mountains, she thought it a splendid idea, if you know what that
is, to have him spend his vacation with me instead of running round the
streets. I told her I was going a great way off, into a rough country
where the mosquito and buffalo gnat were rampant, to sleep upon the bare
ground, to live upon flitch and potatoes with flap-jacks fried in
grease, and she said that was just what he needed, fresh air and plain
food. I told her that where I was going the boys were wicked and the men
drank and swore like pirates, and there were no Sabbath schools; she
said he would never be good for anything were he not thrown in the way
of temptation, and as to the Sabbath school, I could take along a
Testament and read to him; that would be novel to myself and amuse the
boy. I told of high mountains and dangerous trails to be traversed, of
deep caverns and antres vast, of swift rivers, and Utes whose heads were
filled with vermin, “the chief end and market of whose time” was to
capture and torture boys. She said he would have something to tell about
when he came back, and as to the vermin, I could have his head mowed
with a clipping machine. I swore I wouldn’t take him; but she said she
knew I would, and was right, because I always like to, and do, have my
own way, except—.
Yes, he is waking up and looking round in search of his Barlow, perhaps.
I saw him stabbing the shingle horse with it when he went to sleep. No,
he is not looking for his Barlow, but another fellow of later date.
There goes his hand to his mouth; I knew it.
“Hello, old fellow! here I am under the old pine.”
“All right,” came back to me, in confidence of my ability to take care
of myself, while he had me in sight.
“Can I come up there?” and he granted his own request, as usual.
“What’s that thing over there?”
“What thing, and where do you mean?”
“Why, that thing over yonder; it looks like a man.”
“I don’t see anything that looks like a man.”
“Why, don’t you see that thing up against that mountain that runs down
to the river? It looks like a man with his fist doubled up goin’ to hit
somebody.”
“I see a brown patch against the mountain side surrounded by green that
has something the shape of a man—is that what you mean?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“A patch of brown surrounded by grass or bushes.”
“Well, what does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did it come there?”
“Because the grass or bushes grew around it, I suppose.”
“Well, but I mean does it mean anything? It looks like a big man.”
“Life is short, little boy. But if it means anything, it is the
photograph of the presiding genius of the Hot Sulphur Springs.”
“What’s a presiding genius?”
“Little boy, did you say that you would like to ride horseback?
Yes—well go over and tell the man at the barn that you want the pony.”
I am a great lover of ponies, they give one a rest. In fact, if it were
not for this particular pony, the only non-bucking broncho in the
vicinity, I should be constrained to leave. I have been anxious to go
down the river to the house of a friend and have a week’s fishing, but I
dare not go away from that pony. I am afraid the owner of that pony is
mercenary; he refuses to hire him for a week; I think he knows that I
want to go fishing, and has possessed himself of the idea that I cannot
fish without the pony. He told me only yesterday that he commonly fished
off that pony’s back; in fact that it was “the best way to fish anyhow.”
It may be a good method; I never tried it; the novelty of the thing is
something of an inducement. But the man asks too much, I am satisfied;
the pony is not worth more than thirty dollars, but the owner demands
fifty. He says I can sell him again, and I have no doubt of that. But
what can I get for him? Well, he don’t know, but he’s sure I “won’t lose
nothin’;” he might take a notion to buy him back, at a discount, of
course. I offer to pay him the “discount” for the pony’s use, and also
tender references as to my integrity. But he “don’t know nothin’ about
references—there’s the pony, sound in wind and limb, and so gentle a
child can ride him, and the best pony to fish off’n I knows on; you can
take him, or leave him.”
I have concluded to take him; an indifferent saddle and bridle, ten
dollars—total, sixty dollars. The boy takes the outfit under his
immediate supervision and we go down to the house of my friend.
Here we found another boy a couple of years younger. I did not know of
this boy save by report, but now I do. This last boy is sedate;
sometimes I think he is about sixty, but his father is not that old, and
it bothers me occasionally to determine which is the father and which
the son. They call him Judge, and it’s worth half a dollar to hear him
call me counselor—the title with which he dubbed me on our
introduction.
“Counselor, I’m glad to see you; the fishing is good; the mosquitoes are
a little troublesome for this time of year; but we can give you a net,
and I’ll show you where to fish.”
His hair is curly, and he has what the mother of the boy in charge of me
would call a “sweet face.” I was about to take him in my arms, but I
took off my hat instead, and introduced him to my boy; they looked at
each other, grinned and shook hands; then I knew he was a boy, and again
wanted to take him in my arms, but dared not. That evening I sat on a
stool mending a broken leader, and the Judge sat opposite in a high
chair.
“Counselor,” said he, “you are not tying that knot square; that knot
will slip; bring it here and let me tie it for you.”
I obeyed reverently; he accomplished the trick deftly and handed back my
leader in silence.
“Judge, can you tie a fly?”
“Not very well; but I will some day, and then I’ll make the trout round
here think they are eating candy.”
“By the way, Judge, do you like candy?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
I was glad of that, because I’m fond of candy myself, though I never
before took any on a camping trip.
We have been at my friend’s house nearly a week. I have not as yet had
an opportunity to test the qualities of the pony “to fish off’n,” but
the boys corroborate the stableman’s assertion, and I think that unless
I can get a good price from the man of whom I purchased him, I shall
take him home with me and try him another season. The idea, however, is
not of my own suggestion; my boy proposed it. Besides, some day when the
boy is at school—blessed be the school, the school teacher, and not the
birch—his mother might get a chance to ride. The pony could rest at
night, of course. It would only involve a dollar a day and a
side-saddle. Think of a pony eating himself up once a month! That kind
of financiering is what keeps me a pauper; I shall have to forego the
pleasure of fishing “off’n that pony.”
At my friend’s house our tent is pitched on the bank of the river. I
came away from home to be out. I have slept in the house for so many
years that it has ceased to be a novelty. The boy and I sleep together;
or rather he sleeps on the same spruce boughs or hay that I occupy.
Perhaps there is nothing in the world so beautiful as a sleeping child,
with the rosy flush of health mantling brow and cheek, with, may be, a
tear trembling on the closed lashes, the remembrance of a sorrow that
was, but now forgotten. This has been an inspiration to a multitude of
poets, but the inspiration did not come upon them in camp, nor were the
poets trying to snatch repose in the same bed; they were lookers on
merely, giving the rein to their imagination. A poem under such
circumstances would be a satire, certainly.
Last night the boy went to bed early, while the pony sorrowfully partook
of his evening meal in my friend’s meadow. I flattered myself that a
good night’s rest was in store for me, and turned in as the moon came up
over the range. The night was very still, and I was dozing off under the
soothing melody of the swift flowing river on its road to the sea, when
I thought I heard the distant lowing of a cow; that was no strange
matter in this neighborhood. I forgot it in a moment and was gone,
perhaps five minutes, trout fishing, or eating wild raspberries with
cream, yellow cream, not blue, when I heard the cow again, then
something like three hundred cows and as many calves, and six hundred
cow-boys, all yelling like a band of Apaches just before day break. If
you never heard an Apache yell, remember, the first time you do, each
particular hair will stand on end—if you have any left. Each cow
bellowed for her calf and each calf for its dam—how I’d like to put an
“n” to that last word, with cow to top off with—and each particular
cow-boy yelled as though he were six, and interested in his mission.
They were trying to ford the stream, not a hundred yards from my head.
Of course I was broad awake, expecting every instant that the boy would
start up with the impression that a million Utes had come down for him.
I opened the tent fly, and the moonlight streamed brightly in upon his
sunburned face; he heaved a long sigh of utter satisfaction, turned over
and snored an accompaniment to the pandemonium in the road. I gave it
up, and prepared to turn in again just as the rear end of the cavalcade
was passing out of sight.
But not to sleep, just yet. My friend has a dozen or more burros, and
the burro is another of the blessings of this world for which I possess
unlimited love. Their patient and melancholy looking eyes will excite
the sympathy of any human save the miner; their ears are a mystery;
their song!—Oh for a bard to string his lyre and sing in poetic numbers
his praises of the burro’s song! I have sometimes thought the burro the
Pegasus of some of our Colorado poets, but that they shunned their
source of inspiration; gave him the cold shoulder, as it were. Rivalry
begets jealousy, and that may account for it; each individual poet would
swear by himself only, upon the same principle that every fellow likes
to take to himself the credit of all the good things said and done,
forgetting there is nothing new under the sun.
Well, my friend’s burros had ranged themselves in line along the inside
of the lane fence, and with their ears sticking straight out a foot or
more between the top rails, seemed to be silently investigating the
cause of the misery in their vicinity. A little blue fellow at the head
seemed to take in the situation, as the last cowboy galloped by; then he
stuck his head through the fence rails and laughed; his immediate
neighbors of course saw the joke, and joined in. The whole band at once
became inspired, and that infected me. When it grew monotonous, I began
“heaving rocks;” they pulled their heads in at this unexpected
interruption, backed off a few rods out of the reach of my compliments,
and stared at me with their ears. After apparently taking in _my_
situation, they began laughing again. I laid down in disgust, and the
boy slept on. The moon was going down in the West before the serenade
entirely ceased; then I went to sleep, and dreamed—no wonder, you
say—that I was in Ireland. There I met the Doctor, driving round in an
American buckboard, with no tires on the wheels. I asked him where the
irons were, and he told me the English Government was covering the Green
Isle with railroads as a military necessity, and was confiscating all
the iron. Building railroads being then my mission, I had a gang of men
at work, when I felt myself suddenly hit in the back with a spike
hammer, whereat I was broad awake in the tent on the bank of the river,
and the boy’s knees planted in my ribs. I shook him, gently of course,
and asked him why he did it. He said he didn’t know, but guessed he was
asleep; that he could always do it at home, and strike his knees against
the wall. There was no answer to this, so I told him to go to sleep
again, which he did. In less than five minutes he was lying crosswise. I
straightened him out, gently of course, and he wanted to know why I did
that. My explanation being satisfactory, he went to sleep again, and I
was getting into a doze when he turned a somersault and lit with his
head in my stomach. I straightened him out again, gently of course, and
asked him if he thought I was a circus ring. He said he had been
dreaming. I told him he shouldn’t dream; that dreaming was the peculiar
privilege of his elders. I might have read him quite an essay on
dreaming, but he was having out his morning nap, and I turned out quite
refreshed. When I went to call him to breakfast, he was on his knees
with his face buried in his hands, and his hands on his pillow. Of
course I hesitated to disturb him in that Oriental attitude of devotion,
but I soon discovered he was asleep, finishing that morning nap. As soon
as he was fairly awake he began to whistle.
The boy, the pony and I went back to the stableman to-day, and the
latter offered me thirty dollars for the pony, saddle and bridle. I told
him I thought thirty dollars rather an extravagant expenditure for a
week’s use of a pony, but the man seemed to have forgotten that he had
sold him to me. When I reminded him of the fact, he said he couldn’t buy
and sell horses without making something; that the buying and selling of
horses was his business; that he had a family to support and expenses to
meet; but seeing as how I was, anxious to sell, though he had no
particular use for a pony, and as long as it was me, he’d give me
thirty-two fifty for the outfit. I had finally learned the value of the
pony, and being loth to impose upon him something that he did not need,
I concluded not to sell, notwithstanding the side-saddle and the ability
of the pony to consume himself monthly. The boy approved the plan—that
is all this emergency demands. I shall yet “fish off’n that pony.”
The dining-room of the caravansary where my boy takes me to get our
daily bread is presided over by a goddess possessed of a pink cotton
gown and a Grecian nose with a mole—an exquisite sorrel mole with two
sable hairs pendant. Looked at from any point of the compass she
resembles a shingle with an old-fashioned candle extinguisher for a
head. The former physical peculiarity is the result, I presume, of the
Mother Hubbard cut of the cotton robe; the latter, of the manner in
which she dresses her hair. While she served the fried liver to-day, a
pensive sadness lingering about her blue eyes exaggerated the mole, and
it seemed that both the mole and its owner felt they were out of place.
As she stood over against me, with the stoneware platter of felicity
gracefully poised in her nut-brown hands, hers was that “far-away look”
we read about, and I thought,
“The melancholy days have come,
The saddest of the year.”
Might she not be a New England school ma’am away for a vacation? Or
perhaps one of our own seminary young ladies escaped for a holiday. I
had heard of such vagaries in other hill countries further east, and
knew that fashion followed the star of empire rapidly. I had never met
any poets—might she not be one? Her style of _coiffure_ and number
seven boot were suggestive of something out of the ordinary, to say the
least. Presuming upon the far-away look and my paternal appearance, I
said:
“My dear, can I have a glass of milk?”
The look was not so far away any more—only about three feet, or less;
and to me the little boy appeared quite as tall as I, as she answered:
“No, sir; we buy our milk.”
I wanted to ask her if I might infer that all else in that hostelry was
stolen, but daren’t. She left me in this collapsed condition, and the
boy then wanted to know of me who she was. I ventured to tell him she
was the lost pleiad. Then he wanted to know what a pleiad was. When I
had explained as well as my limited knowledge of mythology would permit,
he wanted to know if the pleiades were in the Milky Way. In my then
condition of mind, the inquiry from any other source would have proved
the proverbial “last straw.” He pouted on my laughing at him, and
threatened to tell the young woman that I had said her husband was in
hell rolling stones. Only the promised deprivation of the pony, in such
event, averted the calamity.
Sometime during that forenoon my boy picked up a friend whom he brought
into camp behind him on the pony. This other boy was dressed in the
remains of a shirt, with some other man’s pants, strapped to his arm
pits by a relic of suspender and rolled up to his knees. The iris of one
eye was black, the other gray; his hair had the withered appearance of
having been cured in the sun; his skin russet and of grain leather
texture. He might have been half a score or three in years; if he had
ever possessed any timidity the sharp edges of it had been rubbed off
years ago. Looking down at me with a Selkirkian satisfaction, he
inquired hoarsely:
“I say, Mister, be you this kid’s dad?”
“His mother says so, and I have no reason to doubt it.”
“Is she the boss?”
“She is.”
“Thought so; does she chaw gum?”
“No.”
“What! Don’t chaw gum! What kind of a Christian is she, anyway?”
“A Methodist—an orthodox.”
“Well, so’s mam, and she chaws gum, you bet—see that”—and he held out
a hand that in its normal state would have rivaled Vulcan’s for color;
but the combination of pitch and dirt exhibited was a marvel of
blackness. “That’s her’n.”
Thinking my turn had come, and taking advantage of the momentary lull, I
inquired his name.
“Tom.”
“What is your surname?”
“My what?”
“Your other name?”
“Oh! Hain’t got none.”
“What is your mother’s name?”
“Mam, you mean?—Jane.”
“Well, what is her other name?”
“Dunno.”
“What is your father’s name?”
“Dad, you mean?—John.”
“Has he no other name?”
“Not that I knows on.”
“What does your mam call him?”
“Don’t call him at all—she blows the horn.”
Upon further questioning I learned that this scion of a nameless house
was a nephew of the young woman who owned the mole. Also that he had
been informed that I was “one of them newspaper fellers.” I hastened to
convince him that however much I felt honored I could not lay claim to
the distinction. At this he wanted to know what I was “givin’” him. I
disavowed any intention of giving him anything, unless, indeed, it might
be a taste of the quirt my boy used to tickle the pony’s ribs. Not
having an appetite for that kind of pabulum, he suddenly slipped off his
perch and disappeared; as he did so the sulphurous fumes from the
Springs were heavier than I had ever known them. My boy then had an
interview with me, amicable, of course, during which we discussed at
length the evil influence of miscellaneous associations, the Sunday
school mission and kindred subjects. Half an hour afterwards I saw them
together again killing water snakes. I went immediately and turned the
pony into the pasture, thinking he would need at least three days’ rest;
it proved a specific.
That day at dinner I found a glass of milk awaiting me, as well as the
young woman, with a smile, instead of the excrescence, being the
absorbing feature. Being neither Mexican nor French, the revolution was
a surprise; I carried that round with me all the afternoon without
knowing what to do with it. Had my boy’s mother been accessible she
could have cleared up the surprise in five minutes.
In the evening I sat on the tavern porch, enjoying my brier-root, when I
became conscious of the presence of the cotton gown and its owner. She
wanted to know of me if I were “star gazing.” I began to think she had
taken me for a widower and eligible, so I hastened to tell her that
since my fourth marriage I had outgrown the sentiment involved in her
inquiry. She nevertheless assured me that she “doted on the study of the
heavenly orbs,” and a minute afterwards I learned—“Oh, my prophetic
soul”—that poetry was her mission. She said she had been trying to find
out the difference between a spondee and a trochee; I told her I knew
nothing about the former, being a temperance man; as to the latter, I
recommended Brown’s, and offered her one, as she seemed to need it at
the moment. But she declined, as I thought, in a manner unnecessarily
formal. Then she informed me that she had no reference to bronchial
difficulties or their remedies, but to feet. I expected no less than a
dissertation on corns, that being a tender subject with me, and hastened
to express my interest. I became convinced in a moment that I had verily
“put my foot in it” for the second time, when she told me she meant
“poetic feet.” I was about to say something, but felt out of my depth,
and refrained, lest I might disappear, head and ears. She then informed
me that a spondee was a foot, but whether it was a foot of two short
syllables and a long one, or two long ones and a short one, was what
“bothered” her. I told her the subject was too long for me to get round,
and, in short, that I had never read any poetry but that of Walt
Whitman. She had never heard of him, and wanted a taste of his quality;
I gave it her:
“My head slews round on my neck;
Music rolls, but not from the organ;
Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine”—
She interrupted me at this point, and wanted to know what I was “giving”
her, and whether I called that poetry. It became my duty, of course, to
assure her of my utter inability to express an opinion. Thereupon, in a
burst of confidence, she informed me that, as I had no appreciation of
poetic numbers (though she possessed “piles of manuscript”), she had
just finished “An Essay on Time.” The subject being prose, and original,
I begged the favor of hearing it. She began without hesitation:
“Once more has the earth completed its circuit round the burning and
brilliant luminary of heaven; the wheels of Time still roll on and bury
every moment in the dust the wrecks of former revolutions——”
Just then my boy came with the announcement that he was sleepy and
wanted to go to bed. It is difficult to resist a boy’s appeal, as a
rule; of the sleepy boy an impossibility. If not yielded to at once, he
repeats his invocation every half minute until success crowns his
efforts. But I could not go without exacting a promise that, at some
future time, when she had time, the Essay on Time, “whereof by parcels I
had something heard, but not intentively,” she would “dilate” fully. Of
course she promised, but the Arctic smile which beamed upon the boy
would have made his mother wretched. The next morning at breakfast he
complained to me that his coffee tasted salty. I had learned of him that
he had already that morning corroborated to the aunt my denial to the
nephew of the editorial dignity charged upon me by that youth the day
before. I had no milk for dinner that day, nor any day thereafter; the
far-away look came back into Merope’s eyes, and, for me, was stereotyped
there. The Essay on Time was lost; so were I and the boy—at least we
seemed to be the only ones aware of our own presence at meal times. I
always have sympathy for those who realize having, as it were, “wasted
their sweetness on the desert air.” But the young woman ignored
sympathy, and I was made painfully conscious of my inability to eat her
pearls. One’s pride may sometimes exert the mastery over one’s appetite,
but a boy’s stomach, especially a healthy boy’s, possesses no such
armor. His tyrant began to dictate to him, and, as tyranny generally
begets rebellion in the subject, there was no alternative but to declare
war or vacate. Being always peacefully inclined, I adopted the latter,
and the boy, the pony and I took our leave.
[Illustration]
“HE’S NO SARDINE.”
Wagon Wheel Gap ought to have been colonized by Frenchmen. Why, did you
say? Well, the Gap proper is a few hundred feet long. On the southwest
side of the Rio Grande, a cliff, about six hundred feet at the base,
reaches heavenward perpendicularly about the same distance. Opposite,
and stretching for two miles or more down the stream, is a beetling
wall, in some places, they tell me, thirteen hundred feet high. To reach
the summit, one must go two miles up the river to Bellows Creek, strike
into a game trail that leads through numberless little parks, bordered
with mountain pines, and gorgeous with the hues of wild flowers. If a
Frenchman should walk to the summit of his ambition, he would be too
tired to fall off; if he rode up, being a mercurial creature, he’d have
time to, and would, change his mind, go back to his family, if he had
any, and wonder why he had ever entertained the notion that this is not
a good world to live in. Looked at from below, there would be such a
fascination in the absolute magnificence of the means to his end, that
when the melancholy fit enraptured him again, he’d go over the same
trail, with the same happy result. With those cliffs hanging over him,
the consequences of charcoal, morphine, the pistol or the rapier would
become coarse. He would abandon all other routes to immortality, and
finally die in his bed with the weight of years, like a Christian. That
was my explanation to the Captain, and he believed in it, as we lay
peering over the edge and looking down at our six-feet friends turned
into midgets.
Those friends of ours, good rodsters, all, stood on the bank of the
river, evidently predicting what a day might bring forth. The Rio Grande
was metamorphosed from a crystal stream into a river of mud. From our
dizzy height, it looked like a demoralized rope, the impeding boulders
in the current making the frayed patches. We had seen it in that plight
and none other for two weeks. But that we had been assured each day that
there would certainly be a change on the morrow, we would have sworn its
normal condition was “rily.”
Having been lied to daily for the last fourteen days, our hope had ended
in the faith that inspired our comforters. “So much a long communion
tends to make us what we are:—even I” promised each newcomer, anxious
to test his skill, that the river would “clear up to-morrow.” We had
heard, too, about four times a day, of the eight-pound trout captured
somewhere in Antelope Park, on a seven-ounce rod,—the trout I mean, not
the park. I knew all the history of that trout; it had been skinned and
the skin stuffed; I saw a woman who saw the trout, and I, of course, had
no hesitation in confidently asserting its weight and the details of its
capture.
Our hourly routine had been to go to the river, examine the color of the
water, and the mark that registered its stage; every fellow said it
would “clear up to-morrow;” then we went back to the house and smoked.
Being on higher ground, the Captain thought he would vary the subject,
so he said:
“I’d like to catch a pound and a half trout.”
I told him he should have one; that one of eight pounds had been caught
somewhere in Antelope Park, and that it had been skinned and the skin
stuffed; then he said he felt encouraged. That night the river did clear
a little, and notwithstanding we knew that every fish in the river was
gorged, we could not resist going down stream. Having floundered round
on the slippery boulders for a couple of hours without sitting down, we
reached a couple of good-sized pools at the head of a riffle; the
Captain took the upper, I the lower. Making my way out near to
mid-stream, I took up my station behind a large flat rock that stood
about a foot out of water, and busied myself sending a “coachman” and a
“professor” out into my domain with a little hope that I might induce
something out of the inviting pool. Before I had been there five minutes
a yell from the Captain caused me to look his way. His Bethabara was
beautifully arched, and at the end of fifty feet of line something was
helping itself to silk.
“I’ve got him—he’s a whopper.”
“That’s the pound and a half I promised you,” I answered, as a beautiful
fellow shot across stream not three yards above me; “but you’ll lose him
in that current.”
“I know it, unless I work him down your way.”
“Come on with him—don’t mind me.” I reeled in, climbed on the rock, and
sat down to see the fun. The noble fish made a gallant fight, but the
hook was in his upper jaw, and it was only a matter of time when he
would turn upon his side. Working him down stream, through my pool and
round into the quieter water near shore, was the work of ten minutes at
least; the captive, seeming to readily understand that still water was
not his best hold, kept making rushes for the swift current; but each
time he was brought back, and soon began to weaken under the spring of
the lithe toy in the Captain’s hand. Fifteen minutes were exhausted when
the scale hook was run under his gills, and he registered one pound
twelve ounces.
Apologizing for creating a row in my quarters, the Captain went back to
his old place, while I again tried my luck. About five minutes elapsed
when I heard another, not to be mistaken yell.
“I’ve got another—he’s bigger than the first.”
“Yes, I see you have—I think it’s infernally mean.”
“I know it is, but I can’t help it. I’ve got to come down there again.”
“Well, come on,” and I sat down again to watch the issue. The struggle
was not so brave, though the fish, when brought to scale, weighed half a
pound more than the first. While we were commenting on this streak of
luck, we noticed a change in the water, its partially clear hue began to
grow milky, and in less time than it takes to tell it, a boulder six
inches under the surface was out of sight.
“We might as well go to dinner, no trout will rise in that mud,” and I
reeled up with the reflection that the next best thing to catching a
trout is to see one captured by one who knows how to manipulate a
two-pounder on a seven-ounce rod.
That evening the river gave promise, as usual, of “clearing up
to-morrow,” whereupon six of us made arrangements for a trip up stream
half a dozen miles, with a lunch in the wagon. The morrow came and
brought with it comparatively clear water. We were off immediately after
breakfast; arrived at our lunching place under the shelter of some pines
by the river bank, it was at once discovered that the river had gone
back on us, so to speak; muddy again. No one swore, we just arranged
ourselves along the margin and prayed; all good anglers know how to
pray. I am indifferently skilful—at angling I mean—but always endeavor
to do the best I can. In the course of an hour the river gave us some
encouragement. It grew better as noon approached, and after lunch each
man was assigned his quarters and struck out for them.
I went down stream with a six-footer in long waders, who was to cross to
the other side at the first riffle, which he did. Our flies overlapped
each other in agreeable proximity for two hours or more, with
indifferent success to either. The trout were gorged with the food
brought down by the repeated rises, and seemed in no hurry to seek the
broad road that leads unto death.
Finally we reached a magnificent pool, nearly a mile from our starting
point, and my companion had worked his way back to my side of the
stream. We started into the edge of the pool together, he above me a
couple of rods. The flies went over toward the opposite bank,
twenty-five and thirty feet away, time and again, without success.
Finally an exclamation from the gentleman above me directed my attention
from my own tackle to his.
“Have you got him?” The inquiry was made on the score of good
fellowship; the bend of his split bamboo, the tension of his line, and
the whirr of his reel indicated that my tall friend had reached the
first stage.
“I’ve hooked him, and he’s no sardine, I tell you—whoa boy; gently
now,” as a sudden rush strung off full twenty feet of line. “Whoa boy,
be easy, now; gently, now; come here; whoa! confound your picture! whoa
boy; gently; so, boy.”
Just then a call from behind us announced the arrival of the balance of
the party. They had got out of the wagon and were standing along the
bank.
“May be you think you are driving a mule,” came from one of them.
“Oh no! I’m trying to lead one—whoa boy, whoa boy—gently now; none of
your capers—whoa! I tell you!” as a renewed and vigorous dash for
liberty threatened destruction to the slender tackle. “No you don’t, old
fellow—so, boy; that’s a good fellow,” and showing his back near the
surface the captive exhibited twenty inches, at a guess, of trout.
“By George, he’s a beauty,” came from behind us. I had allowed my flies
to float down stream and had backed out to give room for fair play. It
was a long fight, but his troutship finally showed side up, and was
gently drawn ashore, the water turned out of him, and he drew down the
scale three pounds, to a notch. As we gathered around to admire his
majesty, I said: “The next best thing to catching a trout is to see a
three-pounder brought to creel by one who can handle a seven-ounce rod.”
They all agreed with me, and our tall friend modestly doffed his dead
grass canvas.
[Illustration]