interest mounted. The black fawn lived there. Maybe he would see it
again today. But as they walked along, resentment welled up in him, too.
Gramps' rod was disjointed, which made it easy to carry. Bud's, however,
had been left jointed so that he had constantly to be alert for every
branch, every bush, and even every twig on every branch and bush. Bud
thrust the tip of his rod into a hemlock tree and the rod bent
alarmingly. Gramps, striding ahead, did not even bother to look around.
Disgruntled, Bud disengaged his rod and hurried to catch up. He would
have liked to carry a disjointed rod, too, but he didn't know how to
take his apart and he wouldn't ask Gramps to show him.
Ten minutes later he was glad that Gramps was so eager to fish for Old
Shark that he thought of nothing else. He was finding his rod easier to
handle and he stopped gripping it desperately. He was becoming
accustomed to its feel and balance, and beginning to understand it. And
he hadn't called for help.
As they neared the thicket where the black fawn lived, Bud grew excited.
But just before they came to it, Gramps swerved from the path into the
woods. Bud kept his thoughts to himself. As much as he wanted to see the
black fawn again, he wasn't going to ask Gramps to go out of the way for
him.
The trees among which they threaded their way were mostly second-growth
yellow birch but now and then there was a grove of aspens, a solitary
black cherry or a copse of laurel and rhododendrons. It was such hard
work to keep from tangling his rod in the twigs and branches that Bud
almost bumped into Gramps before he was aware that the old man had
stopped.
Gramps stood absolutely motionless and, without speaking, pointed. About
a hundred yards away, a very dark-colored doe was leaping toward a copse
of sheltering rhododendron. Behind her, matching his mother's every
leap, ran the little black buck.
Now, Bud knew the fawn had not been abandoned. Just as Gramps had
promised, his mother had come back to look for him and he was in safe
care. And between last night and this morning, he had learned to use his
legs. Not again, or at least not easily, would any human lay hands on
him. The doe and fawn disappeared, and Gramps turned to Bud.
"There's your pal. After seeing his mammy, I know where he gets his
color."
"Yes." Bud's eyes danced.
"I figured she'd take him away from that tote road after you and Shep
found out where he was."
"Tote road?"
"The path we followed used to be a road. The lumbermen who cut the pine
and hemlock that was in here made it and a hundred more like it."
"Why do they call them tote roads?"
Gramps shrugged. "I reckon 'cause they toted things back and forth on
them."
"Were you here when the lumbermen came?"
"Saw the tail end of it but took no part. I wasn't much bigger'n that
little black fawn. Been here ever since."
"When they cut the forests . . ." Bud began.
"We'd best get moving," Gramps said.
Gramps swerved at right angles to the direction they had been following
and Bud wondered. Had Gramps brought him this way so Bud could see for
himself that the black fawn was safe? If he had, what lay behind it? Bud
was forced to concede that, if Gramps had deliberately set out to find
the doe and fawn, he had shown wonderful woodcraft. Never once had he
faltered or been at a loss as to the route to follow. He had known
exactly where to find the doe and her baby.
Ten minutes later they reached Skunk Creek, a beautiful little woodland
stream with pools of various sizes and depths and with sparkling
riffles. Except for the larger pools, some of which were forty feet
wide, the stream was less than a dozen feet wide. Most of Skunk Creek
was bordered with willows and other trees, but the pool to which Gramps
led Bud had almost no growth on the near bank and only scraggly willows
on the far bank. Gramps laid his tackle on a moss-grown rock and turned
to Bud.
"This ain't where Old Shark lives, but it's a darn' good place to show
you how to lay a fly on the water. Let's have your rod."
Bud surrendered his rod. With skill honed to a razor's edge by vast
experience, Gramps strung line through the guides, whipped the rod back
and forth and paid out line from the reel as he did so. As he was
keeping the line in the air, he said,
"See that little hunk of grass, maybe thirty-five feet out and a little
up? I'll aim for it."
The rod described a graceful backward arc and an equally perfect forward
sweep. The line glided forth as though it was not a flexible object at
all, but a solid thing that Gramps was somehow shooting from the tip of
his finger. The extreme tip of the line settled perfectly over the bit
of grass. Gramps twitched it free, retrieved his line, and turned to
Bud.
"Got it?"
Bud was flabbergasted.
"Try it and find out," Gramps said.
Bud took the rod, now strung and with a bit of line the length of the
eight and a half foot rod dangling from the tip. But where the rod was a
live thing in Gramps' hands, in Bud's it unaccountably went dead. He
whipped it back, then forward, and the dangling line splashed at the
very edge of the pool.
"You forgot to pay out line," Gramps said patiently. "You didn't use
your reel. Let me show you."
He took the rod a second time, and once again laid the line smoothly on
the water. Although Gramps had named no target, Bud knew that he was
laying the line on the water exactly where he wanted it. Gramps returned
the rod and Bud tried again. He remembered to pay out line as he cast,
but the line slapped the water only about a dozen feet from shore and a
full eight feet downstream from the target Bud had selected.
"You're throwing it," Gramps said, "and you're throwing with your whole
arm. Here." He pressed the upper part of Bud's right arm against his
ribs. "That's as much as you need and use your wrist. Let the rod work
for you; don't you do everything."
Forty minutes later, although he couldn't come close to Gramps' distance
or, unless the wildest luck was on his side, lay the line within two
feet of any target he picked, Bud felt that he was improving. At least
he was able to lay the line on the surface instead of whipping it into
the water. Gramps tied a nine-foot tapered leader, a spiderweb at the
thick end and like gossamer at the thin end, to Bud's line and showed
him how to attach a dry fly to it. Then Gramps put a drop of oil on the
fly, greased ten feet of line, and took the rod.
"Watch."
The fly soared out, hovered over the pool, settled on it precisely as a
live insect might have, and began to float downstream. Gramps pulled the
fly away from a small trout that rose and handed the rod to Bud.
"Go ahead."
Bud's first cast snagged a ground-hugging bush twenty feet behind him.
The next time the fly bellied back to float beside the floating line.
Then he hooked the only willow growing on the near side of the pool. But
all the same Bud was elated. He forgot that the object of this wonderful
art was to catch fish and, trying to remember all Gramps had told him,
he kept on casting and learning through trial and error. When, after
another hour, he was able to make ten successive casts and lay his fly
reasonably well, Gramps pronounced judgment,
"Guess we can try now."
Without another word he turned and led the way downstream. Bud followed,
knowing that his casting had not won the old man's approval but that
Gramps had not wholly disapproved either. Bud did not care or at least
he tried not to think about it, for he had discovered another new world.
In time, he promised himself grimly, he would be a dry fisherman
equal--well, almost equal--to Gramps.
Ten minutes later, Gramps slowed to a turtle's pace. He stole stealthily
toward a twenty-foot-wide rock ledge that overhung a deep pool. When he
came to the near border of the ledge, he turned and whispered,
"Leave your tackle. We'll crawl the rest of the way."
Bud laid his rod down carefully and, dropping to all fours, crawled
beside Gramps toward the water. Five feet from the edge, Gramps dropped
to his belly and began to inch toward the pool.
"No fast moves and show no more of yourself than you have to," Gramps
whispered.
Bud nodded and wriggled toward the water. He peered down from the ledge
and saw a broad, long pool formed by the ledge and fed by rushing
riffles that curled around the upstream end of the ledge. On the far
side the water was relatively shallow, or perhaps it only looked shallow
because there was white sand on the bottom there. Schools of shiners
and minnows swam lazily in that part of the pool and the white sand was
pock-marked with driftwood that had floated down in flood time and,
having become waterlogged, gone to the bottom.
At first glance the water at the near edge of the white sand seemed
almost black. This was partly because the white sand ended and partly
because the water was deeper there. Actually, it was green-blue, and the
high-riding sun bored well into it.
Presently Bud saw a school of fish almost directly beneath him. The fish
ranged in length from about five to nearly eighteen inches, and they lay
very still in what appeared to be a quiet pocket of water, the biggest
fish at the head of the school and the smallest at the end. Farther out,
Bud saw more fish. The deepest part of the pool was too deep for the sun
to penetrate it, and its invisible depths were tantalizing. Toward the
foot of the pool, just before it was gathered in by the riffles that
drained it, the trunk of a leaning sycamore jutted out about six feet
over the water. The water near the sycamore was sun-sprayed, too. Bud
saw flat stones on the bottom away from the bank, but in closer the
bottom was in shadow and he could see nothing.
"The fish 'neath us are trout," Gramps whispered. "Those farther out
are suckers and mullets. The shallows 'cross the pool are loaded with
minnows and shiners. Down there Old Shark hangs out 'neath that sycamore
trunk." He spoke as reverently as a fanatic Moslem referring to Mecca.
"Stay here and watch. Don't move. You do, you'll send every trout in the
pool kiting under the ledge."
Gramps wriggled backward and disappeared. A few minutes later Bud saw
him near the foot of the ledge standing behind a rock spire that hid him
from the pool and at the same time gave him freedom of action. Gramps
made a perfect cast. The fly floated lazily toward the leaning sycamore
and gathered speed as the water became swifter.
Old Shark rose and Bud saw him, a great, dark shadow that left the
shaded bank and rose into the clear water upstream from the leaning
sycamore. Old Shark did seem more like a shark than a trout as he paused
within an inch of the fly and then sank back into the shadows from which
he had come.
Almost unable to tear his eyes from Old Shark's lair, Bud's attention
was distracted for a moment by a ripple in the water beneath him. It was
a grasshopper struggling toward the ledge; before it reached safety, a
twelve-inch trout from the school rose and took it.
Twenty minutes later Gramps called,
"Your turn. Take it slow and crawl away, mind you."
Bud took his place behind the spire of rock and cast. He knew how clumsy
he was in comparison with Gramps, but he didn't care, for now he knew
why Gramps spoke so reverently of Old Yellowfoot and Old Shark.
When Bud's second turn was over, he went back to where Gramps was
sitting well back on the ledge.
"We didn't get him," Gramps said, but if he was disappointed he did not
show it. "There's always another day and we'll come again. Reckon we'd
better go in after this last try, though. Mother's all alone."
Bud stayed where he was and watched Gramps walk down to cast. A
grasshopper the old man's feet had disturbed came to rest on Bud's left
arm. He clapped his right hand over it and held the grasshopper until
Gramps shrugged, reeled in and indicated that he was finished by hooking
his fly in the cork butt of his rod.
Then, taking up his own rod, Bud strung the grasshopper on over the fly
and crept across the ledge. He eased his grasshopper onto the water near
the school of trout and a trout, which might well have been the one that
had taken the other grasshopper, darted upward and sucked in the
grasshopper. Bud struck, and his rod bent and his line grew taut as the
hooked trout tried frantically to escape.
"Keep the tip up! The tip up, Bud!" Gramps shouted.
With a heave that bent his rod double, Bud jerked the trout from the
water and sent him ten feet back on the ledge, where he lay flapping.
Bud raced back to get his catch.
"You did it!" Gramps shouted deliriously. "You did it! Your first trout
on a dry fly!"
"I caught him on a grasshopper," Bud panted.
"What'd you say?" Gramps asked blankly.
"I caught him on a grasshopper."
"A hopper?"
"Yes."
"Surely you're not going to keep him?"
Bud looked at the ground without replying.
"Well," Gramps said with an effort, "I guess that's your business."
Without another word the old man turned to start homeward. Bud followed,
miserable in the knowledge that he had betrayed Gramps. But even though
it was abominable to take a trout on anything except a dry fly, he
couldn't have done otherwise. Gram had asked them to bring her one
trout.
* * * * *
They took old shark on their seventh trip to the ledge. Gramps did it
with a cunningly placed midge. Bud knew he would never forget the battle
that followed or the plucking of Old Shark from shallow water when
Gramps had finally worked him there.
They bore their prize proudly home, showed it to Gram. Then, in Gramps'
asthmatic pickup truck--a vehicle that, until now, Bud had not even
suspected was on the farm--they carried the trout to Pat Haley's store
at Haleyville. Old Shark was a sensation and Pat Haley began at once to
freeze him in a block of ice.
"What now?" Bud asked, as he and Gramps started home.
"Find us another big trout."
"I mean, what about Old Shark?"
"Oh, him. Even if he had any flavor and wasn't tougher'n a shoehorn,
he's too much for us to eat. Nobody else'll want him for the same
reasons." Gramps drove in silence for a while and then said, "Tell you
what we'll do. When Pat's finished and everybody who wants a look at Old
Shark has had it, we'll send him down to the orphanage. They don't often
have trout there."
chapter 4
As he walked toward the road with a lunch pail dangling from one hand,
it seemed to Bud that the driveway--endlessly long when he had labored
up it that first day, with a chip on his shoulder and fear in his
heart--had shrunken miraculously. He glanced quickly behind him to see
if he was being watched and, seeing nobody, bent down to loosen the
laces of the shiny black school shoes Gram had bought him in Haleyville.
Then he straightened up and walked on, trying to manage a natural gait.
But it was hopeless because after the conquest of Old Shark he had
stopped wearing shoes. The soles of his feet had become so calloused
that he could even run over the sharp stones around Gramps' gravel pit.
Now, at the end of the summer, it had been so long since he had worn
shoes that he felt as if he were dragging a ball and chain on each foot.
His shoes pinched, too, but you could not go to school barefooted, not
if Gram Bennett had anything to say about it.
The summer had been so wonderful that, looking back now that it was
ending, every minute seemed precious. It had taken Bud a month to
realize that there was actually only a bare minimum of work to be done
and that Gram and Gramps had planned it that way. They had labored
prodigiously to rear and educate seven sons and four daughters and, now
that the children were grown up and had their own families, the old
people had made up their minds to do the things they had always wanted
to do. For Gramps that meant hunting and fishing; Gram wanted nothing
more than to make other people happy. There was money in the bank and
very little labor was needed to provide for the two old people even now
that they had taken a hungry orphan into their home.
Bud reached the blacktop road and waited for the bus to take him to the
Haleyville Consolidated School, where he was to enter the eighth grade.
He had concealed it from Gram and Gramps, but he dreaded starting out in
a new school. As he stood there waiting, he tried to ease his troubled
mind by concentrating instead on one of the high points of the summer.
He had cast a dry fly beneath a hollow stump beside a pool thickly
bordered by a jungle of willows. The fly had gone truly and he had taken
a fourteen-inch brook trout. Gramps had not been effusive, but it had
meant a great deal to hear him say,
"Some day you'll be a fisherman, Bud."
Bud knew that although he might have learned to cast a dry fly, a single
season or a dozen seasons do not necessarily produce a dry fly
fisherman. There were very few masters of the art. Still, Gramps'
approval was the next thing to achieving knighthood.
Sometimes with Gramps and sometimes alone, Bud had gone to see how the
black fawn was faring. Although the fawn and doe had widened their range
somewhat, they were still in the same general area. Now they were much
more difficult to approach, but Bud had seen them enough times to know
that the fawn was doing well. The knowledge that the fawn was
flourishing made Bud less uneasy about his own good fortune, for since
that first meeting, he had never stopped believing that a bond existed
between himself and the fawn. Bud's luck had taken its turn for the
better as soon as he found the little black buck and he was sure that
misfortune would overtake him again if harm ever befell the fawn.
Bud had discovered the ruffed grouse, known locally as "pat'tidges," the
thickets where foxes hunted and the places where black-masked raccoons
washed their food. He had come to understand what sportsmanship means as
opposed to hunting, and instead of recoiling when Gramps asked him to go
grouse hunting, he had accepted eagerly and was looking forward to the
opening day of the season.
Finally, he had found a dream of his own.
Gramps had a half-dozen turkeys, as many geese, a few ducks and a large
flock of mongrel chickens that ranged from fussy little bantams to huge
dunghill roosters. The flock was allowed to wander at will and to
interbreed freely. According to the articles in the farm journals Bud
had found stacked in the little closet off the living room, that was not
the proper way to raise chickens. Although purebred fowls cost much more
in the beginning, the returns were said to repay the initial investment
many times over if the flock was correctly fed and housed. So far Bud
had not broached the subject with Gram or Gramps because it was useless
to talk about a project until you had the means to carry it out.
Nevertheless, he had privately decided that, if and when he got both the
money and Gram and Gramps' permission, he would buy a pen of purebred
chickens and try to build up a flock.
That was for the future, but this was now, and when he saw the school
bus approaching, Bud drew a deep breath. Then he clenched his teeth and
boarded it.
The trip to Haleyville was over before he thought it could be, and the
children assembled in little groups in front of the school. Bud went up
alone to the entrance to the building and stood by himself with his back
against the wall pretending to lounge nonchalantly. He was the only one
who did not seem to know exactly where to go or what to do. Bells rang
at intervals and the crowd of boys and girls thinned until the only ones
left were Bud and a tall man who was obviously a teacher.
When Bud told him he was in the eighth grade, the teacher led Bud down
several long corridors and past rows of closed doors with frosted glass
panes in them. Finally he paused before one of the doors and, opening
it, propelled Bud through ahead of him. A man with the physique of a
wrestler but with gentle eyes looked around.
"I have one of your lost sheep, Mr. Harris," Bud's escort said.
"Come in and join the class, sheep," Mr. Harris said, smiling.
The class tittered and Bud writhed. The only refuge he knew was
defiance.
"Don't call me names!" he shouted. "I'm not a sheep!"
"You're not very polite, either," Mr. Harris said without raising his
voice. "What is your name?"
"Bud."
"Is that all your name? Just Bud?"
The class tittered again and Bud's mortification mounted as he choked
out,
"Bud Sloan."
Mr. Harris consulted his class roll. "It says here you're Allan Sloan."
"I don't care what it says!" Bud shouted again. "My name's Bud!"
All at once he found himself sitting on the floor. Lights danced in his
head. He blinked owlishly, and as if from a great distance, he heard Mr.
Harris say,
"Get up, Allan. Your seat is the third one in the first row. Take it."
Bud walked to his seat and the class was subdued. Bud sat in sullen
silence for the rest of the morning. When noon came, he ate a lonely
lunch and when the dismissal gong sounded at the end of the day he was
the first to rise.
"You're to stay after school, Allan," Mr. Harris said.
Scowling, Bud sat down again and watched his classmates whoop out to
freedom. As though he had forgotten all about Bud or perhaps because Bud
was too insignificant to notice, Mr. Harris methodically and calmly put
his desk in order. Finally he looked up and said,
"Come on."
Mr. Harris led the way out through the rear entrance and Bud gulped as
they neared the parking lot. He would have run if his legs would have
obeyed him, but since they would not, he got into Mr. Harris's car. They
started up the road toward the Bennetts' farm, and after they were out
of town, Mr. Harris said,
"You needed that cuffing I gave you."
Bud said nothing as Mr. Harris continued, "You had it coming and you
know it. I know exactly what you were thinking and why. Stop thinking
it.
"Let me tell you about another boy," Mr. Harris said, "another orphan.
He was farmed out when he was just about your age, and he went to a new
school exactly as you did. Inside, he was frightened as a rabbit with
five dogs and nine cats backing him into a corner, but he was afraid to
let anyone else know that. The teacher reprimanded him and he shouted at
him. Then, because he was convinced that only tough guys can get along,
he hit the teacher with a chair. The boy was twelve when it happened. He
was eighteen when he finally got out of reform school, and it was a
reform school even if they called it a training school for boys."
Bud said nothing and Mr. Harris went on, "It's a true story, as I should
know. The boy's name was Jeffrey Chandler Harris, who now teaches eighth
grade at Haleyville Consolidated School. I've wished many a time that
that teacher had had sense enough to clobber me when I most needed it."
Before Bud could recover or reply, Mr. Harris eased his car to a stop in
front of the drive leading to Gram and Gramps' house and was holding out
his hand.
"Friends?"
"Friends," Bud said, and shook hands.
* * * * *
The autumn days were literally golden days. Gold leaves clung to the
aspens and birches and to some of the maples. Goldenrod bloomed. A
golden moon shone down on a field where golden pumpkins lay among
shocked corn. The sun rose golden every morning and set in a golden
blaze every night.
Most of the crops were harvested and the fields lay bare. The cellar
beneath the farmhouse was bursting with the fruits and vegetables that
could be stored, and every shelf was filled with jars in which Gram had
canned those that could not be stored. Split and neatly corded wood was
stacked up to the roof of the woodshed and now the wood boxes on the
back porch and in the kitchen were kept heaping full.
The warmth the kitchen range radiated was welcome these days, for even
at high noon there was a sharp tang in the air. The cattle preferred the
sunny to the shady parts of the pasture and a box, which had a hole cut
in it and with a cloth hung over the hole, covered Shep's bed on the
porch.
After their first encounter Bud and Mr. Harris had understood each other
and Bud brought home a very creditable first report card. That afternoon
he raced up to his room to exchange school clothes for work clothes and
ran back down the stairs, stopping in the kitchen only long enough to
gobble the cookies and drink the milk Gram had ready for him.
"I have to hurry and help Gramps get everything caught up so we can go
grouse hunting," he explained when Gram remonstrated.
"Oh. That's real important. Scoot, now."
Bud drank the last of his milk and ran out. In the corn field Gramps had
the team hitched to the light box wagon and was walking beside it and
lifting ripe pumpkins into the box, starting and stopping the horses
with his voice alone. Bud raced toward Gramps, and Shep came leaping to
meet him. As he petted the big furry dog, Bud looked toward the autumn
woods and for an instant he thought he had caught a glimpse of the black
fawn melting away into the trees.