[Illustration: 0259]
F the sucker had gone twenty feet farther up the little brook on his
foraging expedition this story would not have been written. However, by
the time he had appropriated some ten thousand trout eggs, the hunger
which had urged him into the mouth of the brook deserted him, and, as
the water was too cold for his liking, he made his way back to the river
where he could take a siesta in the pool that he had left that morning.
Just above the spot where the sucker turned about was a bend in the
stream, and, passing that, you came upon a reach of shallow water
running over the most beautiful bed of gravel in that whole section. It
was here that the Bully was born, in the afternoon of the very day when
destruction in the form of a predatory sucker came so near to him. Not
that he appeared much like a bully in those first hours of conscious
existence. In fact he looked more like an animated sliver with a sack
suspended from underneath. He moved slowly about the stream in
company with a hundred or so other little fellows until the sack had
disappeared, and then it was easy to see that he had the advantage of
all his comrades in the matter of size at least.
[Illustration: 0261]
When they began feeding upon the tiny forms of life found in the creek,
the Bully soon gained a reputation for pugnaciousness. He did not
hesitate to crowd his best friend away from a larva, and, before he
was an inch long, he had bitten the left pectoral fin from one of his
comrades who had ventured to resist the Bully’s attempt to rob him of a
luscious little snail that he had discovered. One day when the Bully
was yet a fingerling he joined battle with a chub twice his size, and,
although he lost a part of his tail in the fray, and all the spectators
thought he was whipped before the conflict had fairly begun, the thought
of giving up never occurred to him, and he fought until his foe turned
tail and fled into the river, a quarter of a mile away.
He was still living in the brook and had come to be almost four inches
in length when he had an experience that shook his nerves somewhat. As
he was resting beside a sod a little worm, all bent out of shape, but
undeniably of the vermes family, came floating down the stream and he
promptly grabbed it. Then came a sharp prick in his lip and something
was pulling him out from under the sod. He braced and twisted and
threshed about, but all in vain. Up he went out of the water, all the
time doing fancy somersaults such as he had never attempted before.
A moment later he struck the water with a splash and was soon safely
hidden under the sod again. From his hiding-place he watched that worm
come floating past him again and yet again, but he had learned caution.
Now that he looked closely, he saw that the worm was fastened to the end
of a string, and a little later he discovered that this string was tied
to a stick which was in the possession of some creature that walked
along the bank of the stream. Later on he learned that this strange
animal was a small boy and that all members of this species were his
enemies. Whether or not he ever realized that he owed his life to the
fact that the boy had lost the last of his store hooks and was using a
bent pin that day, no one knows.
All that summer the Bully lived in the brook; but when the days grew
shorter and it began to freeze he moved with his friends into the river.
That winter, when the river was frozen over except in shallow places
where the current was swift, he had a narrow escape from a mink. He
was talking with a trout much older and larger than himself about the
comparative merits of worms and flies as food when a dark form darted
towards them with open jaws, and, with one snap, his neighbour was
captured and carried away. This foray caused great excitement in the
trout colony, and the Bully learned for the first time of the existence
of rapacious animals frequenting the banks of the river which made their
living by capturing unwary trout.
The following summer he spent in exploring the river above the point
where the brook joined it. Here there were hills crowding close in on
either side of the river, and rapids were numerous and strong. Practice
in rushing up the swift water brought his muscles to such a state of
development that every now and then he would spend half an hour in
jumping out of the water as far as he could. In fact he entered a
jumping contest held under the auspices of the Hemlock Point Trout Club
late in July, and carried off the first prize, an enormous blue-bottle
fly. The judges on this occasion decided that his jump was two and
a half times his own length which would probably make it some twelve
inches. It was during this summer that he became expert in taking game
on the wing. There is a tradition among the Oswegatchie trout that
on one occasion, with a favourable start, he pulled down a “devil’s
darning-needle” that was flying eighteen inches above the surface of
the water and going at the rate of sixty miles an hour. N. B.--This
is merely a tradition and is unsupported by trustworthy historical
evidence.
The bullying tendencies waxed strong during this second summer. One
dislikes to set it down, but it was about this time that he entered upon
those cannibalistic practices in which he persisted for the rest of his
life. One dark and chilly day, when all the millers and bugs and flies
seemed to have gone into retreat, noon came and found him with a gnawing
pain in his stomach which made him almost beside himself. Unfortunately
when his hunger was at its height a little trout that was playing tag
with some of its fellows happened to jostle him. In his anger the Bully
snapped at and swallowed him. For a moment he was conscience-stricken,
and then, when he realized what a delicious morsel he had taken to
himself, he turned to and grabbed up fifteen other little members of his
family without stopping to take breath. Henceforth he was looked upon as
a social outcast by the best people in troutdom and his only intimacies
were among the tough and lawless members of the community. Doubtless he
brooded over this ostracism, and grew bitter as he realized the evident
contempt in which he was held. At any rate, he waxed more and more
cantankerous and disagreeable as he grew bigger and stronger.
A record of all the experiences through which the Bully passed would
fill a volume. Only a few of the many can be set down in this brief
biography, and those the more important ones. When he was three years
old he was recognized as the boss of the river above the brook. For some
time stories had come up stream of the prowess of a big trout living
five miles down the stream in a mill pond. Confident in his ability
to whip anything that wore fins, the Bully started down stream one May
morning bent upon challenging this far-famed warrior to mortal combat.
He had gone about one-half the distance and had stopped to rest for
a little in a riffle, head up stream, when a strange looking fly came
hopping and dancing across the water. It was many coloured, but that
which attracted him most strongly was its body, which shone like
burnished silver. Without the least hesitation, he made a grab for
it only to feel that same stinging in the lip which followed upon
his experience with the crooked worm when he was a little fellow.
Fortunately for him he had touched the fly lightly, and, while he felt
a pull for an instant, it was only in the skin of his lip, and that, for
some strange reason, was torn. Fie started down stream vowing that never
again would he snap at a fly with a silver body.
By the second morning he had reached the pond, and found himself among
strangers. It did not take long for him to become involved in a scrap
with a trout of about his own size from which he quickly emerged
triumphant. Had the pond not furnished seemingly unlimited supplies of
fat chubs he would have proceeded to give free rein to his cannibalistic
inclinations; but as it was less trouble to catch the chubs than his own
blood relations, he filled himself with the former, and then took a nap
under the shadow of a big stump, the top of which stood a little way out
of the water.
A little before sundown, when he was quite refreshed and had begun to
think of taking a little turn about the pond in search of adventure, he
heard the sound of many voices, and, looking out from his hiding-place,
saw a company of trout moving in his direction. In the lead was his foe
of the morning. There, surrounded by an admiring crowd, came the biggest
trout that Bully had ever seen. His under jaw projected far beyond its
mate and had an ugly upward curve. He was broad across the back and
thick through and moved with all the pride of a conquering hero. “Where
is he? Show him to me. I’ll make mincemeat of the insolent intruder.”
The booming voice of the big fellow left the Bully in no doubt as to the
identity of the approaching monster. It was the fighter of whom he was
in search.
The Bully would have been scared if that possibility had not been
denied him. Instead of fleeing in fear he came out from under cover and
shouted: “Are you talking about me? You big bluffer! I’ll make you food
for the crows.” If the truth must be told, both the combatants used
language that was not only exceedingly scurrilous, but shockingly
profane. In this gentle exercise the Bully had the best of it and the
pond trout became so enraged that he dashed at his enemy with jaws
extended. The Bully was so busy swearing that he came near losing his
life. As it was, he dodged just in time to prevent those powerful jaws
from closing upon him, but not quickly enough to escape a slashing
from two big teeth which laid his side open in deep gashes. He was a
surprised Bully, but not dismayed.
The battle that followed had no historian. Of much that took place, the
whirling and darting, the snapping and struggling, the reports that
have come down through the years are somewhat confused and even
contradictory. It seems clear that at the first the Bully had the worst
of it. Besides the gashes received in the first attack, he lost one fin
and a piece of his tail early in the fray. The pond trout had all the
advantage in size and was cheered on by his friends; but the Bully’s
gymnastic exercises, fighting with the rapids, stood him in good stead
now. His muscles were steel, while those of the pond trout had grown
somewhat flabby since he had come to content himself with life in the
still water. As they feinted and charged and whirled about, the pond
champion began to grow short of breath and found increasing difficulty
in meeting the rushes of the Bully, who seemed to grow more agile as the
battle raged. Then there came a moment when the Bully feinted for his
opponent’s tail, and, when the pond trout turned suddenly to guard his
caudal extremity, he left his throat unguarded for an instant--and it
was all over. Once the Bully had set his teeth into the white throat he
shook and raged and tore while the life-blood of his foe gushed out,
and the denizens of the pond saw their supposedly invincible warrior die
before their eyes.
Nothing is known, certainly, of the Bully’s life after this up to the
day that he met his death. It is whispered that before leaving the pond
he undertook to capture a white miller that came fluttering over the
surface of the water just at dusk one night and found himself fast at
the end of a line as in his boyhood. Some even assume to say that after
vainly flinging himself into the air in the effort to shake the miller
out of his mouth, he said goodbye to those who had been drawn about
him by his struggles, and was about ready to give up hope when one last
struggle took him over and under a root and he found himself free. They
even go so far as to say that for many a day after that the miller stuck
to the Bully’s jaw, and that from it floated a fine, white thread.
Another unsupported rumour has it that as he was going up stream one
day in a narrow part of the stream he found a fine bunch of branches and
leaves, and gladly pushed in among them when he heard a disturbance
in the water back of him. No sooner had he entered this refuge than it
began to rise out of the water, and he shortly found himself on shore
and being handled by an animal that resembled the boy who had given him
so much trouble years before, only much larger. Even then he would not
give up without an effort, and, summoning all his strength, he gave a
mighty squirm and escaped out of his captor’s hands. He struck on the
gravel, gave two or three tremendous leaps and was in water again, free.
The Bully had grown to be the biggest trout in all that stretch of
water, and his under jaw protruded as far and was quite as hooked as had
been that of his vanquished enemy of the pond. An August morning found
him well up the river in the dense woods where the water was cool and
food was abundant. He had found a place where the water was some four
feet deep, and a fallen tree-top made the finest kind of a hiding-place.
Just above him was a clear space some two feet in diameter where now
and then he could take a bug or a foolish miller. Lying at his ease, he
thought with satisfaction of his numerous victories over other trout and
of his good fortune in escaping those strange beings which prowled
along the shore and threw enticing flies or worms into the stream. Just
then--but, before we tell of this incident, we must bring in another
story. That morning four men had broken camp some miles down the stream
and started on a sixteen-mile tramp back into the woods, where they were
to spend a month on the shore of a lake, fishing and hunting. The duffle
was piled upon a rude sled drawn along the trail by a horse. When two
of the party were ready to start ahead of the others, the guide, Fide
Scott, said to one of them, the Preacher, “We’ll follow the river for
more than half the way, and if you fellows can catch some trout we’ll
have ‘em for dinner.”
The Preacher already had hooks and a line in his pocket, and at once
added a supply of fat angle worms from the common stock. They had walked
for an hour or more when they came to a point on the river where a tree
had fallen across the stream. Just below this natural bridge the water
was deep and still, and a great mass of brush seemed to promise an ideal
hiding-place for trout. To make conditions exceptionally favourable
there was a good-sized open place in the centre of the brush where one
might drop his lure without the absolute certainty of getting snagged.
The line came out of the Preacher’s pocket in a hurry, the hook was tied
on and two exceedingly well-developed worms were looped in such a way
as to be as enticing as possible. A piece of alder, six feet or so
in length, was pressed into service and everything was ready for the
piscatorial adventure. But the pole was too short. Doing his best, the
fisherman could not stand on the shore and drop his bait into that open
spot in the brush. Only one thing remained, and that was to walk out on
the log, from which the bark had dropped away, leaving it as slippery as
the cellar door down which the Preacher had been wont to slide as a boy.
Slowly and with exceeding caution the adventurer made his way inch by
inch along the log until he had reached a point from which he could
drop his hook into that most attractive opening in the brush. Balancing
himself carefully, he allowed that mass of wriggling worms to touch the
surface of the water when--but now we’ll go back to the Bully.
When he saw that bunch of angleworms just above him he forgot the
crooked worm which had pricked him in his childhood. He was sure that
here was the most satisfying morsel that had ever come his way and
rushed for it. He closed his jaws on only a part of the mass, and the
rest disappeared, much to his disappointment. What he secured made him
eager for more. It was distinctly more palatable than anything he had
tasted for many a moon. Just as he was longing for more of the same
kind--behold! another bunch of wriggling, squirming worms appeared in
almost the same spot. This time he did not propose to lose any of this
meal so providentially provided, and he made a rush that enabled him not
only to grab the entire mass, but to get it well back in his mouth. Then
came that upward pull which he had felt in former experiences. He kicked
and struggled and threshed, making the water boil about him. For a
little his upward progress seemed to be stayed and he imagined that he
would get free after all. Then his ascent began again and continued,
despite all his mighty protests, until he felt himself enwrapped and
almost smothered by something, he knew not what. The Bully of the Upper
Oswe-gatchie never knew what happened after that. He could not see the
painfully anxious face of the Preacher endeavouring to balance himself
on a peeled log and haul a big trout out of the brush by a sheer pull.
He had no knowledge of the fervour with which the Preacher embraced him,
or of the perilous journey to the shore along that treacherous pathway.
He could not see the comrade of the Preacher when, excited by the
splashing made by the Bully in his efforts to get off the hook, he
jumped into the stream in his anxiety to be of help.
When the rest of the party came up, there upon the grass lay a noble
fish, and the proud Preacher was fairly sizzling with eagerness to tell
all about the capture. There was nothing with which to weigh the Bully,
but he measured a plump twenty-two inches in length and Fide Scott
placed his weight at a good five pounds. That Preacher fairly split the
buttons from his coat, swelling with pride when the guide exclaimed:
“I’ve lived along the Oswegatchie for fifty years and he’s the biggest
trout I ever saw took out of the river.”
[Illustration: 0275]
[Illustration: 0276]
_We may say of angling as Dr. Botcler said of strawberries: “Doubtless
God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did”; and
so, if I may judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent
recreation than angling_.---Izaak Walton, _The Complete Angler._
[Illustration: 0277]