[Illustration: "Eddie's room and contents ... was a marvel and a
revelation."]
Eddie's room and contents, with Eddie in the midst of them, was a marvel
and a revelation. All the accouterments of former expeditions of
whatever sort, all that he had bought for this one, all that I had
shipped from week to week, were gathered there. There were wading boots
and camp boots and moccasins and Dutch bed-slippers and shoepacks--the
last-named a sort of Micmac Indian cross between a shoe and a moccasin,
much affected by guides, who keep them saturated with oil and wear them
in the water and out--there were nets of various sizes and sorts, from
large minnow nets through a line of landing nets to some silk head nets,
invented and made by Eddie himself, one for each of us, to pull on day
or night when the insect pests were bad. There was a quantity of
self-prepared ointment, too, for the same purpose, while of sovereign
remedies, balms and anodynes for ills and misfortunes, Eddie's
collection was as the sands of the sea. Soothing lotions there were for
wounds new and old; easing draughts for pains internal and external;
magic salves such as were used by the knights of old romance, Amadis de
Gaul and others, for the instant cure of ghastly lacerations made by man
or beast, and a large fresh bottle of a collodion preparation with
which the victim could be painted locally or in general, and stand forth
at last, good as new--restored, body, bones and skin. In addition there
was a certain bottle of the fluid extract of gelsemium, or something
like that, which was recommended for anything that the rest of the
assortment could do, combined. It was said to be good for everything
from a sore throat to a snake bite--the list of its benefits being
recorded in a text-book by which Eddie set great store.
"Take it, by all means, Eddie," I said, "then you won't need any of the
others."
That settled it. The gelsemium was left behind.
I was interested in Eddie's rods, leaning here and there on various
parcels about the room. I found that the new noibwood, such as I had
ordered, was only a unit in a very respectable aggregate--rather an
unimportant unit it appeared by this time, for Eddie calmly assured me
that the tip had remained set after landing a rather small trout in a
nearby stream and that he did not consider the wood altogether suitable
for trout rods. Whereupon I was moved to confess the little bamboo stick
I had bought in Boston, and produced it for inspection. I could see that
Eddie bristled a bit as I uncased it and I think viewed it and wiggled
it with rather small respect. Still, he did not condemn it utterly and I
had an impulse to confess the other things, the impossible little
scale-wing flies, the tin whistle and the Jock Scott with two hooks.
However, it did not seem just the psychological moment, and I refrained.
As for Eddie's flies, viewed together, they were a dazzling lot. There
were books and books of them--American, English, Scotch and what not.
There was one book of English dry-flies, procured during a recent
sojourn abroad, to be tried in American waters. One does not dance and
jiggle a dry-fly to give it the appearance of life--of some unusual
creature with rainbow wings and the ability to wriggle upstream, even
against a swift current. The dry-fly is built to resemble life itself,
color, shape and all, and is cast on a slow-moving stream where a trout
is seen to rise, and allowed to drift with the gently flowing current
exactly over the magic spot. All this Eddie explained to me and let me
hold the book a little time, though I could see he did not intend to let
me use one of the precious things, and would prefer that I did not touch
them.
He was packing now and I wandered idly about this uncatalogued museum of
sporting goods. There was a heap of canvas and blankets in one corner--a
sleeping bag, it proved, with an infinite number of compartments, or
layers; there were hats of many shapes, vests of many fabrics, coats of
many colors. There were things I had seen before only in sporting goods
windows; there were things I had never seen before, anywhere; there were
things of which I could not even guess the use. In the center of
everything were bags--canvas and oil-skin receptacles, vigorously named
"tackle bag," "wardrobe," "war bag" and the like--and into these the
contents of the room were gradually but firmly disappearing, taking
their pre-destined place according to Eddie's method--for, after all, it
was a method--and as I looked at Eddie, unshaven for weeks, grizzled and
glaring, yet glowing with deep kindliness and the joy of anticipation, I
could think of nothing but Santa Claus, packing for his annual journey
that magic bag which holds more and ever more, and is so deep and so
wide in its beneficence that after all the comforts and the sweets of
life are crowded within, there still is room for more a-top. Remembering
my own one small bag which I had planned to take, with side pockets for
tackle, and a place between for certain changes of raiment, I felt my
unimportance more and more, and the great need of having an outfit like
Eddie's--of having it in the party, I mean, handy like, where it would
be easy to get hold of in time of need. I foresaw that clothes would
want mending; also, perhaps, rods; and it was pleasant to note that my
tent-mate would have boxes of tools for all such repairs.
I foresaw, too, that I should burn, and bruise, and cut myself and that
Eddie's liniments and lotions and New Skin would come in handy. It
seemed to me that in those bags would be almost everything that human
heart could need or human ills require, and when we went below where Del
and Charlie, our appointed guides, were crowding certain other bags
full of the bulkier stores--packages, cans and bottles, and when I gazed
about on still other things--tents, boots, and baskets of camp
furniture--I had a sense of being cared for, though I could not but
wonder how two small canoes were going to float all that provender and
plunder and four strong men.