One morning in early June a ten-year-old lad, having been given a
half-holiday, dug a fine mess of luscious worms, put them in a tin
can with plenty of good dirt, and started off up Berry Creek to fish
for bullheads and sunfish. He went through the papaw patch and cut a
nice long pole, and took time to fix his line on it in good shape,
and to see that his cork, sinker, and hook were all right. He then
went on through the woods, crossed the big ravines, and climbed
around the rocky cliffs, making his way to the spot designated among
the boys as the "bullhead hole." This was and is the best place on
earth to fish for bullheads, and the boy knew it, and it was there he
wanted to commence the day's sport. Finally he climbed over the last
ledge, forced his way through the brush and came in sight of his
favorite place, and, to his astonishment, he found an aged,
peculiar looking man sitting under the old sycamore tree in the very
spot where he had planned to be. He walked slowly up to a place as
near the old man as good manners would permit, unwound his line and
put on a good lively worm and commenced.
The old man paid no attention to him whatever, and, on watching
him closely, the boy noticed that he was fishing for minnows with a
pin-hook fastened to a thread, and this tied to a crooked stick. He
put the minnows he caught into a tin bucket which was sitting at his
feet, partially full of water. As soon as the boy noticed what he was
doing, he set his pole and went up to him and offered to take off his
shirt and help him seine for minnows with it. The old man looked up
and said:
"Boy, I wouldn't fish with minnows caught with the best seine on
earth. Your shirt wouldn't be much account as a seine; and anyway,
they're never big enough. I am on my way to Wakarusa, and I want some
good, strong, live minnows. A man who fishes with seined minnows is
no account. More than that, you have no business to get your shirt
wet. You tend to your fishin' and I'll tend to mine. Andrew Jackson
said he knew a man who got rich tending to his own business."
This was a good deal of a bluff for the boy, and he proceeded as had
been suggested, and "tended to his own business." It was a good
morning for bullheads, and he soon got their range and commenced
catching them. In fact, they were biting so well that he didn't stop
to string any of those he caught, but threw them back on the bank;
and just to see to it that the stranger did not forget he was there,
he usually threw them toward the foot of the sycamore tree.
After a while the old man took his thread off the crooked stick and
wound it up, poured most of the water off his minnows, and then
filled the bucket again with fresh water, splashing it in with his
hand so that it would be as full of oxygen as possible; and then he
took out an old pipe and filled it, and as he commenced to smoke he
looked around at the ground, spotted with wriggling bullheads and
sunfish, and for the boy, who had experienced a lull in his
activities long enough to allow him to commence to pick up and string
the fish he had caught.
The boy looked at him, and he brightened up and said:
"Kid, you're having a good time, and I don't blame you. I am going
down to Wakarusa to fish for big fish, but, after all, you've got
more sense than I. The bullhead is the safest and surest fish for
meat, and he's not bad sport either, because he usually bites like he
meant business, although he may be a little slow. The bullhead is a
good deal like the rabbit in one way--he's sure food. There's more
rabbit meat on foot in Kansas than there is beef or pork, and it's
all good. The buffalo was all right in his time, but even he didn't
come up to the rabbit. The bullhead reminds me of the rabbit, and the
rabbit reminds me of the bullhead."
The old man stopped talking, and acted as though he were about to
start off, when the boy asked him where he was going on the Wakarusa
to fish, and he said:
"I don't know just where I'll wind up. I have fished in every hole in
Wakarusa from way above the Wakarusa falls down stream nearly to
Lawrence, and sometimes I go to one place and sometimes to another.
I've fished for bullheads, too, and for sunfish, in every place that
the water is deep enough from the place where Berry Creek starts,
over in the coal banks by Carbondale, down to the Sac and Fox spring
and all along Lynn Creek, especially in the part that's full of
boulders and little round pebbles, with here and there a riffle made
by a broken flat rock. And boy, I want to tell you something--some
days you can catch fish like you've been catching 'em this morning,
and some days you can't. I've seen days so dull that even the bite of
a crawfish was welcome."
The old man started off, and then came back and took the boy by the
shoulder and almost shook him as he said:
"Don't tell anyone that you saw me. It's nobody's business." And then
he went away.
The boy was not at all afraid, although the man was a total stranger,
and looked and acted very queer. The next day he told Joe Coberly
about meeting him, and Joe said:
"That old cuss is not real. He's around here every once in a while,
and always has been. Nobody knows where he lives nor where he comes
from or goes to. He must have been in a good humor or you wouldn't
have caught so many fish, because he can give you good luck or bad
luck; and there's always something strange happenin' when you hear of
him around. Last night something had one of my horses out and run him
nearly to death; his mane was all tied in knots this morning, and he
was wringin' wet with sweat when I went into the barn; and the barn
doors were all fastened just as I had left them, too. You never can
tell what's goin' to happen when that old devil's pretendin' to fish
up and down the creek."
The boy told the story to a number of people, and soon found that
practically all of the old-timers thought just the same as did Joe
Coberly, and that they believed that there was something mysterious
and unreal about the fisherman he met at the bullhead hole.