The hammock between the two jack pines at the back of the Arrowhead
ranch house had lured me to mid--afternoon slumber. The day was hot and
the morning had been toilsome--four miles of trout stream, rocky,
difficult miles. And my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, had
ridden off after luncheon to some remote fastness of her domain, leaving
me and the place somnolent.
In the shadowed coolness, aching gratefully in many joints, I had
plunged into the hammock's Lethe, swooning shamelessly to a benign
oblivion. Dreamless it must long have been, for the shadows of ranch
house, stable, hay barn, corral, and bunk house were long to the east
when next I observed them. But I fought to this wakefulness through one
of those dreams of a monstrous futility that sometimes madden us from
sleep. Through a fearsome gorge a stream wound and in it I hunted one
certain giant trout. Savagely it took the fly, but always the line broke
when I struck; rather, it dissolved; there would be no resistance. And
the giant fish mocked me each time, jeered and flouted me, came
brazenly to the surface and derided me with antics weirdly human.
Then, as I persisted, it surprisingly became a musical trout. It
whistled, it played a guitar, it sang. How pathetic our mildly amazed
acceptance of these miracles in dreams! I was only the more determined
to snare a fish that could whistle and sing simultaneously, and
accompany itself on a stringed instrument, and was six feet in length.
It was that by now and ever growing. It seemed only an attractive
novelty and I still believed a brown hackle would suffice. But then I
became aware that this trout, to its stringed accompaniment, ever
whistled and sang one song with a desperate intentness. That song was
"The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly told
myself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic.
Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showing
through the green needles of a jack pine. It was a sane world again and
still, I thought, with the shadows of ranch house, stable, hay barn,
corral, and bunk house going long to the east. I stretched in the
hammock, I tingled with a lazy well-being. The world was still; but was
it--quite?
On a bench over by the corral gate crouched Buck Devine, doing something
needful to a saddle. And as he wrought he whistled. He whistled "The
Rosary" shrilly and with much feeling. Nor was the world still but for
this. From the bunk house came the mellow throbbing of a stringed
instrument, the guitar of Sandy Sawtelle, star rider of the Arrowhead,
temporarily withdrawn from a career of sprightly endeavour by a sprained
ankle and solacing his retirement with music. He was playing "The
Rosary"--very badly indeed, but one knew only too well what he meant.
The two performers were distant enough to be no affront to each other.
The hammock, less happily, was midway between them.