and hesitated as to how to kill quickest. Walter’s eyes strayed back
to the brown pool with the white bubbles doing waltzes and two-steps
across it; and with that, as I stood reflecting, I was aware that
Mr. Spafford was trying to come alone. All of two hundred yards—the
dare-devil. I knew it by a crash as of a bull moose, and a howl
following. He’d gone into a hole the first thing. “Oh, my! Oh, my!”
I heard him moan, and then more crashing, and the guides splashed
suppressed laughter all over me, but Walter didn’t hear. His soul was
at the end of the thread that dipped out of knowledge at a point of
the dark water.
And in a second we were all intent on that same point, for the
trout opened up hostilities once more. Without warning he gave an
enormous pull and rose to the top and shook himself, and broke
water, and beat with his tail, and tossed, and jerked, and rolled,
and raised the most dangerous Cain ever, and Walter’s wrist followed
the ins and outs of it faster than any mind could possibly think. If
your subliminal consciousness doesn’t understand fishing you might
as well give up when a trout gets to that act, for no up-stairs
thinking-machine ever could follow. However, Walter’s sub-qualities
saw him through, and the whale went down again, visibly tired from
the struggle.
And out of the woods burst our guest. So sad and bad and mad he was
that I crouched before him. “Judge Morgan,” he fired at Walter, who
paid no more attention than if a puppy was barking; “Judge Morgan,
I’ll say nothing about the condition of my clothes.” So I took
notice, and there was a six-inch square tear in the right knee of
them clothes, and the piece flopped.
“Too bad,” I murmured, and he glanced at me sarcastically as who
should say he knew well enough I’d put that stick to catch him, so I
needn’t be hypocritical. He further addressed the court:
“Judge Morgan, I’ll suppose that my discomfort has not been caused
intentionally—I’ll suppose that.”
Walter lifted the tip of the rod the least gingerly bit, and promptly
lowered it; he was there.
“Judge Morgan, I’ll not further mention myself, but for Heaven’s
sake, for reason’s sake, for Mr. Engelhardt’s sake, stop catching
that fish and come and catch the train. I adjure you, do not throw
away the prize of your career, the governorship,” and that was
shrieked in large capitals. His voice trembled with emotion. He
thrust his hand into his trousers-pocket, and halted a mere second;
then he pulled out of that pocket as he went on—I couldn’t believe
my eyes—he pulled out of that trousers-pocket a small, slimy, dead
trout, and cast it from him, and pulled out another, and up to six,
and discarded them on the rocks contemptuously. And I gasped, and
the guides lay down and rolled, choking, but his voice went on in
great exhortation: “The governorship! For a fish! Come, Judge Morgan.
Be sane. There’s time, but not more than time. We must start this
instant—we must hurry—but we can make the train. Judge Morgan, I
entreat you—come!”
And that “come” was a howl that penetrated even Walter. When he’s
annoyed he’s likely to take his glasses off. He did that now, pulling
them away hurriedly with one hand, and staring up at the exhorter
near-sightedly, like a troubled bat. “What’s all this?” he growled,
and threw me an appealing, irritated glance. “I’m not going anywhere
till I kill this fish—you ought to know that, Bob!” and then he put
his glasses on and threw one surprised glance at the little dead
fishes on the rocks, and settled back to his rod, and I think plain
forgot Spafford and me and everything else.
I realized that the universe, barring the trout, had been put up
to me, so I took the wheel. “Mr. Spafford, I’m sorry; but it’s no
use. Derricks couldn’t stir him. If you want to go on, you can take
two guides and make the train all right. I’m awfully sorry, but my
brother wouldn’t drop his rod, as things stand, to be made czar; we
might as well give up.”
“But it’s insanity! It’s—it’s criminal! It’s—”
I just agreed. “All of that,” said I. “Only it’s Walter. He’s that
way, and I can’t change it. It’s pretty selfish of course”—and I
looked sidewise to see if the criminal was taking in things, but not
an eyelash quivered.
The outraged Mr. Spafford held out a disgusted hand in answer to
mine. “I shall tell Mr. Engelhardt, and he will believe me, but he
will not understand. No reasonable person _could_ understand that a
sane man would throw away the governorship for a fish. Good-by.”
At that Walter looked up with the nice beaming smile which makes
him so popular and said pleasantly: “Good-by, Mr. Spafford. Sorry
you have to go. It would be nice to be governor, Mr. Spafford, but
it’s necessary to finish the job I’m on.” And in two minutes more
the dumfounded youth was in a canoe between Henri and Godin, and the
paddles were flashing down-stream beyond the Golden Pool.
Walter played the trout twenty minutes more—forty-five minutes in
all. There were more rushes, and more sulking, but the runs were
shorter each time, and the brute was plainly getting tired. At last
the battle was practically over, and the huge fish was swimming near
the surface, rolling on its side and flapping its fins helplessly,
and Walter drew it this way and that, waiting to land it till the
psychological moment when it should be too tired to shy at the net
and break loose, as happens often after a great fight. Zoëtique
knelt by him on the rocks, intent and excited, but responsible, and
dipped the net softly in the stream to make it pliable, and then held
its mouth toward the moving fish, following its course, ready every
second for Walter’s signal.
“Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward the trout, and the
trout, with a last effort, splashed, tore, ran—Zoëtique had missed
him.
We all gasped in unison. Then for two or three minutes more the fish
was played gently, carefully, back and forth, near the surface always
now, and then suddenly Walter’s chin lifted, and Zoëtique, half in
the water himself, brought the net around and up with a splendid
sweep, and in it, high in air, flapping and splashing spray over us,
was the great trout! And when the net was lowered, and Zoëtique got
out his big dirk to finish the beast with a rap on the skull, _v’là!_
he fell off the fly into the net. Lightly hooked as that, and Walter
had saved him! It sure was a mighty fish-fight!
My! you ought to have heard Walter sigh. And one minute later you
ought to have seen him grin. It was an hour of glory. Then the guides
were given cigars and drinks, as is seemly at a great killing, and
then the scales were dug out. Six and seven-eighths, just short of
seven, the record in the club for the Salmo-Fontinalis on a fly. Of
course, they’re taken up to nine pounds in our waters in spring, but
that’s trolling, and no credit to anybody. The whale of the Golden
Pool holds the record, to this writing, for sporting fishing.
And here ends the first chapter. Walter claims that here ends the
story, and that the sequel is a detached incident. But I am now come
to man’s estate, and I happen to have a perfectly able hunch of my
own about that. It’s the sequel—I give it.
[Illustration: “Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward the
trout.]
We went back to camp that night, and by careful observations
my brother hadn’t a regret in the world, and crowns and
principalities and governorships weren’t on his mind, which was et up
by a huge gloat over his fish. He was the most deeply satisfied man I
ever saw, that night, after he’d “thrown away the governorship”—see
Spafford as above. We trotted along back and unpacked our “_butin_,”
and settled down, much like that emperor of Russia and his thirty
thousand men who drew their swords and put them up again. We stayed
a week, and not an uneasy glance did I surprise in Walter, but once
and again an amused one with a chuckle onto it, as something recalled
the Spafford episode. We got no mail and he seemed not to care. At
length we broke camp definitely, and paddled down the lake in the
sunshine of a glorious cold September morning, looking back longingly
to where our long, low log palace, barred and empty, blinked blind,
reproachful windows at us through the trees. We did hate to leave—we
always do.
We got to the club-house at five in the afternoon, and everything
was dead quiet; not even Demerse, the steward, was in sight. So we
wandered up through the birches to the big house and stood a moment
on the veranda to watch the guides bring up the _pacquetons_. Walter
was bossing it, so I just stared at the last wild-woods picture I’d
see for a year. Around the cup of Lac à la Croix in front of us were
two sets of mountains: one stretched calm miles of greenness and
sunshine into the horizon; its double dipped deep in water upside
down, and the wind zigzagged wet silver across the submerged spruce
spires. With that, out of the spruce spires as it appeared, leaped
Demerse panting before us, excited, much-grinning.
“_Bon jour_, Demerse,” said Walter cheerfully, and shook hands and
went on bossing the guides. “Godin, _je veux que vous faisait_”—he
began. But Demerse wasn’t to be corked that way. Not much.
“_Bon jour, m’sieur le gouverneur_,” he burst forth. “_Mes
félicitations à votre Excellence. On est b’en content de ces
nouvelles, m’sieur le gouverneur_,” and he grinned and panted more.
“What the devil are you talking about?” remarked Walter impolitely,
and instantly translated, with that friendly comic grin of his which
nobody seems to resist. “_Quaw le diable est-ce que vous disez_,
Demerse?” he said. With that Demerse burst into the club-house and
brought forth bunches of papers. It was so. They’d nominated the old
rascal, whether he would or not. We read that first, and Walter was
interested enough and pleased enough to satisfy even Mr. Spafford.
Then I lit on a head-line in huge letters, which read:
“‘Consider the Contrast. Candidates of Different Calibre. Holloway
Leaves Sick Child to Make Speeches. Morgan Says’”—and then I yelped,
and joy got in my legs, and I threw down the paper and leaped a leap
in mid-air.
“Read it, cub; read it, you young cuss,” Walter fired at me, and I
read:
“Morgan says: ‘It would be nice to be Governor, but it’s necessary to
finish the job I’m on.’”
In small type below was the story about the fish. All straight,
too. Spafford in deep disgust had told it to Mr. Engelhardt, and
the chairman had been quick to see how to use it as a campaign
catch. Holloway, Walter’s rival, had left his small boy, about to be
operated on, to get to the convention, and was awfully criticised for
it; so the picture of immovable old Walter sticking to his fishing
made a grand set-off to Holloway’s nervousness.
We found it in paper after paper. Mr. Engelhardt said afterward that
the simple account of Spafford’s despair and Walter’s solid-rock
front of determination to get that trout first, and then attend to
the governorship, but to get the trout first anyhow—that the account
of that did more for the nomination than Walter’s presence could
have done. It seemed to tickle the people to have him look after
the job on hand, and be impervious to everything else till he put
that through—and that’s the way the old chap is. Single-minded. I
brought him up rather well, if I do say it, and I only hope this
governor job—for he’s elected now, you see—isn’t going to spoil our
camping-trip next summer. So does Walter.
THE REWARD OF VIRTUE
THE REWARD OF VIRTUE
This is a story about my guide, Josef Vezina. He’s a corking guide
and a wonder at hunting, and all sorts of a good fellow besides, but
he’s a French-Canadian _habitant_, and that means that he’s blind as
a bat to some ideas perfectly evident to us. So he did a stunt last
autumn one day, all out of kindness of heart, which came near getting
me into a nasty hole, and would, if my friend Arthur Shackleton, my
roommate at college last year, hadn’t been the best ever, and too
square himself to think un-squareness of another fellow. It turned
out only a joke on me after it was straightened out, but I was
feeling rather shy for a while along at first.
I ought to give some idea of the sort Josef is. Well, to look at
he’s a tall, lean, powerful chap of twenty-four, with slim hips and
big shoulders, and black hair, and large light-blue eyes which are
simply marvellous. They are wide open always, and snap back and forth
over everything like lightning, and there isn’t a visible object
for miles that they miss. Why, one day out on the lake in a canoe,
fishing, Josef said, in his soft, respectful voice:
“M’sieur Bob!”
And I answered, “_Oui_—what is it, Josef?”
“If M’sieur will look—so—in the line of my paddle”—he held it out as
lightly as a pencil—“_V’là un oiseau-de-proie_”—hawk—“on the tree
across the lake.”
I looked till my eyeballs popped, and not a blessed bird could I see
for minutes, and then, with much directing from Josef, I caught sight
of a lump with a wriggle to it, on the top branch of a spruce like a
thousand other spruces, half-way up a hillside.
It’s a treat to see him bend over a dim footprint in the moss,
deep in the woods, and to watch those search-light eyes widen and
brighten, and notice how he puts his rough fingers down as delicately
as a lady. Then in a minute he’ll blink a quick glance and say
quietly:
“_Un orignal_, M’sieur Bob—a moose. There is about an hour that
he passed. It is a middle one, and he was not frightened. He but
trotted.”
At first I used to say “Gosh! how can you tell all that, Josef?” and
he would shrug his shoulders and look embarrassed.
“But it is easy—_c’est facile_—M’sieur. The print is not large or
deeply sunken—_calé_—so the animal is of medium size. The marks are
close together—he did not jump long jumps as one does to hurry, when
_effrayé_. And the left hind foot and right fore foot come side by
side—an animal trots so.”
“And the hour, Josef?”
For the life of him he can’t exactly explain that, but two or three
times his guesses have been exactly verified. He murmurs something
about whether the fern is withered which the moose crushed into his
step, and whether a leaf or little twigs have fallen into it, but he
lets a lot go unexplained. I reckon it’s judgment that’s come to be
instinct by practice and thinking about it. For I believe he dreams
hunting, he’s so crazy on the subject, and he’s sure a shark at it
too.
He’s a shy fellow and won’t talk to most people, but he’s got used to
me because we’ve gone off on trips. Being in the woods alone with a
person, camping in one tent at night, and tramping in one another’s
steps all day long; putting up with short rations and discomfort,
and then having the fun and glory of killing a caribou, or getting
a five-pound trout together—that game makes you feel as if you knew
the other fellow pretty well. Especially if it rains—Holy Ike! We did
have rain on one trip to drown a frog. Three days of it. We were off
to find a lake up the right branch of the Castor Noir river, and we
didn’t find it at all that “_escousse_”—as the guides say—and we got
wetter every step and didn’t get dry at night so you’d notice it,
and altogether it was a moist and melancholy excursion. But Josef
was such a brick that I had a good time anyway—I’ve discovered that
there are many varieties of good times and there’s one tied up in
about every package, if you’ll look hard, and shake it out. So we
used to have lots of fun building a whooping blaze at night near
some little green-mossy arrangement of a brook, and making it go in
spite of the rain—Josef’s a wizard at that. We’d get the tent up and
chop for the all-night fire, and dry out our clothes and things—it’s
wonderful how much you can. And then we’d have supper, and I never
hope to taste anything as good as that fried bacon with corn-meal
flapjacks. Maple sugar’s fine mixed right in too—we didn’t stop for
courses. I’ve had meals at Sherry’s and they’re not in it with our
bacon and flapjacks. Then Josef would fumble in his soggy pocket and
bring out an old black pipe, and fumble in another pocket and bring
out a marbled plug of tobacco, and slice off some with his ferocious
hunting-knife, out of the caribou-skin case with fringe of the hide,
which he wears always on his belt. Then, when he’d lit up, he’d start
in to amuse me—I think he was deadly afraid I’d get bored before we
found that lake. He’d tell me anything on an evening off in the woods
like that by ourselves—especially, as I said, if it rained. He told
me about his sweetheart who died, and about the hundred dollars he’d
saved up in five years and then had to pay the doctor from Quebec
when his father was awfully ill. He’s had a hard time in some ways,
that Josef—yet he has his hunting, which is a great pleasure. I’d
tell him about college and big cities, where he’s never been in his
life, not even to Quebec, and he’d ask the simplest, most childlike
questions about things, so that sometimes it made me feel sorry and a
bit ashamed somehow to have had all the chances.
After we’d talked a while that way I’d get him to sing for me, for
he’s got a corking voice and they are all musical, these _habitants_.
Some of the airs were fascinating, and the words too, and afterward I
got him to write down a few for me. The one I liked best began this
way:
Les grands bêtes se promenent
Le long de leur forêt—
C’est aux bêtes une salle—
Le forêt, c’est leur salle;
Et le roi de la salle
C’est le Roi Orignal.
Chanceux est le chasseur
Et louable, qui est capable
Vaincre le Roi Orignal.
I had a bit of trouble making out the words because he spells his
own style and splits up syllables any way that it sounds to him. I’d
like to give some of it the way he wrote it, for it sure was queer,
but I’d feel as if I were playing a mean trick on poor old Josef if
I did that. When he brought the songs to me, written on a piece of
brown paper that came around a can of pork and beans, he shrugged his
shoulders in an embarrassed way and blinked those enormous light eyes
half a dozen times fast, and said:
“_Sais pas_, if M’sieur is capable to read my writing. I do not write
very well—me.” Then the shoulder stunt. “M’sieur will pardon, as I
have had little of instruction. I was the eldest and could go to the
school but two years. It was necessary that I should work and gain
money. Therefore M’sieur will pardon the writing.” And you bet I
pardoned it, and you see I can’t make a joke of it after that.
All this song and dance is just to explain how Josef and I got to be
a good pair, so that he’d get up any hour of the night to hunt with
me, and jump at the chance; and would always manage to get me the
best pool on a river for fishing, and never let me realize that I was
hogging things till after I’d done it. Sometimes the other guides
were up in the air at him, but Josef didn’t mind. However, the one
chance that was apparently the ambition of his life he’d never yet
been able to give me, and that was to kill a moose. I’d been pretty
slow at getting even a caribou, and missed one or two somehow—they’re
darned easy things to overshoot, for all they’re so big. But that
I’d finally accomplished, and I drew a good head with thirty points
to the _panaches_—horns—so Josef’s mind was at rest so far. At the
present moment the principal reason he was living—you’d think—was
that I should get “_un orignal_,” and I didn’t have any objections
myself either.
That’s the way things stood when Arthur Shackleton came up to camp.
Shacky’s the best sport going, but a greenhorn in the woods—he’d tell
you so himself promptly. I saw Josef sizing him up with those huge
shy eyes, as Shacky stood on the dock and fired my 30-40 Winchester
at a target before we started out on the trip I’m going to tell
about. Josef had one foot in the canoe, loading _pacquetons_ into
it, busy as a beaver and silent as the grave, and almost too shy to
glance at the bunch of “messieurs” who were popping the guns—all the
same he didn’t miss a motion. He knew perfectly that Shacky had to
be shown the action of the Winchester—how you saw the guard to load,
and then saw it again to throw out the shell and put in a fresh
cartridge. If it had been the Archangel Michael, Josef wouldn’t have
taken much stock in a fellow who didn’t understand the Winchester
action, and that afternoon poor old Shacky settled himself. We’d been
travelling all day, paddling in canoes and tramping on portages, and
we’d gone through two or three lakes and were now working up a little
river full of rapids, but with long “_eaux morts_” between them. We
were getting to the end of such a dead-water, and Shacky’s canoe was
in front, with a guide in bow and stern, and him in the middle, with
a rifle. We were behind, but neither of Shacky’s guides, Blanc or
Zoëtique, saw the caribou till Josef gave a blood-curdling whisper
that waked them up:
“C—caribou! C—caribou!”
And, sure enough, there it was, but so hidden in the branches on the
left bank that no eyes but those big microscopes of Josef’s could
have picked out the beast. The stream narrowed just there and a
ripple of water dashed over the stones between alders on one side,
where the caribou was, and a pebbly shore in front of alders, on
the other. Of course the animal heard Josef’s whisper—that couldn’t
be helped. And what do you think he did? They’re crazy in the head,
those caribou. He gave a leap out of the alders that hid him, and
jumped across the rapids with a tremendous splashing, and stopped
on the pebbles in full sight of the audience, and stared at us. I
suppose he didn’t know where the trouble was coming from—or else he
didn’t know it was trouble, and liked our looks—but that question
can’t be settled this side the grave. Anyhow, Zoëtique swung the
canoe around with one mighty stroke so that Shacky had a nice
left-hand shot, and the caribou stood as if trained and waited for
him to be good and ready; and poor old Shacky proceeded to profit
by my lessons on the Winchester. He put the rifle to his shoulder
and sighted with care, and started in and worked the lever back
and forth, back and forth, till he’d loaded and thrown out all
five cartridges—and never once touched the trigger. The caribou
stood petrified with astonishment while he went through with this
surprising performance, making a most unholy racket of course. And
when he’d quite finished, and the last cartridge lay in the bottom of
the boat—they rained all over him—then the beast stuck out his nose
and took to the underbrush, a perfectly good caribou still. It sounds
like an impossibility, but it’s an absolutely true tale—it was a
pure case of blue funk of course. And he wasn’t used to guns—it’s an
outrage to bring a boy up like that.
Well, old Shacky was as game as they make ’em about it, and
apologized profusely for wasting good meat, and never whined a whine
on his own account. But that didn’t help with Josef. I explained at
length how the m’sieur was new to the gun, but when his big eyes
lighted on Shacky I saw such contempt in them I was dreadfully afraid
Shacky’d see it too. He’d queered himself all right, and I believe
Josef would have hated to guide for him at three dollars a day, he
despised him so. Yet that’s putting it strong—there aren’t many
things the French-Canadians won’t do for money, poor fellows. Anyway,
as things were, Josef never looked at Shacky, and acted, as far as
he decently could, as if he wasn’t there.
We came to the lake where we were to camp, and the four men put up
the tents, and we settled things, and then Josef sneaked off in a
canoe alone to see what the signs were for game. We’d planned to hunt
first on the _Rivière aux Isles_, the inlet to this lake, which was
said to be broad and grassy in spots.
It was clean dark when Josef got back, and when he walked into the
firelight his eyes looked like electric lights—blazing, they were. I
never saw such extraordinary eyes. Some old cave-dweller that had to
kill to eat, and depended on his quicker vision for a quicker chance
than the next cave-dweller may have had that sort—but I’ve never seen
the like.
“Did you find good ‘_pistes_,’ Josef?” I asked him.
He had stopped on the edge of the light, shabby and silent and
respectful in his queer collection of old clothes, his straight black
hair sticking all ways, like a kingfisher’s feathers, under his faded
felt hat. I tell you he was a picture, with his red bandanna knotted
into his belt on one side and the big skin knife-sheath with its
leather fringe on the other. That knife gave a savage touch to his
make-up. But he stood erect and light and powerful, a bunch of steel
springs—there’s nothing to pity Josef about on the physical question.
He was shy because of Shacky’s being there, but when I asked about
the “_pistes_”—signs, you know—up went his shoulders and out went his
hands—he was too excited to think of anything but the hunting.
“_Mais des pistes_, M’sieur Bob! _C’est effrayant! C’est
épouvantable!_”