“That brook starts way in behind the mountain,” Chet reminded me. “It
swings down through the old meadow and into the woods, and through the
lower meadow there, and finally it runs into Marsh River. There weren’t
the trout in it then that there are now. It’s been stocked right along,
the last few years.... But there were trout there, even then. If I told
you the fish I’ve seen my father take out of some of those holes, it
would surprise you.”
“It’s a beautiful brook,” I agreed.
“Jim and I always used to fish it,” Chet went on. “When we started in,
we’d draw lots to see who’d take the first hole, and then take turns
after that. He took a pebble in one hand, this day; and I picked the
hand that had the pebble in it, so I had the choice. And we started up
the brook, me fishing the hole under that log above the bridge, and him
fishing the next bend where the bank has all fell in and spoiled the
hole, years ago. And I fished under the big rock below the fence; and so
on.
“Jim was a fellow that loved fishing,” Chet continued; and I interrupted
long enough to ask:
“Jim who?”
“Jim Snow,” said Chet. “He loved fishing, and he liked getting into the
woods. He was a boy that always played a lot of games with himself, in
his imagination. We were only about ten years old. And this day he was
an Indian. You could see it in the way he walked, and the way he crawled
around, except when he got excited and forgot. There was always a change
in him when we climbed up out of the lower meadow into the real woods.
He’d begin to whisper, and his eyes to shine. And he’d talk to the trout
in the pools; and he was always seeing wildcat, or moose, or bear, in
the deeps of the woods.
“I never knew any one it was more fun to go around the country with than
Jim.”
He was still for a moment, tasting the sweets of memory; and he chuckled
to himself before he spoke again.
“Well,” he said, “we come up out of the meadow into the woods. You’ve
fished there. It’s the best part of the brook now, and it was then. My
winning when we drew lots in the beginning made it my turn to fish when
we came to the big hole. And Jim knew it as well as me.” He chuckled
again. “You know the hole I mean. Where that old gray birch leans out
over.”
I did know. The brook ran through the heart of a grove of old first
growth pine; and the big hole itself was dark and shadowed. The water
dropped into it over a ledge a few inches high; spread wide and deep
upon a clear and sandy bottom, and spilled out at the foot of the hole
over the gravel bar. There was an old pine on one bank, at the upper
end, leaning somewhat over the water; and on the opposite side of the
brook, a huge gray birch leaned to meet the pine. Except on sunny days,
the spot was gloomy. More than once I heard great owls hooting in
muffled tones among those pines; and the number and ferocity of the
mosquitoes which dwell thereabouts is unbelievable.
“It hasn’t changed much, all this time,” Chet went on. “That slough on
the west bank, in that spring hole, was there then, the same as it is
now. Maybe you’ve noticed an old stub, rotting away, right beside that
slough. That was a blasted hemlock; and it’s been dead a long time.
Wind, or lightning, or something knocked it down.
“When we came up to that hole that day, I was on the side toward the
pine; and I crept in behind the big tree that leaned out over, and swung
my line in, and I had a bite right away. But I jerked too soon; didn’t
set the hook. And the line whished up and snarled in the branches over
my head.”
He laughed to himself at the recollection, his head back, his chin down
upon his neck, deep-set eyes twinkling beneath his bushy eyebrows in the
fashion I like to see. “Well, sir,” he chuckled, “while I was untangling
my line, I heard a regular Indian hoot, and I turned around and see Jim
had caught a fish out of my pool. Quicker than a minute, I was mad as a
hat.
“Yes, sir. I didn’t stop for a thing. He was on the other side, by that
old hemlock; and I went after him. I waded right across the ledge,
running, and when he saw me coming, he jumped to meet me. Because he
knew I was mad. We come together right in the black mire of that spring
hole; and let me tell you, for a minute the fur flew. I guess we fought
there in them woods, nobody within a mile of us, for as much as five
minutes, maybe. Both of us grunting and cussing with every lick. Knee
deep in that stiff, black mud. And first I’d get him down in it, and
then he’d down me; and finally, when we kind of stopped for breath, he
yells:
“‘I was only catching the fish for you, anyway, Chet.’
“And I says: ‘I’ll catch my own trout!’ And I managed to roll him under,
and by that time we were both too tired to do any more.”