THE CAMPAIGN TROUT
THE CAMPAIGN TROUT
THE CAMPAIGN TROUT
Josef and I were lifting our canoe into Lac Lumière from the Dammed Little River when we saw paddles flash up the lake. The “garçons,” Blanc and Zoëtique, the brace of younger guides, had been out to the club for mail; as that happened only once in ten days we hustled.
I ought to mention that the Dammed Little River is not so named entirely for love of blasphemy, but because it is little and is dammed—it was over that dam that we lifted the canoe. I’ll grant you, however, that it may add a tang to the harmless stream to call it by the fierce name, and also it makes you feel pleasantly like a perfect devil to swear that way without sin. Anyhow that’s where we were that September afternoon, Josef and I, just back from a two days’ hunting-trip to Lac Sauvage country. I’d missed a moose, and I knew I was going to get jeered when I got back to campand told my brother Walter, who never leaves much to reproach himself with when there’s an opening for jeerings. But I might as well face the music; and besides, there was the first mail for ten days a mile ahead between two glints of sunlight coming and going—the paddles. So we hustled, as aforesaid.
But Blanc and Zoëtique paddling the home-stretch are hard to beat, and they had landed minutes before we got there, and were making oration with Walter on the porch. He detached himself with difficulty to greet me.
“Hello, Bob,” he threw at me, and “Bon jour, Josef. Glad to see you. Any luck? Wait a moment and I’ll talk to you.”
I sat myself on a bench and stretched my hunting-boots over the landscape and waited per order. It’s good for the soul to hear Walter talk French. He was enthroned in the one store chair, a red rocker, in the middle of the big camp porch, and I’ll tell how he looked, for local color’s sake. He’s a lot older than I to begin with—over forty, while I’m only at Yale—and they made him a judge the minute he cut his teeth—the youngest in the State. Hesat there appearing pretty prosperous, with his nice beefy color, and his dark-gray clothes, and his dark-gray hair, for his honors have gone to the outside of his head only. He’s a trifle too embonpointish around the hips, but great men often have a rush of dignity to the waist-line, I notice. The light splashed on his spectacles so that they were all you could see of his eyes, but the glasses seemed full of earnestness, and there was a deep line in the middle of his forehead which comes when he’s most awfully serious. He was this time. I’d have bet on it, when I saw his pipe sitting on his knee like an interrogation-point upside down.
Before him stood Zoëtique and Blanc, dressed in odds and ends; trousers under their armpits, multiple suspenders, slouch hats, a red bandanna, an axe in Zoëtique’s belt, and a caribou-skin knife-sheath with buckskin fringe in Blanc’s. Rummage-sale effects. For all that Zoëtique’s got a figure which any athlete might envy, deep-shouldered, small-waisted, musclely—and Blanc moves like a greyhound, all steel springs and lightness. They stood respectfully in front of the red rocking-chair,and behind them two miles of lake stretched from the camp porch to the everlasting hills. In musical, incorrect French, with the nice polite manner all thesehabitantshave, Zoëtique was getting to the end of a story, as I gathered, about a fish. That made it clear why Walter’s soul-depths were bubbling and he couldn’t pay attention to me. He’s keen for fishing. He’d rather fish than be President—rather than shoot the biggest bull moose on record. He had the package of letters in his hands, the first in ten days; around him were piled rolls of newspapers, and he hadn’t heard a new in all that time—but nothing mattered. Nothing but Zoëtique’s fish-story.
When Zoëtique’s crisp, rippling sort of low voice stopped, Walter leaned forward and got ready with anxious care to talk. To talk French was a necessity, for the men didn’t understand English, and I could see him working his intellect. He usually helps himself to the French dictionary and kicks it, and calls that conversation, but this was different. This was about a fish—it was important to be understood.
“Si je comprenne, Zoëtique.Comme celà. Vousl’avez view sortir à le Remous Doré, yune gros poison—gros grosse—vous disons celà?”
I yelped a short yelp. The guides canvassed the sentence with perfect gravity. I could see them guessing. “View” they recognized as “vu,” I was sure; and “yune poison,” was a fish, “un poisson”; these transformations they’d run up against before. But “sortir” stumped them a minute. They looked at each other trying to remember if they’d seen a big fish go out—sortir. Then Blanc got it—it was “jump”—“sauter.”
“But, yes, M’sieur, it is true that one saw a big fish jump—at the Golden Pool—as one passed. A very big one—b’en gros—gros de même”—and the knotty hands of Blanc measured a hearty three feet.
“Great Scott!” gasped Walter excitedly, taking it all verbatim as he does a fish-story. “Holy Moses! it’s a six-pounder, at least!”
And with that the French language was batted through a game. A Parisian would have sobbed. But Walter got his questions out of his system, and I pulled him from one or two sad holes by the boots.And then thegarçonsraconté-d over again for me how they had been passing the Golden Pool—theRemous Doré—on their way up from the club with the mail and provisions, and had been brought to a dead stop by an enormous splash in the water. Zoëtique specified that it was “épouvantable,” and Blanc, with gestures of hands and shoulders, told how he was so scared blue that he spilled into a two-foot hole, and the pack slid off him. Then the trout came up again, and concerning that appearance they gave measurements. They had him half the length of a canoe, and ten pounds heavy, by egging each other on a little, and Walter didn’t doubt a syllable; he didn’t want to.
“Je vous dites ce que nous faisait,” he addressed them enthusiastically.
Then he arranged, with further language, that the three, he and Blanc and Zoëtique, should go down to the Golden Pool the next afternoon and collar that fish. Then he let the men loose, and they dissolved into the woods toward their own camp, and Walter glared at me joyfully through his goggles.
“Bob, it’s a sockdologer; it’s the one that nibbled at my fly two weeks ago, and I couldn’t get him on. But it was hot, then, and low water, and lots of flies for the fish to fill up on. Now it’s cold, and they’re gathering in the deep holes, and the flies are frozen out—I’ll get him.”
“Please the pigs, you will,” agreed I. “Sounds like an old he-one, doesn’t it? And Zoëtique never does lie as well as the rest. Give me my letters, won’t you?” and with that he came to.
“Well, Bobby, I haven’t heard about your trip. Did you have a good time? How was the water onLac à l’Isles? Have the beaver raised it? And did you see anything? Get a shot?”
My time was come, so I unbosomed my sorrow, and Walter was decent at first and said we all knew what it was to miss, and likely the sights of my rifle were wrong, as Josef suggested, and shooting from a canoe was hell anyhow, and these Frenchmen couldn’t hold a boat still—and all such things. When you shoot crooked there are just so many excuses from which your friends will choose comfort to offer up to you, and you knew beforehand which.But the feeling left is the same. If you’ve missed, you’ve missed, and nothing alters that fundamental grief and the yearning for blood and one more shot, which remains. And conversely, if you’ve hit you don’t give a button how easy the shot was, or how many times you pumped your gun to do it. There’s a profound peace in the pit of your being that religion is powerless to bestow.
So as Walter ran over the reasons why I couldn’t possibly have hit I appreciated his courtesy, and rejoiced to be let off, but I was sore all the same. Besides, there was a gleam behind the spectacles which gave me a good hunch that I wouldn’t be let off forever. A moose—to miss an old bull moose the size of a barn! I couldn’t forgive myself, whatever Walter said, and even if the rifle was gone queer, which it was. I’ll mention in passing that not long after I killed one bigger than the first, but that’s quite another story. I told about my trip, and began on my letters, and Walter took to the newspapers. I heard him laughing in a few minutes, and I looked at him.
“What’s up?”
He glanced at me over a paper, grinning sheepishly. “They’re talking about me for governor.”
“Hey!” I hurled at him, for I was surprised. “You!” And I got up and kicked before him a little. “You! Hooray! Glory has come upon us. And me associating with you just as free—!” Then I sat down. “Tell me what it says,” said I.
Walter read some paragraphs from different papers, and it sure did appear like a promising young boom.
“Why, look here, Walter,” I gasped. “What’s the likes of you doing in the wilderness? Oughtn’t you to be down there fussing? Why don’t you beat it for the settlements to-morrow—oughtn’t we to go home?”
But Walter frowned evilly. “Go home? Not much. I’m going to take that fish at the Golden Pool to-morrow,” he snapped at me. “Besides, if they need me they’ll let me know. Whatever happens, I mean to get my fish to-morrow.”
Then I addressed him. “That’s too ridiklis,” said I. “An afternoon’s fishing—and us candidates for governor! Why, you make me laugh. I’m in charge of you, my good man—”
“Oh, are you?” he inquired sarcastically.
“I am that. See?” So I punched him about a bit till he yelled for mercy. I can handle him since he got his embonpoint. I’m in training, and he isn’t.
“Don’t—don’t,” he howled; and then, as I slowed down, “I do dislike physical demonstration,” said Walter. And I gave him a dig that rounded his sentence up with a squeal.
“That’s all,” I stated. “Just wanted to put you in your place. Am I in charge?”
“Yes, yes—leave me alone, Bob,” he threw at me hurriedly, and just at that second I happened to look out at the lake.
I stood petrified. There was a canoe on it. Now our own guides and canoes were all in camp, and we’re away beyond everybody’s passing. Nobody comes to Lac Lumière unless they come to see us. Who under heaven could be coming to see us? It was five-thirty in the afternoon, and nobody from another camp would arrive at that hour, for it would be too late to get back anywhere. One doesn’t walk portages after dark in Canada. So I was petrified. It was a canoe all right, however, and the paddles were flashing fast; it would be at our dock in five minutes.
“What the devil does that mean?” Walter growled, and I lit into the camp and brought out my telescope, and in half a minute it was on the canoe.
“Two guides—don’t know ’em,” I reported. And then I shrieked in agony, “For cat’s sake—for cat’s sake!”
Walter got excited. “Who is it—what is it?” he threw at me.
“That’s what I say,” answered I. “Who is it? what is it? It’s, a, straw, hat!”
“A straw hat?” Walter repeated, dazed-like.
For, you see, nature may abhor a vacuum, but I’m willing to bet she doesn’t abhor it a patch on the way she does a stiff hat. And there it sat in the middle of nature, the lake gurgling around; dingy, regulation guides dipping paddles bow and stern; outraged mountains rising up green and sanctified at the horizon; and, in the centre of the stage, a shiny straw hat. It was too much. I dropped the glass and doubled with too-muchness. And Walter glued an eye to the lookout.
“It’s a straw hat,” he admitted, and reservedjudgment, and went down to the dock, me following in all maidenly modesty.
In five minutes more the canoe’s nose ran up the bank to our feet. We “bon jour-ed” the guides, and then the hat was lifted respectfully and a lanky figure of a man arose to his feet and stood wobbling. The guides tried to keep the boat steady, but he lurched at the dock and slopped over. His forefoot went into some quite wet lake which we kept there—Canadian canoes aren’t meant for doing the tango. Walter and I snitched as one man at him, and yanked him landward, but in the enthusiasm of salvage his eye-glasses jumped him, and according to the law of gravity made for a crack in the dock. And somebody—said to be me—knocked off his lid. It took to the deep and bobbed away riding a wave, and Auguste, the guide, had todepêchelike sin to fish it in with a paddle. It was an eventful landing for that sandy-haired youth, as we discovered him to be on the escape of the hat. He squished water sorrowfully out of the yellowest low shoes I ever saw, and you couldn’t cheer him even when I set his crown back on him and picked up his glasses.He just pulled off his hat promptly and gazed at it like an anxious mother and squished more lake out of his yellow foot, and clucked softly—I don’t know how to spell the noise, but it was a kind of a regretful cluck. Finally he got his glasses rubbed and his hat wiped, and Walter and I volubly offered him dozens of shoes, though I knew we’d have to short-come on the color. With the most exquisite courtesy we walked him up-stairs over the muddy little precipice of a trail to the camp, and sat him in the red rocker, and offered him whiskey. But he wouldn’t. Heavings, Maud! No. Not for him. So we fed him Jamaica ginger and hot water, which I prefer myself, if there’s sugar in it. And behold! he smiled like a split in a potato and arrived at the next station.
“I beg you will pardon me, Judge Morgan. I have been disturbed a little by these unfortunate accidents. I have forgotten to explain my presence in your hospitable camp. My name is Spafford. I am head clerk in the office of Bush, Engelhardt & Clarkson. I come from Mr. Engelhardt, Judge Morgan.”
“Huh!” grunted Walter in a sweet way he has, like a cross codfish.
The sandy one looked bewildered. “Mr. Engelhardt,” he emphasized, “the chairman of the State committee. I meanthatMr. Engelhardt,” and he paused to give Walter a chance to whoop for joy. Walter not whooping, he trotted along glibly: “The convention which is to nominate the candidate for governor is on the eighteenth, and Mr. Engelhardt decided yesterday that it would be best that you should be there. You know, of course, Judge, that you are likely to be nominated?”
“Huh!” remarked Walter again, making awful faces, biting his cigar.
“Yes, sir.” Mr. Spafford answered that sound with firm politeness. “Mr. Engelhardt thinks it best.” And that to Mr. Spafford seemed to be final. “To-day is the 14th. If you take the train with me from the club to-morrow night at eight, leaving from Quebec the next morning, we will reach headquarters on the 17th, the day before the convention. Mr. Engelhardt and I planned it out,” and he smiled that split-rock smile again.
For the third time Walter got off that insulting “Huh!” And then in a flash there spread over hisface a thick layer of a peculiar sirupy smile, which I knew to mean an attack of pig-headedness.
“I’m afraid I shall not be able to join you on the journey, Mr. Spafford,” he cooed.
Mr. Spafford looked flabbergasted. He simply didn’t know the repartee. That anybody should disobey Mr. Engelhardt seemed one form of insanity. But here was a human being playing fast and loose with the nomination for governor—that was a form even more awful. His pale eyes popped till you could have knocked them off with a stick.
“Are you ill, sir?” he exploded finally.
“Oh, no—not ill, Mr. Spafford,” Walter answered gently. “But I’m going fishing.”
The cigar which Walter had fed him dropped splib on the floor, and the lower half of his mouth nearly joined it. “Fishing!” he gasped. “Fishing! But—but,” hope dawned. Maybe Walter was absent-minded or deaf or something—he surely hadn’t understood. “Judge Morgan,” he began in a first-reader effect, “it—is—the—nomination—for—Governor.” He got into capitals at that point. “Mr. Engelhardt—the Chairman—of—the—State—”
Walter headed him off. “I know—I grasp,” he interrupted softly. “I would like to be nominated for governor very much, but there’s a big trout, Mr. Spafford—are you a fisherman, Mr. Spafford?” he interrupted himself in dulcet tones.
“No.” The stunned one stared.
“Ah! then you can’t really quite understand. I’m so sorry to disappoint Mr. Engelhardt if he wants me, but you see it’s this way.” He proceeded to explain elaborately, as if in court, the situation to that dumfounded youth. Walter showed him carefully how the fish wouldn’t bite of a morning, and so the first time he could take this one would be the next afternoon. He pointed out that he’d been after this fish off and on all summer, and how big he was, and how one could see that it would be out of the question to leave before he killed him. This and more—details about flies and low water and such things.
When he got through, the head clerk of Bush, Engelhardt & Clarkson didn’t know what he possibly could be talking about. Then a bright idea struck him. Walter was a practical joker—and withthat we got the privilege of hearing Mr. Spafford laugh. It wasn’t dead merry laughter; it sounded like a rapid-fire Christmas horn gone rusty. “I see,” he arrested the flow of it to explain. “You are jesting.” And with that I butted in.
“Not on your life, he isn’t,” I stated. “But it’s too blamed bad. Walter, don’t go and do such a perfectly rotten—” and at that point Walter’s eyes flashed fire, and I stopped hurriedly.
But I didn’t give in for all that. I can get him to do things sometimes when most people can’t, and I was bound to try this time. So that night, after we’d tucked up the Spafford blossom in his downy guest-tent—and he was horrid nervous about beasts and spiders—I went into Walter’s camp and reasoned with the Judge. I pointed out things which are obvious to the intelligence of a frog, and after a while I got him to shed his sirupy smile and talk sense.
“I’m not keen about being at the convention, Bob,” he explained. “If the nomination comes of itself I’ll be delighted, but I’m not the build to roll logs and keep my dignity. And I don’t care to be led down on a leash by that young fool. I don’t knowwhat Engelhardt means by sending me such an infernal puppy.”
“Ought not to talk that way before a boy like me, Walter,” I remonstrated. And then reminded him that Mr. Spafford meant awfully well, and that it was his proud boast that he’d been sent because of his reputation for persistence.
“Persistence—heavenly powers!” Walter groaned. “I should say he was persistent. Like a terrier this whole evening. Made camp a hell. I’m so relieved to get him to bed that I could yell for joy.”
Back I went to the point. I saw he was only reluctant to go out, not dead set against it, and I thought Mr. Engelhardt could likely judge better than he could. I asked him, and he said yes, likely, and that it was no harm to be there for the convention, only—he didn’t feel like it. And he felt amazingly like taking that trout. Well, I managed a compromise. It was agreed that we should break camp next morning, and go down ahead of the guides early in the afternoon to the Golden Pool, he and I and Mr. Spafford, and there Walter should fish till it was time to go on to the club to catch the train.If he could corral the sockdologer before that psychological moment, well and good. If not—well, he wouldn’t promise, but I had a hunch that if we were all packed up he’d go on. Anyhow it was the best I could do. So I took Mr. Spafford aside next morning and stated the case, with a rosy glow over possibilities; and I warned him politely not to nag at Walter or he’d break for the North Pole, and never be governor or anything else but a frozen corpse.
Next morning we were busy little housewives, bundling our earthly alls into the big canvas mail-bags which are our camp trunks. The guides were flying back and forth, and everybody was bubbling French, and lots doing. And in the middle of it the poor Spafford waif clung to the red rocking-chair, with the straw hat on his head, lost in wonder. He couldn’t comprehend why people who might live in houses with rugs on the floor, and lace curtains and upholstered chairs should choose to do this. I saw him stare at a three-inch hole in my left trouser, where my complexion showed through, and then lift his wondering eyes to my gray flannel shirt, with much mountain wiped upon it, and a red cottonbandanna decorating the neck of it—he couldn’t see through the game. You have to be born to it, or you can’t.
We got off about two, Walter and I paddling, and Spiff in the middle, in the hat. We left all the guides to shut up camp and bring on the “butin.” We paddled two miles down the lake, and then into the river among the rocks—it was low water and you had to know the channel. We shot a little rapids, and the flower of civilization was scared blue, but we made the portage, and there I flopped the canoe on my head and walked off, and Walter guided the steps of the stranger. It’s only a mile down the portage to the Pool, so we got there an hour after leaving camp, and Walter at once paid no more attention to anybody. He began to put up his Leonard rod as if it were a religious ceremony; he does it that way. He had his leader ready, and I saw him meditate on the flies, and then open his fly-box and look it over thoughtfully to see if there was anything more seductive to the troutly mind. I remember that cast; it was a Jock Scott for hand-fly, a Silver Doctor in the middle, and a Montreal tail-fly.That’s the way he started. Afterward he changed the Silver Doctor for a brown hackle—it was a brightish day. The minute he began to string the rod, it came to me that we’d forgotten the landing-net. That was ghastly when we were out for big fish, but it was much too far to go back, and I knew the guides would have it, and so I hoped the giant wouldn’t get on, and Walter wouldn’t notice about the net till the guides got there. And I kept mum, not to fuss the fisherman.
The Golden Pool was named that because it is. In September, when we fish there most, the leaves around it have turned yellow, and yellow only, for we’re too far north for red foliage, and it’s all in a bath of gold light. It’s a widening in the river about a hundred yards across, and a lot of it is shallow, so, of a bright afternoon, the tawny-colored sand-bars show through. And all around the shore are tall birches which lean over, and their thin leaves are gold-shot, and the sun glitters through them. There are alders close to the water, and these are frost-touched too, and the stream rushes in over a steep rapids at a gorge between alder walls. It tumblesflashing around rocks in tier on tier of champagne whiteness, with sherry-colored slides of smooth water, and in the deep holes it’s the gold-brown of brandy. Flecks of foam whirl over the surface, and under the bushes at the edge lie feathery hunks of it like piles of whipped cream a foot square. As you get to the place from the shadow and quiet of the woods, you seem to have come into a shower of glancing light and movement and excitement. You breathe in autumn and energy sharply. Yet it’s all as still and remote as the big shadows on the mountains. That’s the Golden Pool, and that’s where we got, the afternoon of September 15, when my brother squatted on the rocks, and put up and strung his rod.
The reel sang as the first line ran, and the snells fell stiff and curly—but not over the hole—trust Walter not to stir up that hole till he was ready for business. In two or three casts the snells were wet, and the flies spun out on the brown, foam-spotted water. And then Walter cast carefully at the edge of the real fishing-ground. Along the left-hand side of the Pool the bottom is all big rocks, and in betweenare deep, cold holes, and there the big trout lie—never many, yet every year two or three good ones are taken by the few who know the secret, from a place about twenty feet square. It’s ticklish fishing, for there are sharp edges to the rocks for an educated fish to dodge under, and more than once a leader has been cut in two by a jerk from a fish that knew his business; and many’s the fly yanked off around those edges. So it’s skill against skill, man with his clumsy inventions against trout with his exquisite instinct—human brains out of their element against trout cleverness in its stronghold. That’s the way it is when you go fishing in the Golden Pool.
Walter cast his prettiest from the first, and that’s very pretty casting indeed. The dim-colored Jock Scott danced delicately toward us as he lifted the tip of the rod, hardly touching the surface; the Silver Doctor just wet its bluish, silverish wings, and the Montreal, with its streak of purple-red, dragged a bit in the water; big trout are more likely to take a fly underneath than to jump for it. It was all done in regulation form, slow recover, wrist motion only,sidewise jiggle as the flies came in, a lengthening line covering the hole slowly from side to side. Close back of us was the forest, with just a few yards of big rocks and low bushes for clear space; the recover, you’ll see, was a critical business. It was mighty easy to catch a fly in one of those alders or on a fringe of tree, but Walter didn’t catch once. He’s a shark at the job. However, it was too early; the sun was too strong; nothing doing. So, after half an hour of exhibition casting:
“Take me across, Bob,” said Walter, his eyes still fast on the Pool.
So I slid the canoe in, away off one side, awfully cautiously so no ripple would disturb the sacred and holy twenty feet square. And Walter stepped in the bow, and I slid the paddle into the water without a splash, and in two or three careful strokes I had him over at the farther side of the pond, well away, but yet within casting distance of the hole. “Zip” went the reel, with the businesslike, sharp, soft sound which means it’s well oiled and well wound and well managed. It’s a joy to hear Walter’s reel. Out flew the nine-foot line of light which wasthe leader, and over the brown water danced three spots of color which were the flies. And then I saw Walter’s fist jerk back about two inches, hard, and my eyes jumped to the leader, and the hand-fly was taut, and there was a bunch of white foam where it should have been, and a great bubbling of water, and the Silver Doctor and the Montreal were floating loose, and the kicking and bubbling and struggling were stronger each second. A fish was on the Jock Scott, and Walter had hooked him. I watched about thirty seconds with my heart in my mouth, and then I knew it wasn’t what we were after. And with that Walter gave his pretty grunt.
“Huh!” he said, and began to reel in, casual-like.
“Smoll feesh?” I asked, as Blanc talks English.
“Yes, the little cuss,” Walter murmured, and yanked up alongside the boat a three-quarter-pound trout.
“Want to keep him?”
“Heavens, no!” said Walter with contempt.
So I laid the paddle in the boat, and wet my hands in the stream, because if you don’t do that yourtouch will take off the overcoat of slime that’s necessary to a fish’s life, and he’ll die. If I’d wanted to keep that fish I couldn’t have landed him without a net. He was hooked by just a thread in the upper part of the mouth. But I got the hook out gingerly, and presented him with the freedom of the pool, and he slid off with no remarks. He lived all right. Then big brother proceeded to disgust himself and me by taking rapidly, one after another, five half and quarter pounders. I threw them all in, and, seeing we were too popular with the small game, we moseyed back to the rocks.
Meanwhile, all this time the outcast from civilization was sitting on my sweater on a rock, gazing in wonder at the lunatics. If it hadn’t been for the infallible Mr. Engelhardt, I’ll bet he’d have shaken Walter as no fit thing for governor, but as Mr. Engelhardt said he was, why, he was. Somehow, because the chairman of the State committee ruled the cosmos, and said so, Walter had to be nominated. So he sat, and just wondered. I thought I’d try to open a dark side of life to his vision—be a missionary, as it were. Walter had brought the rod-case, and Idug out an old fly-rod and strung it, and put on a leader and three flamboyant flies—a Scarlet Ibis, and a Grisly King, and a White Moth—regular flag effect. Then I charmed him with kind words to follow me down the pool a way, and he followed, lamentably complaining. He fell into holes. At last I got him where he couldn’t hurt the fishing, and I showed him how not to hook the tree tops, and how to work the automatic reel, and then I put the rod in his virgin hands and said, “Fire away.”
For about three casts he was doing it to oblige me. Then an infant trout, out of an asylum for feeble-minded orphan fish, jumped at the Ibis and hooked himself enthusiastically. And I took it off and showed it to Mr. Spafford—his first trout! And you wouldn’t believe what a hurry he was in to cast again. It sure was funny. But that’s the magic of the game. The primmest of humans aren’t proof against the lure of fishing when they take something. So he took another, and he was a figure of fun, standing on a rock in that wild place in his store clothes, gleaming at head and foot with brightness of straw and leather, prancing with excitement,and casting very fast. I showed him points, and he began to catch on, but he threw a fit when he hooked the Grisly King to a spruce-tree, and I had to climb for it.
“If you could go faster, Mr. Morgan, I’d be obliged,” he panted. “There’s a large trout in the pool which I can see, and I want to catch it.” And then a frank groan: “Oh, mercy,dohurry!”
So I yanked the fly off the branch and slid, and he was casting before I struckterra cotta.
About then I began to be conscious that time was passing. I looked, and it was 4.30; the guides might be along any minute and we’d have to go on our winding way in half an hour if we caught the train. I glanced across at Walter. He was changing a fly. He put a Brown Hackle in place of the Silver Doctor. He sent two or three short casts, letting out line, and the reel whirred sharp above the gurgling of the rapids. Then he loosed a reckless handful of line on the butt, and his wrist went back, and the flies sailed high and forward and floated out over the pool and touched without a sound—the Montreal under water, the Hackle skimming, the Jock Scottan inch over the surface. A corking cast, over sixty feet, I reckon.
Suddenly there was a swirl, and the Montreal went under deep, with a steady old he-pull. No mistaking that taking of the fly—it was a big trout. Sometimes a huge catfish will make you think he’s a trout, but you can’t ever mix a trout of large calibre with a catfish. It isn’t done.
I saw the swirl and pull, and I leaped into the woods and heard my scholar fisherman wailing as I fled. I knew that Walter had on the whale, and the thought of the landing-net minus made me sick. I crashed through till I got back of Walter; then I called just a word:
“Go slow till I get the net,” and up the trail I bolted to meet the guides.
Right where the Green Velvet Brook comes in I met them; we call it that because there are yards of flat rocks each side of solid emerald-colored moss. Zoëtique was prostrate on his lungs with his face in the drink; Blanc was dipping it up in his hat; the others were lighting pipes; my eyes lit on the four-foot handle of the net, and with that I lit on it. Igrabbed it without breaking the stride, and was loping back down the trail, and not a word said. Those men were surprised—the tail of my eye saw that. I took the portage at a hand gallop, and slowed down twenty feet behind the pool, and crawled out over the rocks to Walter.
“The net is here,” I gasped at him, and Walter didn’t throw me a syllable, but I knew he heard and would be civil when he got time. The brute was sulking. Down in the rocks—blamed dangerous trick. It was all uneven on the bottom, and the rocks were big, and there were deepish holes, and if he could get the leader across a rough edge and yank, or if Walter pulled a bit too hard, he could cut the leader and be off in a second. He knew it too—he was an educated person, that trout. Wherefore it behooved Walter to fish like an archangel.
He didn’t look the part, being screwed into a wuzzle behind his gleaming glasses, but if pretty is as pretty does, he was a beauty. He held Mr. Sockdologer on a short line, just feeling him, and giving him a tiny lift now and then to keep the game going. Exactly the right amount, that’s why fishing ishard; you have to do it right to a hair’s breadth, which is instinct. You acquire it by patient years of losing fish. So the candidate for governor, huddled in a brown lump, sat on an inconvenient-shaped rock and held himself there by one boot planted in the water, and didn’t give a hang for the governorship or the discomfort—those qualifications also go with a fisherman.
I lay along a chosen log six feet back, and watched the battle. And pretty soon I was aware of shapes that melted out of the trees, and it was the guides. They slid together back of me like a group of fauns or other woods creatures only half human, in the shadows, and there wasn’t a sound from them, but a wreath of blue air floated forward in a minute, and I got the dim odor of Canadian tobacco. That odor always seems to me just one remove from leaf-mould and growing ferns and spruce-needles and other forest-speaking smells. So there we all watched, while Walter fought the fight.
And around the corner of the pool, out of mischief, Mr. Spafford, mad with excitement, fished his first fish with squeals of rapture and of agony. I couldn’tsee him, but I could follow the plot by the noises he made, and I had to chuckle, in spite of the real job on hand. First there’d be an “Oh!” high and sharp, of excitement and hope—a trout was on; then an “O—O—Oh!” deep and mournful—he’d lost him. Then he’d adjure them.
“Come, little fishy,” said he; “nice fly—jump for fly, little fishy,” as unconscious as a kitten, and as lost in the game. And pretty soon I heard the men behind me giggling softly, and as I squinted up they were shakingen masse, and trying to see the débutant Izaak Walton around the trees.
About then, out of the hidden deeps the whale suddenly rose right at the rod, coming with a smooth velocity that was terrific. The tip went up, and the reel ate line; the line kept taut. But it was a miracle that did it, and if the beast had got an inch of slack he’d have shaken loose; he knew his job, the trout. And the next second the reel screamed, and off he went like a cannon-ball, out and out and out, tearing down the stream, and Walter had the rod straight forward, lowered almost to the water, giving him line by the yard. It was a tremendous rush, and I tellyou I was proud of Walter. That minute and the next two or three were the most superb fishing-show I ever had the luck to be in at. For no sooner had the beast run like mad for sixty feet straight from us, than he whirled as chain lightning, and scooted for us, licketty-split. I thought that settled it; no human could manage a line at that angle, I thought. I heard Zoëtique gasp softly back of me:
“Mais, bon Dieu, c’est fini!”
But it wasn’t “fini.” Up flew the tip of the rod; Walter was turning the reel rapidly, and the line was ripping in without a sag, without a jerk—I never saw the equal of it. That, if you please, sir, is fishing. Also it was lightning. Quick! Heavings! It discouraged old man whale. Down he went into the rocks again, sulking, and I knew Walter would rather have him do rushes than that, for there’s nothing so anxious in all fishery. You can’t ever tell what minute’s going to be an earthquake, and you don’t know what jagged edges he’s got down there to jerk himself across, and you don’t dare pull him, and you don’t dare hold him easy. It’s all guesswork, and mighty dangerous. Moreover, for a hole, thehole was shallow, and you had less leeway with the line, and a mistake in gauging the depths would be fatal quicker than in deep water. So Walter had a handful and a brainful.
Into that breathless situation reverberated a roar. “Oh, Mr. Morgan!Oh, Judge! Oh, Mr. Morgan—come and get ME. I—want—to—go! It’s five o’clock! Come, and get ME! It’s five o’—”
And about there Walter looked up and frowned vaguely, and I arose 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 samepoint, 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 enoughI’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’stime, 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 personcouldunderstand 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 eachtime, 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 greattrout! 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.