“At half-past five!”—Ace peered at his wrist watch, then held it to his ear. “Besides, it’s in the East––”
“Looks more like a fire starting off there,” contributed Norris. “Whew! See old Red Top, there?”
“Red Top!—Where Rosa is?”
“I think it must be.”
“Radcliffe’s plumb worried, with the woods so dry, I’ll bet,” Ted surmised. “And short a coupla fire outlooks, at that, I heard there in the Canyon.”
At this point they reached the mouth of the creek that had wriggled down from some spring, and Ace elected to follow it upstream with his Brown Hackles, which he dropped on the water with the most delicate care lest their advent appear an unnatural performance to the wary troutlets watching from the shady pools.
The slender stream raced dazzlingly in the reddening sunshine, as Ace tickled the placid surface of each pool, and the up-stream side of each fallen log, careful lest his shadow fall betrayingly across his miniature hunting grounds. He kept a good ten feet from the bank. And before the red glow had started climbing the Western slope, he had a full string of little fellows,—the prettiest rainbow trout he had ever seen.
Ted, sighting another creek, climbed back along the canyon wall to follow it down-stream with his bait can and his short, stiff willow rod, cut for the occasion with his good old jack-knife. His bait was the remnant of the ham sandwich he had saved that noon for the purpose,—though he had little dreamed at the time how much would depend on their next fishing jaunt.
Keen to out-do his chum by back-country methods, he pushed through the brush that made the gully a streak of green against the granite, until he came to a bend. Here, he knew, there would likely be a pool. He approached warily from above, lengthening his line. He cast well above the bend, so that his bait would sink to the bottom. He was rewarded at once with a bite. With a quick flip, he drew the fish away, and began his string.
For some time he followed down-stream before he saw another likely-looking place. An up-turned stump awoke his sporting blood. Safe refuge for a trout in more ways than one, it offered a 50-50 chance of losing his hook. But Ted lifted skyward at the instant of the bite, and all was well.