“What did you fight about?” I asked.
“Fishing,” Chet told me. “We used to always fish Marsh Brook, where you and I went last summer. Where you caught the big trout in that hole in the woods. Remember?”
I nodded. The memory was very sweetly clear.
“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.”