"Gracious! you've scared every fish in this hole!" exclaimed Tom. "But that's a good trout. Pick him up and string him. I guess I'll go up stream now, and you fish on down stream. When we each get a dozen, we will go to the camp; but don't stay too long, anyway."
Tom was a little disgusted, I suppose, with the way I yanked out that trout, and thought that I had better fish by myself. He went off up the brook. I determined to catch a dozen as quickly as he did. So I strung my half-pound fish on a hazel twig, and scud along to the next bend of the brook. I had no more than looked to my bait and dropped in there, when I had a bite and (this time more carefully) swung out a thumping big trout that would have weighed near a pound! His sides were well specked with red; he was a beauty!
Taking him off the hook, after some trouble with him in a bunch of brush, I strung him, dropped in again, and had a third one out—smaller—in less than half a minute. The brook was plainly well stocked with trout. Baiting again, I tossed in and caught a fourth in less time than it had taken me to cut off the scred of pork. I got a fifth and a sixth, both good-sized, and had my seventh bite, when, jerking, I lost him, and the hook, catching on a dry pine branch which stuck out from a pile of drift, was broken. It was the only one I had, and I stamped the ground with vexation. Tom would beat me now; and as it would do no good to linger after the hook was gone, I took my string of half a dozen—weighing fully three pounds—and went back to camp as fast as I could, in order to show good time on the half dozen.
I was in a few minutes ahead of Thomas. But he brought a dozen nice ones, though some of his were smaller than mine. He had one larger than my largest, however. The eighteen, as we laid them out on the grass, were a pretty lot to look at, with the sunshine playing on their spotted sides.
Meantime, I had heard Willis's gun several times, and Tom said that he had heard it, too. "He's shooting partridges, or else gray squirrels, I guess," Tom remarked. "Gray squirrels, where they have fed on hazel nuts for a month or two, make a luscious good stew."
Addison had just come out and kindled a fire; and before we had our trout dressed, ready to fry, Willis came in with a string of four partridges, but no squirrels.
"Are the partridges plenty?" Ad asked.
"Well, there's some. They seem a little shy, though," replied Willis, taking the cap off the tube of the gun, which had a percussion lock. "I shouldn't wonder if some hunter had been firing among them, by the way they fly," he added. "But we can get all we shall want."
"Aren't the girls up yet?" said Thomas. "Wonder what they would say if they knew the fire all went out by eleven o'clock! There's lots of bears round here, too."
"That's so," said Willis. "I've seen bear sign out here in the opening this morning in more'n a dozen places."