“You can’t tell,” I whispered back; “maybe there is bears.”
The deer smelled us, I guess, and off they went, running with the funniest, jumpiest gait you ever saw.
“Did you notice,” asked Mark, “that he asked w-w-who we were?”
“Who asked?” Tallow wanted to know.
“The f-fat man in Billy’s wagon. I could see him asking Billy.”
“Huh!” says I, and on we went.
After a while the ground got higher, and about two miles down we came to a place where the banks of the stream were maybe forty or fifty feet high. Then the stream widened out into a big pool and curved off to the right. It was a dandy place. We sat down, with our feet hanging over, and looked at the water. I noticed some black spots that moved around here and there toward the lower end of the pool where there wasn’t any current, and after a while I got it through my head they were fish—trout. Great big fellows they were. I showed them to the other three, and we sat looking at them, watching how they stayed right around that spot, having a sort of fish meeting, I guess.
The sun was shining bright right down on the water, so that we could see to the bottom where the current didn’t make a ripple. It was pretty deep in spots, too, where the water rushing down had scooped out a hole. It swept around that corner faster than anywhere above.
“Here comes somebody,” says Tallow, and, sure enough, down-stream waded a man, casting away just like we had seen Collins do in the morning. He was an old man—we could tell by the way he carried his shoulders—and he looked tall. He came along, paying no attention to anything but his casting, wading right in the middle of the stream. We watched him without saying anything until he was almost under us.
“If he don’t look out he’s going to wade right into that hole,” says Plunk Martin, but nobody thought to do anything except Mark, and he yelled down: