It is in the two classes of diseases above mentioned that the little cold spring comes into play as a useful beverage. Dyspeptics, however, bathing with less assiduity than their more unfortunate brethren, affect the hot soda water (Number Three), which bubbles up in a strong, hot fountain at the head of the gulch, and surrounded by chalybeate springs of various qualities. This is the water, too, which the mildly ailing like to sip, perhaps mingling a little lemon juice and sugar with it to make a foaming compound grateful both to the taste and the system,—a union rare in these days of doctors.
So, thanking God, we were in no need of the Little Medicine for health, but could enjoy its delicious warmth and fragrance as pleasure unalloyed; but profoundly grateful that for humanity in worse luck there was such an Elim in the desert of our degeneracy, we bade adieu to pleasant, sunny, warm-hearted Wagon Wheel and its jolly landlord,—Mr. McClelland, our compliments, and your good health, sir, in something stronger than mineral water!
Down at the station we went fishing, partly for fun, partly with the urgency that set the boy digging out the woodchuck. Marvelous stories—regular fish stories of eight-pound trout caught on a seven-ounce rod,—had been dinned into our ears; and as for me, I half believed them (for I remembered the splendid fellows we used to snatch from the White Water at pretty Irene cañon, up above Antelope park). Our ambition was not to repeat such performances, but to get one or two of, say a pound and a half each; while the Madame said she’d be thankful if we had a few little ones not worth weighing, by dinner time. So Chum and I went down stream rod in hand.
Having floundered round on the slipping bowlders for awhile without sitting down, we struck a couple of good-sized pools at the head of a riffle; Chum took the upper, I the lower. Making my way out near to mid-stream, I took up my station behind a large flat rock that stood about a foot out of water, and busied myself sending a “coachman” and a “professor” out into my domain with a little hope that I might induce something out of the inviting pool. Before I had been there five minutes, a yell from Chum caused me to look his way. His Bethabard was beautifully arched, and at the end of twenty feet of line something was helping itself to silk.
“I’ve got him; he’s a whopper.”
“That’s the pound and a half I promised you,” I answered, as a beautiful fellow shot across stream not three yards above me. “But you’ll lose him in that current.”
“I know it, unless I work him down your way.”
“Come on with him—don’t mind me.” I reeled in, climbed on the rock, and sat down to see the fun. The noble fellow made a gallant fight, but the hook was in his upper jaw, and it was only a matter of time when he would turn upon his side. Working him down stream, through my pool and round into the quieter water near shore, was the work of ten minutes at least, the captive, seeming to readily understand that still water was not his best hold, kept making rushes for the swift current; but each time he was brought back, and soon began to weaken under the spring of the lithe toy in Chum’s hand. Fifteen minutes were exhausted when the scale hook was run under his gills and he registered one pound twelve ounces.
Apologizing for creating a row in my quarters, Chum went back to his old place, while again I tried my luck. About five minutes elapsed when I heard another not to be mistaken yell.
“I’ve got another—he’s bigger than the first.”