“Bright Star says so. Let’s proceed to find out.”
For more than an hour, it looked as if the doughty Bright Star were wrong, very wrong. Not a solitary nibble did either Tom or Ben secure. And although the young savage kept constantly alert with his sharp spear, he was unable to entice a fish within suitable throwing distance.
At long last, however, just as Tom Gordon was half dozing in the warm spring sun, there came a prodigious tug on his line. After a spirited battle of some five minutes, the excited lad succeeded in pulling ashore a fine, large fish.
“What a whopper of a trout!” cried Ben, thwacking the gleaming creature on the head with a stick, as it leaped and floundered in the grass.
Perhaps a half-hour later, Ben hooked a second trout, of about the same dimensions. This left Bright Star as the only one who hadn’t caught a fish; and although the trio continued their efforts until twilight, the young brave was not able to spear one of the speckled beauties.
“Rock-bug heap good bait,” he said glumly. “Spear no catch um.”
“Never you mind, Bright Star,” said Tom consolingly, “I’ll make you a present of mine. We can’t possibly use two fish of that size.”
By the time that the big fish were cleaned, wrapped in cool, green, wide-bladed grass and packed away in their pouches, the twilight had deepened rapidly. A dark cloud-bank had come up in the west to mar the end of the bright blue day; and night would now fall with surprising swiftness.
“High time to leg it for the fort,” said Ben, viewing the suddenly darkening sky with some apprehension.
“We’ll never make it in daylight,” replied Tom, “that’s plain to see.”