"On this lake," declaimed the Colonel, "farther from tide water than any other like body of water on this earth, could float our entire navy."
"Safest place in the world for it, too," declared the Groom.
"I know some awfully nice navy men," protested the Bride; "so don't be cattish about the navy."
They had spent many hours on Yellowstone Lake, and days in its vicinity. Paint pots, geysers, and iridescent springs were no longer recorded in the log-book; but when, at the Fishing Cone, the Hired Man came into camp asking for salt, with a cooked trout on his line, and the Bride learned that he had hooked the fish in cold water, and cooked it in hot without moving from the spot, wonder at the marvel was swallowed up in protest on the Bride's part, against such an atrocity.
"Oh, Mr. Snoke, Mr. Snoke!" said she, almost tearful. "How could you! How could you! How would you like to have a thing like that done to you—cooked alive. Oh!"
"Well," said Mr. Snoke. "If you put it that way, I wouldn't be very strong for bein' hooked, let alone cooked. After I'd been snaked out of the drink, I wouldn't care, Bride."
"Well, I move we don't cook any more of 'em until they have gasped out their lives slowly and in the ordinary mode," said the Artist.
"Shore," said Aconite, "no more automobiles de fe for the trout—hear that, Bill? An' speakin' of cookin' fish that-a-way," he went on, creating a conversational diversion. "Old Jim Bridger found a place out here som'eres, where the water was shore deep. At the bottom it was cold, and on the top hot—hot as it is in the Fish Cone over yon. He used to hook trout down in the cold water, and they'd cook to a turn while he was bringin' 'em to the surface an' playin' 'em."
"That sounds to me all right," assented the Colonel.
"The hot water," observed the Professor, "would naturally be at the surface; but as for the tale itself—"