"Waugh!"
4.
In the gathering dusk the Wildcat swam and floated for a mile downstream in the currents of the Columbia; then under the insistent drag of a wide-swinging eddy he headed for the leading fences of a great salmon wheel whose plunging buckets dived into the black currents and lifted with their gamble of fifty-pound salmon. Now and then a heavier fish would punctuate the monotony of the catch.
Flopping among their more substantial companions a fleet of leaping steel heads added splashes of silver to the Chinook background.
The swimming Wildcat saw above him the descending framework of the fish wheel. He tried vainly to escape from the cage of wire netting falling from the sky upon him, but he was captured like a moth lost in a butterfly net.
"Lady Luck, good-bye."
The Wildcat dragged in a deep lungful of air as he went under. Five seconds later, preceded by three heavy-set salmon, he slithered down a trough into the storage bin in the hull of the fish wheel. About him were plunging fish. He looked at the square of evening light which glimmered through the hatch.
"Whah at is I?"
A fifty-pound salmon, sliding down the trough, struck fairly against the Wildcat's stomach.
"Fish, how come?"