“No.”
“You must go and see that big water-hammer hit the side o' the world. It weighs a million tons or more, an' swings a hundred an' fifty feet, an' for a dozen miles you can hear the boom of it. Think o' the power in that blow. One o' these days it's goin' to help push us along an' kick a lot o' things out of our way. Down below, the rapids run like wild horses. I call 'em God's horses. One o' these days they'll put 'em on the tread.”
“On the tread!” I exclaimed.
“Yes; every one of 'em 'll tread a turbine an' move a belt, an' then—” He paused and spat over the gunwale, and I looked at him full of wonder. “'Lectricity!” he exclaimed; “streams and rivers o' lightnin'!”
His words impressed me deeply, but I did not fully comprehend them until more familiar with his habit of putting his thought into terms of power. But I thought often of the “big water-hammer” and of “God's horses.”
“Look at the fish,” he said, after a moment of impressive silence. “One of 'em just looked up an' winked at me real insultin'. I don' know but we'd better get offended an' go after em.
“No tackle,” was my answer.
“We'll make some,” said he, promptly. “We're goin' to be hungry by-an'-by.”
He went ashore, stripped some bark off a willow, split it into strands, and began to braid them. In a few moments he had made a fairly good line, and tied it to the end of a pole.
“Will you have a snare or a hook?” he asked. “I can make ary one.”