“Je vous dites ce que nous faisait,” he addressed them enthusiastically.
Then he arranged, with further language, that the three, he and Blanc and Zoëtique, should go down to the Golden Pool the next afternoon and collar that fish. Then he let the men loose, and they dissolved into the woods toward their own camp, and Walter glared at me joyfully through his goggles.
“Bob, it’s a sockdologer; it’s the one that nibbled at my fly two weeks ago, and I couldn’t get him on. But it was hot, then, and low water, and lots of flies for the fish to fill up on. Now it’s cold, and they’re gathering in the deep holes, and the flies are frozen out—I’ll get him.”
“Please the pigs, you will,” agreed I. “Sounds like an old he-one, doesn’t it? And Zoëtique never does lie as well as the rest. Give me my letters, won’t you?” and with that he came to.
“Well, Bobby, I haven’t heard about your trip. Did you have a good time? How was the water on Lac à l’Isles? Have the beaver raised it? And did you see anything? Get a shot?”
My time was come, so I unbosomed my sorrow, and Walter was decent at first and said we all knew what it was to miss, and likely the sights of my rifle were wrong, as Josef suggested, and shooting from a canoe was hell anyhow, and these Frenchmen couldn’t hold a boat still—and all such things. When you shoot crooked there are just so many excuses from which your friends will choose comfort to offer up to you, and you knew beforehand which. But the feeling left is the same. If you’ve missed, you’ve missed, and nothing alters that fundamental grief and the yearning for blood and one more shot, which remains. And conversely, if you’ve hit you don’t give a button how easy the shot was, or how many times you pumped your gun to do it. There’s a profound peace in the pit of your being that religion is powerless to bestow.
So as Walter ran over the reasons why I couldn’t possibly have hit I appreciated his courtesy, and rejoiced to be let off, but I was sore all the same. Besides, there was a gleam behind the spectacles which gave me a good hunch that I wouldn’t be let off forever. A moose—to miss an old bull moose the size of a barn! I couldn’t forgive myself, whatever Walter said, and even if the rifle was gone queer, which it was. I’ll mention in passing that not long after I killed one bigger than the first, but that’s quite another story. I told about my trip, and began on my letters, and Walter took to the newspapers. I heard him laughing in a few minutes, and I looked at him.
“What’s up?”
He glanced at me over a paper, grinning sheepishly. “They’re talking about me for governor.”
“Hey!” I hurled at him, for I was surprised. “You!” And I got up and kicked before him a little. “You! Hooray! Glory has come upon us. And me associating with you just as free—!” Then I sat down. “Tell me what it says,” said I.