“Heavens, no!” said Walter with contempt.
So I laid the paddle in the boat, and wet my hands in the stream, because if you don’t do that your touch will take off the overcoat of slime that’s necessary to a fish’s life, and he’ll die. If I’d wanted to keep that fish I couldn’t have landed him without a net. He was hooked by just a thread in the upper part of the mouth. But I got the hook out gingerly, and presented him with the freedom of the pool, and he slid off with no remarks. He lived all right. Then big brother proceeded to disgust himself and me by taking rapidly, one after another, five half and quarter pounders. I threw them all in, and, seeing we were too popular with the small game, we moseyed back to the rocks.
Meanwhile, all this time the outcast from civilization was sitting on my sweater on a rock, gazing in wonder at the lunatics. If it hadn’t been for the infallible Mr. Engelhardt, I’ll bet he’d have shaken Walter as no fit thing for governor, but as Mr. Engelhardt said he was, why, he was. Somehow, because the chairman of the State committee ruled the cosmos, and said so, Walter had to be nominated. So he sat, and just wondered. I thought I’d try to open a dark side of life to his vision—be a missionary, as it were. Walter had brought the rod-case, and I dug out an old fly-rod and strung it, and put on a leader and three flamboyant flies—a Scarlet Ibis, and a Grisly King, and a White Moth—regular flag effect. Then I charmed him with kind words to follow me down the pool a way, and he followed, lamentably complaining. He fell into holes. At last I got him where he couldn’t hurt the fishing, and I showed him how not to hook the tree tops, and how to work the automatic reel, and then I put the rod in his virgin hands and said, “Fire away.”
For about three casts he was doing it to oblige me. Then an infant trout, out of an asylum for feeble-minded orphan fish, jumped at the Ibis and hooked himself enthusiastically. And I took it off and showed it to Mr. Spafford—his first trout! And you wouldn’t believe what a hurry he was in to cast again. It sure was funny. But that’s the magic of the game. The primmest of humans aren’t proof against the lure of fishing when they take something. So he took another, and he was a figure of fun, standing on a rock in that wild place in his store clothes, gleaming at head and foot with brightness of straw and leather, prancing with excitement, and casting very fast. I showed him points, and he began to catch on, but he threw a fit when he hooked the Grisly King to a spruce-tree, and I had to climb for it.
“If you could go faster, Mr. Morgan, I’d be obliged,” he panted. “There’s a large trout in the pool which I can see, and I want to catch it.” And then a frank groan: “Oh, mercy, do hurry!”
So I yanked the fly off the branch and slid, and he was casting before I struck terra cotta.
About then I began to be conscious that time was passing. I looked, and it was 4.30; the guides might be along any minute and we’d have to go on our winding way in half an hour if we caught the train. I glanced across at Walter. He was changing a fly. He put a Brown Hackle in place of the Silver Doctor. He sent two or three short casts, letting out line, and the reel whirred sharp above the gurgling of the rapids. Then he loosed a reckless handful of line on the butt, and his wrist went back, and the flies sailed high and forward and floated out over the pool and touched without a sound—the Montreal under water, the Hackle skimming, the Jock Scott an inch over the surface. A corking cast, over sixty feet, I reckon.
Suddenly there was a swirl, and the Montreal went under deep, with a steady old he-pull. No mistaking that taking of the fly—it was a big trout. Sometimes a huge catfish will make you think he’s a trout, but you can’t ever mix a trout of large calibre with a catfish. It isn’t done.
I saw the swirl and pull, and I leaped into the woods and heard my scholar fisherman wailing as I fled. I knew that Walter had on the whale, and the thought of the landing-net minus made me sick. I crashed through till I got back of Walter; then I called just a word:
“Go slow till I get the net,” and up the trail I bolted to meet the guides.