“As for grouse,” I said to Jimsy, for his silence was on my nerves, “I will now go and catch you some trout superior to any bird that flies.”
Sir Francis, the snow-white drake, stood by the woodpile as I crossed the enclosure on my way to the river. In the pond the lady ducks were loudly quacking, but I passed them by. I desired the solitude of Buffalo Horn, its pools, its cottonwoods, its quiet presiding mountains; and I walked up its stream for a mile, safe from that clear voice and from the bewildered eye of Jimsy, my once blithe, careless friend.
Unless it be from respect for Izaak Walton and tradition, I know not why I ever carry in my fly-book, or ever use, a brown-hackle; it has wasted hours of fishing time for me. The hours this afternoon it did not waste, because, under the spell of the large day that shone upon the valley, my thoughts dwelt not on fish, but with delicious vagueness upon matrimony, the game laws and those ducks. With the waters of Buffalo Horn talking near by and singing far off, I watched all things rather than my line and often wholly stopped to smell the wild, clean odor of the sage-brush and draw the beauty of everything into my very depths. So from pool to pool I waded down the south fork of Buffalo Horn and had caught nothing when I reached Sheep Creek, by Scipio’s ranch. Here I changed to a grizzly king and soon had killed four trout.
Scipio was out in his meadow gathering horses, and he came to the bank with a question:—
“Find the eggs them ducks laid in the water?”
“Jimsy wanted to know why you didn’t stay to dinner,” was my answer.
“Huh!” Scipio watched me land a half-pound fish. Then: “They ain’t been married a year yet.”
I cast below a sunken log and took a small trout, which I threw back, while Scipio resumed:
“Why I didn’t stop to dinner! Huh! Say, when did they quit havin’ several wives at wunst?”
“Who quit?”