Some time after sundown we reached the mouth of a tributary stream known as the Horton Branch. This was a famous trout water, and we determined to fish it thoroughly on the morrow. By the time we had the tent pitched, a few trout caught in the gathering dusk, and a mighty dinner cooked and eaten, our eyes were filled with sleep. We cared not for stories that night, but smoked brief pipes and then turned in.
In the morning after an early breakfast we poled up to the Big Jam, a distance of nearly six miles. The Big Jam is a sort of dam, formed of logs and tree-trunks and a long accumulation of débris. Just beneath it lies one of the finest trout pools I have ever fished—which is saying not a little. The poling up Horton Branch was delightful,—a stiffish current, but few rocks.
Arrived at the pool we made great haste to put our rods together, so tempting were the eddies. Never, surely, shall I forget that morning’s fishing. All the flies in our books seemed equally killing. Those Big Jam trout were insatiable. We soon grew hard to please, and made it a rule to return at once to its native element every fish that did not approach three-quarters of a pound. This had the proper effect of limiting our take to something near what we could at once consume. A few fine fish we packed in salt, in a sort of basket of birch-bark which Stranion ingeniously constructed. Toward noon the fish stopped rising. Then we lunched, and took a long siesta. In the afternoon the sport was brisk, but not equal to that of the morning. No doubt if we had stayed till sundown the morning’s experience would have been amply repeated; but we were not so greedy as to desire that. We left in high spirits at about five o’clock, and slipped merrily down to our camp on the main Squatook.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CAMP ON SQUATOOK RIVER.
That night around the camp-fire stories were once more in demand. Stranion was first called upon, and he at once responded.
“I’ll call this story—
‘SAVED BY A SLIVER,’
and ask you to observe the neat alliteration,” said Stranion.
“In the autumn of 1887 I was hunting in those wildernesses about the headwaters of that famous salmon river, the south-west Miramichi. I had old Jake Christison with me, the best woodsman on the river; and I had also my inseparable companion and most faithful follower, Jeff, a large bull-terrier. Jeff was not a hunting-dog in any accepted sense of the word. He had no inherited instinct for the chase; but he had remarkable intelligence, unconquerable pluck, unquestioning obedience, and hence a certain fitness for any emergency that might arise. In the woods he always crept noiselessly at my heels, as unembarrassing and self-effacing as my shadow.
“One morning we set out from camp soon after breakfast to follow up some fresh caribou signs which Jake had just reported. We had gone but half a mile into the thickets when the woodsman discovered that he had left his hunting-knife by the camp-fire, where he had been using it to slice the breakfast bacon. To go without his hunting-knife could not for a moment be thought of; so he turned back hurriedly to get it, while I strolled on at a leisurely pace with Jeff at my heels.