There we discovered the skull of a large moose, and extracted the great teeth, fearing they would be the only souvenirs we should obtain of that almost extinct animal.
“My!” said the Colonel, as he pried out one of the grinders; “what a surface for a tooth-ache!”
There, also, we had splendid fishing, and captured many large trout.
The day before we broke up camp we had a run of sport that well-nigh astonished us, and that night at the evening meal we had a rare fish feast, served with the following sauce:
“I don’t care whether you believe this yarn I’m goin’ to tell ye or not,” said Hiram, as he added another vertebra to the pile of trout skeletons accumulating by his plate; “but it’s true as gospel, nevertheless an’ notwithstanding, an’ with me the truth is like the stump of a back tooth—it must cum out. You know, Nichols, where the old farm road from Greenville to Dexter crosses the bridge at Spectacle Pond?”
“Me know,” said the Indian, scarcely raising his eyes from the fire.
“Wall, I was guiding for Doctor L. and Squire B. one day in that region, which happened, by the way, to be a pet fishin’ ground o’ their’n. As we were gittin’ along to the bridge, the Doctor, all of a sudden, says to the Squire, ‘If you’ve no objections, Rufe, I’ll slip ahead of you and cast my flies under that bridge, for ten to one I’ll strike a big fish, as I saw some mighty fine trout there the other day while crossing to see my patient in the old farm beyond.’ The Squire told him to go by all means, but to have some mercy for the sport of other people an’ not to altogether clean the brook. With that the Squire turned around, an’ began to amuse himself at pistol practice with my old hat that I’d set up for a target on a tree, an’ the Doctor, he pegged down the road like mad toward the bridge. I stood an’ watched him jest for fun, for he was a comical old duck, an’ so nervus an’ fussy that I ’spected like’s not to see him tumble overboard. Reaching the spot he made a dozen or so wild casts, but at last succeeded in landin’ his flies under the bridge, when he took a seat on a projectin’ beam, an’ let the current sweep ’em out. Quicker’n ye could say Jack Robinson, I heard a shout; the Doctor’s rod almost bent double, an’ he begun reeling in for dear life. ‘I’ve got him, Mansell; I’ve got him. Come, quick! he’s the biggest fellow I ever hooked.’ Grabbin’ the landin’ net, I ran over the bank to help him. It looked for all the world as if he’d ketched a shark, but as soon as I reached the other side an’ saw the game a flappin’ on the surface, I give a shout that almost blew me to pieces, an’ rollin’ down on the bank, I roared until every ’tarnal rib was sore. What d’ye guess had hold of the old fellow’s line? Why, nothin’ less than a big Shanghai rooster! The animile, as I found out after, belonged to the farm near by. It had been hatched and raised with a brood of ducks, an’ bein’ quite a water-nimp, as they call it, had strolled into the stream to have a pick at the Doctor’s flies. I tell ye what, so long as he lives the Doctor’ll never forgit that bite, for the shock of the discovery knocked him clean off the beam into the water, where I clapped the landin’ net on his old bald head an’ fished him out like a drowned rat. I don’t know how true it is, but they say that ever since he took that bath ther’ hain’t been another trout seen about the brook.”
GOOD SPORT.