What a dinner Yang and Jack had in readiness for the party that night! The Judge and spouse, after much pressing, had come. The lady could not withstand the trout, especially on a Friday. The judicial pair arrived just as Madge and his Reverence raced into camp on the sturdy mules. The Doctor and guide followed. Madge’s cheeks were glowing, her eyes sparkling, and her tongue rattling, as she leaped from her saddle. “Such a time as they had had! His Reverence had been a duck, and the Doctor for once had behaved himself and kept civil.” She gave her hand to the Judgess, but kissed the Judge.
At Yang’s summons, a jovial company sat down to such a table as campers in the Sierras seldom see. Madge was in ecstasies, and even the Judgess expressed approval. There was real damask upon it, with napkins and silver forks and wine from the hotel, with all sorts of garnitures of Yang’s contrivance.
The dinner began, continued, and ended with fish; but fish cooked in every way which Oriental imagination could devise, and camp facilities permit. Even “Simpson’s Fish Dinner,” of seven courses, in Billingsgate, could not surpass it. The Judgess, having disposed of about a dozen fish, remarked that, after all, these were only California trout, and entirely lacked the flavor, as they lacked the beauty, of their Eastern cousins. She thought, however, that Yang’s salad—of cresses from the Merced—was not bad; but wine—even if it was champagne—when sipped from a tin cup, left much to be desired. Alas! Jack had forgotten to borrow the glasses.
All that evening, around the camp-fire, the party listened to an account of the catch. The Doctor did not hesitate to express his entire disbelief in the story. It was his opinion that Jack had hired the Indians to fish for him, and bribed Yang to hold his tongue. Then Yang spoke:
“You think you heap smart. Jack heap sabee how fish, and you no sabee, but me sabee you. Last Fliday you go fish, and when me water horse, see Injun sellee you fish. I sabee you.”
In the peals of laughter which followed, the Doctor went away to his blankets muttering. So the trout the Judgess had enjoyed a week before were not the Doctor’s catching, after all.
A week longer the party lingered in the valley. Madge and his Reverence became quite expert with the fly. The lake seemed to have yielded all its finny treasures to Jack, but the Merced afforded ample sport. Many strings of trout were sent to fellow-campers, and to friends at the hotel; and one little hamper made the long journey by stage and rail to San Francisco.
The “trout-camp” became famous in the valley, and paragraphs noticing the catch appeared in the Stockton Independent, and even in the Sacramento Bee. Jack had accomplished his purpose, and had not come to the Yosemite in vain.
Then the prairie schooner sailed away through the mountains, Madge and his Reverence driving by turns, while the Judge held his ponderous foot on the brake. Yang was mounted on a mustang, while the doctor and Jack trudged through the dust. Frequent halts were made, the Judgess taking her noon-day siesta; the “three fishers,” as she called Madge, his Reverence and Jack, striking out for some neighboring stream. Near the Tuolumne big trees his Reverence took the largest trout of the trip—a four-pounder. On the Tuolumne Biver the three met with fair success; but on the upper waters of the Stanislaus the sport was better. They tarried by the stream winding through that dead little mining town, Big Oak Flat. The banks of the little river were honey-combed by the old placer mining. The population of the Flat wondered to see Madge cast a fly. Even the Chinamen who were still washing for gold, would throw aside their cradles and pans to gaze.
An ancient beau of the town stranded there fifteen years ago (such a man as Bret Harte would have gloried in), became so enamored with the fair angler that he would have followed in her wake; but the fickle object of his admiration eluded her admirer, and the miner sadly headed his mustang toward his mountain home, promising to call “next time he went to ’Frisco.” The schooner dropped anchor in Oakland. The Judge asked all to dine with him that day week—“a sort of a re-union, as it were, you know.” His Reverence hastened to don something more in keeping with his cloth than a blue shirt; Madge threw a kiss to Jack as the Doctor handed her into a carriage; and Jack was left to cross the ferry alone. Yang, however, had not abandoned him. He produced a piece of red paper and asked Jack to write his address upon it.