Part 1

Produced by David Widger from page images generously provided by the Internet Archive

DAYS IN THE OPEN

By Lathan A. Crandall

Illustrated by Louis Rhead

Fleming H. Revell Company

1914

``_Do you know the blackened timber--do you know that racing stream

``With the raw, right-angled logjam at the end;

``And the bar of sun-wanned shingle where a man may bask and dream

``To the click of shod canoe-poles round the bend?

``It is there that we are going with our rods and reels and traces,

``To a silent smoky Indian that we know--

``To a couch of new-prilled hemlock, with the starlight on our faces,

``For the Red Gods call us out and we must go!_

`````--Rudyard Kipling,

`````_The Feet of the Young Men._

_The sun was setting and vespers done, the monks came trooping ont, one by one,

And down they went through the garden trim in cassock and cowl to the river’s brim,

Every brother his rod he took, every rod had a line and hook,

Every hook had a bait so fine, and thus they sang in the even shine,

“Oh! to-morrow will be Friday, so we fish the stream to-day!

Oh! to-morrow will be Friday, so we fish the stream to-day!_”

--Benedict, _To-morrow Will Be Friday_.

THE BOY AND THE BROOK

```_I wind about, and in and out,

```With here a blossom sailing,

```And here and there a lusty trout,

```And here and there a grayling.

```I draw them all along and flow

```To join the brimming river

```For men may come, and men may go,

```But I go on for ever._

`````--Alfred Lord Tennyson,

`````_The Brook_.=

I. THE BOY AND THE BROOK

A, may I go fishing?”

That the boy should use the homely “Ma,” rather than “Mamma,” makes it clear that he is not of our generation, although his generous crop of freckles looks familiar, and his blue jumper, coming down to the knees, and that battered straw hat, are sometimes duplicated in our own day. It is fifty years across which we look, even if he does stand out so clearly. The question is one that he asks daily, if not oftener, from the time when the pussy-willows begin to swell in the spring-time, to the season for comforters and woollen mittens in the late fall.

Hark! Do you hear the voice that is calling the boy? It comes distinctly across the long stretch of years, and is as sweet and compelling now as when it pulled at the heart of the lad on that long-ago summer day. It is the voice of the brook. It gurgles and laughs and pleads. It says, “Ha! ha! ha! Isn’t this a beautiful world, and this the finest day ever? Come on, little boy, and play in my ripples. I’ve some nice peppermint growing on my banks, and all sorts of pretty pebbles that I have washed for you. Look sharp, now! Do you see that trout lying at the head of the riffle? Do you know that I counted thirty-seven as big as he is between the bridge and the Deer Pond? Come and catch ‘em!”

That brook was a part, and a large one, of the first permanent impressions made upon the boy’s mind. It had its rise in a little pond, concerning which there was the usual dark legend that it had no bottom. Just what held up the water was a mystery, but the boy never doubted the legend. It was fed by numerous springs. Vigorous and noisy from the moment when it broke forth from its source, the brook was ten miles of silvery laughter.

“If you’ll not go out of sight of the house you may go for an hour,” says the mother, for she too has ears to hear the call of the brook and can understand its charm for her lad. “Just up in the pasture-lot above the bridge,” calls back the boy, and starts off with his pole and a supply of angleworms wrapped up in paper. Take special notice of that pole, for it is the joy of the boy’s heart.

He had thought that a cedar sapling, peeled and thoroughly dried, made an ideal outfit, until a friend gave him a straight cane-pole painted a brilliant blue. In after years he owned not a few jointed rods, made by hand of split bamboo; but the tide of joy and pride has never risen higher in his heart than on the day when he became the possessor of the blue cane-pole.

There is a place in the pasture-lot where the brook stretches itself out in a long reach of still water. Above and below are rippling shallows. Wary as is his approach, the boy sees the shy trout darting from the riffles into the darker water. Patiently he dangles his baited hook by the side of a sunken log, and trails it temptingly back and forth before the coverts where the cunning fish lie hidden, but all in vain. They have learned by experience that the presence of a blue jumper and a blue pole spells out danger for them, and refuse to take any risks. Is this, like so many other fishing trips, to end in failure? Watch the boy! Laying the blue pole carefully on the ground, he rolls his sleeves to his shoulders and, lying on his stomach on the bank of the brook, thrusts one hand very gently into the water. With the utmost caution he feels here and there under the overhanging sods until at last his fingers touch something that sends an electric thrill tingling through the length of his little body. He feels a trout, and strangely enough it does not stir. The little fingers gently tickle the belly of the trout as they work their way towards its head, and when they have encircled the body at the gills they suddenly contract and the fish is thrown far back upon the grass. This performance is repeated three or four times, and then the trophies are gathered up in the jumper and with blue pole over his shoulder the boy goes proudly homeward.

Many years after the boy had grown to manhood he was riding with a friend on their way to a famous trout preserve. Naturally, the conversation turned to fishing experiences, and he told the story of the brook and of catching trout with his hands. The friend looked a whole volume of incredulity and exclaimed, “Well, of all the fish-lies I ever heard that takes the cake.” When the clubhouse was reached the keeper, a canny Scotchman, was interviewed. “Andrew, did you ever hear of catching trout with the hands?”

“Is it guddlin’ you mean? Mony a time. I’ve caught plenty of ‘em in the burns when a boy.” The skeptic was silenced if not convinced. Since that time a heated discussion of this mooted question has appeared in a prominent sporting journal, and able arguments have been adduced to prove the impossibility of any such feat as that ascribed to the boy. But he knows, and the brook knows, and the blue pole knows; and those may doubt who will.

“May I go fishin’ down in the woods?” The question came from an anxious heart, and the boy proceeded to support his request with reasons. “The biggest trout are down there. Edwin Crumb caught one that weighed ‘most a pound down there last week. There are no big ones in the pasture-lot. I’ll be careful, and I’m ‘most seven now, you know.” It was a momentous question. For two miles after leaving the bridge the brook ran through the woods, and the mother fancied all manner of possible and impossible dangers to her boy lurking among those trees. But then, the lad must be allowed to go out of her sight some time, and the day was full of sunshine.

“If you’ll be very careful, and not go far, and be back early, you may go.”

“Whoop!” and a small boy has disappeared from view before the permission is fairly spoken. No blue pole this time. The brush and alders are too thick and the pole too long. It is only a small birch limb, six feet long, possibly, that he pulls out from under the barn as he hurries to get out of hearing before the mother repents her rashness.

What a day that was! He has not gone far before, alongside the alders in the swift water, almost at his feet, he captures a larger trout than any ever granted him by the pasture-lot. He cuts a stringer from the over-hanging alders, and with fish in one hand and pole in the other proceeds on his adventurous way. For some time he steals along the gravelly bed of the brook, eagerly expectant but without getting even a bite. Certainly this is not very exciting, and his gaze begins to wander to the woods. Is that crinkle-root? Investigation yields a plentiful supply of the peppery plant and also three or four ground-nuts. Then the brook pulls him back to itself and a few rods farther on he comes to a log across the stream and partly under water. His heart gives a thump, for this must be the place where Edwin Crumb caught his big trout. It exactly fits the oft-repeated description. He leaves the bed of the brook, fetches a circuit through the brush and comes out just where he can drop his hook by the upper side of the log in the still water. The answer to his invitation is prompt, but the captive is not as large as was anticipated. Again and yet again he returns his lure only to meet a cordial reception, until five fair-sized trout have been added to the alder stringer; then activities cease.

We cannot follow him all through his eventful pilgrimage, but there is one experience that must not go unrecorded. In a tangle of brush formed by a tree-top which has fallen into a deep place in the stream he spies an open space, possibly eighteen inches in diameter, where the water is covered with scum and foam. Just the place for a big trout, but there is no way of getting even his short pole through the brush. The line is untied, and he goes crawling out on a limb that hangs over the brook, and sits, at last, astride it and directly above the enticing spot. A fresh and exceedingly fat angleworm is looped upon the hook and the wriggling mass is cautiously dropped into the middle of the scum. It has no sooner touched the water than there is a sharp tug and a mighty swirl, but only the hook and the remainders of the worm come back in answer to his pull. Another bait, and again the hook is lowered into the pool. No, the old fellow was not pricked the first time, for here he is again and this time firmly hooked. To balance the body on the limb when both hands are employed in tugging on the line, is no easy task, but at last the trout is in his hands and hugged to his breast. With the fingers of one hand through his gills and the thumb among the sharp teeth of the fish’s mouth, the slow journey is made back to the shore. Glory enough for one day! The prize measures about twelve inches and is thick through. Edwin Crumb’s trout is beaten with room to spare.

But now it dawns upon the boy that he has been gone a long time, and if he hopes to be permitted to repeat this trip he must hurry home. He also becomes acutely conscious of an awful vacuum in the region of his stomach which even crinkle-root and ground-nuts will not fill. He reasons with himself that he can reach home more quickly by striking through the woods to the road than by retracing his way along the brook. He is very sure that he knows the way, but his certitude evaporates steadily as he plunges his way through the woods. Just when he admits to himself that he has no idea in which direction the road lies, he emerges into a clearing and sees before him a group of farm buildings. They are certainly unfamiliar; but some one must live here and he can get directions as to his shortest way home. Who is that in the doorway? It cannot be Mrs. Woodman whose home is only a short half-mile from his own? But it is, and, to make his joy complete, this is baking-day and the good woman hands him out an apple turnover. All turnovers are good, but that one was far and away the best ever baked. A hungry boy and an apple turnover form a great combination.

It would not do to say that the boy and the brook were inseparable companions, for there were long months when the Frost King had everything his own way and the merry stream found it hard work to maintain its appearance even on the shallow riffles. Then there were swift flights down the hillsides for the boy, and long journeys up again dragging his sled. Often in the long winter nights he heard the half-smothered gurgle of the near-by brook, and wondered where the trout lived when the thermometer was below zero.

Even in the summer days the two friends could not be together all the time. A mile or so over the hill was the brown school-house to which the boy must make his pilgrimages five days each week for three months at a time, and where he learned, helped by the pictures, that three cherries and two cherries make five cherries, and wrestled more or less successfully with the multiplication table. The old meadow just above the orchard was a famous place for strawberries, and many hours the boy spent in gathering the luscious fruit while the bobolinks, perched on swaying mullein stalks or the old rail-fence, engaged in a vocal contest of riotous and maudlin song. Then a robin had built its nest on one of the big beams under the meetinghouse shed on the top of the hill, and the eggs must needs be watched and the young birds looked after. Sometimes the children strayed into the burial ground adjoining the church and pushed aside the myrtle to read on the little head-stone the name of a child that had died long, long ago.

If anything could make the boy forget the brook it was his dog. Very likely the dog had a pedigree, but it had not been recorded, and he was as dear to the heart of the child as if his ancestors had all been decorated with blue ribbons. Pedro and the lad knew where the woodchucks lived on the side of the hill above the pond, and it was a red-letter day when one of them was cut off from his hole by the two hunters and Pedro vanquished him in a pitched battle.

The brook has run through the years and its laughter sounds now in the ears of the writer. Somehow he hopes that the River of Life will be like the brook, larger grown. And ever as its murmur is heard a vision of the mother is seen.

The two grew into the boy’s heart together. In the last days when that mother had grown weary and was waiting for rest, the son sat by her bedside and they talked together of the long past days, of the home under the hill, of friends gone on into the silence, and of the brook with its sun-painted trout. She has been sleeping for many years on the banks of the Susquehanna, lulled by the ceaseless flow of the noble river with whose waters the waters of the brook are mingled.

_Here is a story of something that was shown me when I was a little boy. Every time I think of this story it seems to me more and more charming. For it is with some stories as it is with many people--they become better as they grow older.... And that something which was told me when I was a child, you shall hear too, and learn that whatever an old man does, is generally right_.--Hans Christian Andersen, _The Wife Perfect_.

II. THE TWO BOYS

E may safely interpret a lowery day in haying time as a providential hint to go fishing. It did not require a strong hint of this kind to move grandfather, especially when the boy was around; for he not only loved to fish but he loved the boy who loved to fish, and was always planning something for his pleasure.

Why not stop for a moment just here to consider what sort of a grandfather a boy should have? Of course he must have white hair and a kindly face, but these are comparatively unimportant parts of his outfit. It is the disposition that counts. He must not have nerves. The peppery, irascible, impatient man, who growls and sputters on the least provocation, should never set up in business as a grandfather. In order to highest excellence he should keep the boy-spirit through all the experiences of life. The man who has entirely ceased to be a boy is disqualified.

This particular grandsire filled the bill completely. He never scolded, and never even grew tired of answering questions. When the little lad had reached the sled age, the cunning hands of his grandfather built him one that could easily distance all competitors. When skates had become an obsession, it was the same benefactor who invested his hard-earned money in the most wonderful pair that the boy had ever seen, and surreptitiously taught him to use them before the anxious mother knew anything about it. But the crowning day among all the many that these two spent together was that upon which the older boy taught the younger how to use a gun. The gun was a family heirloom, and tradition said that it had done duty in the Revolutionary War. The old flint lock had been removed and a percussion lock substituted; but the hammer refused to stay cocked. When it was fired, whatever might be the result to the object fired at, no uncertainty could be felt about the consequences to the firer; he was kicked certainly, promptly, and vigorously.

On an historic morning in the winter, when the grandfather was going into the woods to chop, he took the boy’s breath away by saying, “If you want to go with me to-day and take along the old shotgun, you may, possibly, shoot a squirrel.”

Will he go? If any boy reads these lines, let him answer. Gun over shoulder, and heart filled with infinite happiness, the boy trudges along the road, through the fields, and into the woods on the hillside, pouring forth a steady flow of talk. When the big beech, which the grandfather is turning into fire-wood, is reached, a council of war is held. Directions are given as to the proper way of handling a gun, and especially this one. “You’ll have to hold the hammer back with your thumb, and when you have taken good aim, let go.” Over and over again it is impressed upon the boy that under no circumstances is he to point the muzzle of the gun toward him.

While instructions are going on, a harsh call sounds from among the distant trees. The boy does not need to be told that it is the cry of the grey-squirrel, and with all the speed that caution will permit he hurries in the direction of the hidden challenger. Every now and then he stops to await a renewal of the cry, and then on again. Now the call is very near, almost directly overhead. Evidently it comes from somewhere high up in that great maple. For moments that seem hours he peers here and there among the leafless branches. At last the flirt of a grey tail catches his eye, and there, stretched along a limb near the top of the trees, lies the quarry. Up goes the long-barrelled gun, but the muzzle refuses to hold still. It describes circles and rectangles and zigzags, but persistently avoids the squirrel. Possibly it is too heavy for the slight muscles. Certainly the boy’s heart is beating a tattoo, and a severe attack of “squirrel fever” has him in its grip. Just as despair is completely overwhelming the lad, he sees a big log near by, and loses no time in getting behind it, with the gun resting upon it and pointing toward the tree-top. With this rest it is possible to keep the contraptious old gun still for a minute. Carefully he pulls back the hammer, takes a long sight over the barrel, and lets go. Have the heavens fallen and has the world come to an end? The gun bellows, and the boy turns a back-somersault in the snow, vaguely fancying that the entire universe has struck him. The squirrel is forgotten for a moment in the surprise caused by the back-action of the gun. But it is only for a moment, and then digging the snow out of his eyes, the boy peers anxiously up at the limb just occupied by the squirrel. It is empty. Has he missed him? Just when humiliation begins to creep into his heart he sees a grey heap on the snow, and sorrow turns to joy.

With gun over his shoulder and the squirrel hidden behind him, he takes the back trail, and soon rejoins the chopper. “I heard the gun go off,” says the old boy. “What did you shoot at?”

“A grey squirrel,” is the answer. “Missed him, eh?” This is the moment of supreme happiness, as the concealed game is brought to the front and the boy cries, “Missed him, did I? What do you think of that?” What amazement, simulated or real, appears on the older face! His surprise even surpasses the boy’s expectation. “Well! Well! If that isn’t a big one, and you killed him all by yourself! I’ll take his hide off when we get home and you shall have him for supper.”

It is more than probable that some dear people, if they have the patience to read thus far, will lay down the book in disgust, saying, “Cruel! Cruel! Boys should be taught never to take life unnecessarily.” The writer accepts their censure with all meekness, and assures them of his hearty sympathy. But he is writing of the boy in the open, the out-of-doors boy, the real boy, not of a becurled and anæmic male child, coddled and restrained and tutored until he is no more than a little manikin. And writing of the real boy as he has been, is, and evermore will be, it must be set down in all honesty that he loves the hunt.

But we have wandered a long way from that lowery day when grandfather said, “Boy, I can’t work in the hay-field today; what do you say to going over to the river fishing?” Now the boy had spent innumerable hours on the creek that flowed past the old farm-house, and had sought acquaintance with the bull-heads and horndace and eels for a mile in either direction, but the river he had fished only in his dreams. He had seen huge pickerel and giant perch which neighbours had exhibited as spoils from this wonderful stream, and in night visions he had walked along its banks and pulled out fish of enormous size and brilliant colouring. Now his dreams were to come true.

In the same valley with the river, and before it was reached, was the canal. Just below a lock, where the water looked to be infinitely deep to the boy, the grandfather stopped and said, “We will try it here for a while.” Nothing happened except that after feeling a tug at his line the boy pulled it in minus a hook. “Probably a turtle,” explains the elder: “Let’s go on to the river.” A quarter of a mile farther on and the shining river is reached, just where a dam had been many years before. Some of the logs remained, reaching out over the water, and upon these the two boys seated themselves and began to fish. Memory has failed to record all the incidents of that eventful day, but it has engraved the picture of the long string of fish which they carried home that night. The record is probably not any more accurate than some of which we read now-a-days, for it declares that this string was something over six feet long, and weighed at least a thousand pounds!

One experience of that day will not allow itself to be forgotten. The boy hooked a fish that put up an exceptionally vigorous fight, but was finally brought in. After it had been unhooked and was being exultantly inspected by the younger and exhibited for the admiration of the older boy, it gave a sudden wriggle, slipped through the hands of its captor, and fell back into the river. Woe of woes! For the time, life was not worth living. The biggest fish he had ever caught had gotten away! In spite of the most heroic efforts his chin began to quiver and then came a burst of tears. “Never mind,” said the older boy, “you’ll catch another just as good.”