Part 2

The clear eyes met the man’s with frank, pleased surprise; Jack never got used to the astonishing goodness of people in wanting him about. “Why, we’ll do that with bells on, if you’d really like us, sir,” he agreed heartily.

Ten minutes later the two lads were swinging again through the shifting mystery of the portage, following the narrowing river farther and farther up-stream, while the large m’sieur and Adelard, now in a pleasanter humor, progressed down-stream to the lake and the camp.

About six o’clock that evening the large m’sieur, whose name, incidentally, was Bradlee, spread a gray camp blanket on the pine-needles in front of his immense walled tent, and stretched it with care to the foot of a peculiarly luxurious stump—a stump of the right shape and angle and consistency to make a good back for a man to loll against. There is a large difference in the comfort of stumps. Mr. Bradlee sighed an unbroken sigh of satisfaction as he felt his weight settle rightly into curves of stump and of pine-needles and knew that his confidence in both had not betrayed him. It was the only manner of Morris-chair he had about, and it seemed of importance. He had been tramping all the afternoon, and he was tired and wanted luxury; he found it on the gray blanket, with his back against the spruce stump. Luxury, it is said, is a matter of contrast; this man’s scale of such things possibly began at a different point in New York; here in Canada, after a day’s heavy labor in portage and canoe, after coming back grimy and sweating and black-fly-bitten and footsore—after those things, a plunge in the lake and dry flannel clothes and a gray blanket and a stump realized luxury. So he sighed contentedly and shifted his leg to feel how comfortably the muscles ached in repose, as he drew his crowning happiness out of his pocket, that long brown happiness called a cigar. Yet he was conscious as he lit it, and pulled the first delicious puff, that he was still unsatisfied.

“I wish that cub would come,” Bradlee murmured half-aloud.

Behold, around the corner of the spruce point which guarded the bay, dark on the silvery water, a canoe shot forward, swift, silent. Bradlee with one long pull took his cigar from his mouth and held it as he watched. It was a picture to remember—the blue sky with pink and copper cotton-batting clouds; below that the band of dark woods, sunlight gone from them, crowding to the lake; below that the gray shimmer of water and the dark bulk of the canoe, and the double paddle flash of the stroke of the two powerful lads under which the canoe leaped toward him out of the hills. The indescribable intoxication of the Canadian mountain air was about him, immense, pervading; he heard the beat of the paddles and the long swish of the water after each bound of the canoe; now Jack missed a stroke and shot his paddle high in the air in salute, but did not break the infinite quiet with a spoken word.

“Most boys would have howled their heads off at sight; this one respects the sanctuaries,” thought the man.

With that the springing boat was close and he got up and stood at the water’s edge and the bow crushed, with a soothing sound which canoe people know, up the wet sand. Jack arose, stretched his legs, and stepped out, tall and dirty and happy; bare-headed, bare-armed, the gray flannel shirt décolleté around his strong neck, his face streaked with mother earth, and with blood of murdered black flies, but bright with that peace which shines from faces which nature has smoothed for a while.

“Glad to see you, young man; hope you have an appetite,” spoke Bradlee cordially, and felt the place all at once illumined by a buoyant presence.

“_Have_ I?” responded Jack. “Just you watch me, sir.”

Shortly, on the sand by the lake-edge, under a wide-branched pine-tree, the table was spread, with trout still sizzling in the frying-pan and flapjacks and maple sugar and thin fried potatoes and other delicacies of camp, which Adelard and his confrère, Louis, brought in relays, laughing joyfully at the enormous hunger of the young m’sieur. Then, while the guides ate their dinner, while the night settled down like some mammoth bird into its nest over the lonely miles of mountains and the quiet stretch of lake, the man and the boy sat by the bubbling birch fire and “smelled wood smoke at twilight,” and talked fishing. Jack was very great at expounding, and it was seldom he had such a chance; he made the most of it. The older man listened as to the Law and Gospel; it was a memorable evening. The Bradlee fishing-tackle was had out and looked over.

“You’ve got some splendid things,” Jack announced in his uncompromising young voice, and regretted to himself the unnecessary extravagance of a poor man. “But the trouble is, there’s a lot that’s—excuse me for saying it—trash. I reckon you just went to a shop and bought what they told you, didn’t you?”

“Exactly.”

“Too bad.” Jack’s wise head shook sorrowfully. “Wish I could have been along. I could have saved you hunks of money. An automatic reel’s a crime, too, you know. Not sportsmanlike. However—you’ll know, yourself, next time.”

“Thanks to you,” said Bradlee humbly.

“Oh, gee, no,” protested Jack. “You’ll just learn, doing it. Let’s see about that cast for to-morrow morning. Now, I’d admire to have a Parmachene Belle—that’s good in these waters.”

The fine, big, new fly-book was opened, and the man flapped a thick leaf or two and nervously drew out a brown fly. Jack had been teaching him the names.

“Oh no!” the boy threw at him. “That’s a Reuben Wood. Hard to remember till you get used to them, isn’t it, though? Here is your Parmachene—see, with the white and red feathers? Put her on for a hand-fly, wouldn’t you, sir?”

Bradlee obeyed with pathetic promptness, fumbling a bit, but getting fly and snell together ultimately.

“That’s—all—right!” approved the boy. “Now—let’s see. A Silver Doctor—this fellow? Don’t you think? I’ve had great luck with that fly. It’s a pretty decent fly.” The owner of the fly-book took his orders and annexed the Silver Doctor to the leader.

“Now—tail-fly. That’s important. Let—me—see.”

But the willing horse suddenly took the bit in his mouth. Bradlee pointed out a patch of scarlet with his forefinger. “I want that one,” he stated.

The boy laughed. “The Scarlet Ibis?” he inquired, like a kind but pitying father. “That wouldn’t do, I’m afraid. That’s too—crude, you see. That’s good for very dark days and very wild waters, where no one has ever fished, and they’re not educated. I’m afraid they’d know better than a Scarlet Ibis at Profanity Pool.”

But the man, so docile up to now, acquired a setness about the mouth. “I want the Scarlet Ibis. I like the name of it, and red is the color I like, and I have an idea it will bring me luck.”

There was something in the large m’sieur, when he spoke in this way, which made one see that he was accustomed to manage things; this was different from the meek scholar of the kindergarten class in fishing. Jack yielded at once and with cordiality.

“Of course, if you’ve got a hunch,” he agreed with his young-elderly benevolence. “Maybe it will bring you luck.”

And the large m’sieur, smiling inwardly, felt that he had been allowed the Scarlet Ibis by an indulgent superior, yet liked the lad no less.

When the thick mists that had blanketed the lake all night were blowing in streamers along the shore and curving to the alders in the damp morning wind; when the forest was a black mass below, but dividing above into spires of spruce-trees under the mystical glow which fast loosed the night-bound shadows; when the grasses in the little beaver meadows were stiff with cold, wet silver, the man and the boy, leaving the guides in camp, started up-stream to Profanity Pool. It was hard to follow the portage at first, so dark it was; a hush was through the woods; no breeze stirred here away from the lake; no little beast rustled; no bird fluttered; the underworld was fast asleep. One felt like a knight of Arthur adventuring into a Merlin-guarded forest.

Even when the two fishermen reached the pool it was dark enough to make the footing uncertain as one crossed from rock to rock, to the sand-bar where the Indian tea-bushes grew, their small old-rose-colored blossoms frosted with dew, and over them in the dim light the same mysterious stillness, as if the night’s sleep were not yet ended. Also it was very cold; the chill crept through sweaters and flannel shirts, through flesh and blood and into the bones and the marrow, as they sat down to put the rod together. Instinctively they spoke in low voices, not to waken the drowsy forest. Then arrows of sunlight shot and caught in the tops of the spruces and crept ever downward. One could see the quiet pool now, and the dark, wet log lying lengthwise, and the brown water; not a stir of life on that level surface, yet under it the great trout must be waking.

The large m’sieur, casting, with his whole heart in his forearm, suddenly was aware of a small tentative resistance somewhere on the leader threading a shimmering way across the pool. Like an electric connection his wrist thrilled in response and the delicate mechanism answered again with a light jerk.

“Steady,” spoke Jack’s deep, authoritative voice. “Something’s after it—don’t jerk. It’s a big one. Recover—don’t get flustered—slow. That’s a peach. Draw the fly slowly—it’s dark yet—let the tail-fly go under a little—not too quick—he’s after it—let him take hold. _Strike!_”

With an appalling suddenness Bradlee was aware of a mighty pull of unseen live strength applied to the gossamer structure of his rod and line, and his wrist flew up antiphonally with a good will which luckily did not break everything concerned. The fish had taken the fly under water, as a big one will; he was on—Bradlee had hooked him. But there was small time to dwell on that point, for the fight had begun without preliminaries. Straight for the log ran the invisible streak of force, and Jack cried out in horror:

“Keep him away—don’t let him get under.”

The large m’sieur’s lips curled back from his teeth, and his eyes gleamed savagely, as he lifted the tip and held the struggling fish on the very edge of the danger zone. The boy, following every pulse-throb, murmured “Good work,” and with that there was a sound as of a mighty garment ripping and the trout was off headlong to the foot of the pool.

“Give him line—quick,” the boy thundered.

And Bradlee, lowering the rod a bit, let the line run out—and behold the trout turned suddenly in his tracks and rushed back. Only luck saved him on that manœuvre; before Jack had cried breathlessly “Reel up,” the man had the tip lifted and his finger on the spring—for he was learning fast—and the line was snapping back in handfuls—yet there was slack for at least two seconds and it was pure chance that the fish did not shake loose. There was a space of quiet after this—dangerous quiet. The big trout was “sulking.” Somewhere down in the bottom he lay, planning fight in his cloudy fish brain, and it was equally dangerous to let him go on and to stir him up. He might be burrowing under a rock with a sharp edge which would cut the leader; he might rise at an inopportune touch and get free with one unexpected effort; everything was dangerous.

“Just wait,” Jack advised. Two minutes of masterly inactivity and then, out of patience, enraged, the enemy rose to the top and flung himself this way and that, tearing, rushing, shaking his head from side to side in a very hopeful effort to shake out the fly. Fisherman’s luck certainly carried the large m’sieur through that peril, for the most expert rodsman can do little but hold on to his tackle in such tornadoes. The fit wore past, however, and was succeeded by a determined attempt, in a series of rushes, to get under the big log. Jack stood close at Bradlee’s side and counselled him through the sharpness of this battle, and Bradlee’s keen mind bent to the execution of his orders with all there was in it. Add to this that the trout was uncommonly well hooked inside the throat, and one sees that the event was not impossible. The time came at length when it was evident that the prey was tiring. The rushes were shorter and executed with less vim, and the great back came up to the surface at times and flopped over limply.

“Gee!” commented Jack, “it’s the best fight I’ve seen in moons. He’s a sockdologer, sure Mike! All of four pounds, sir—look at him—did you see him then?”

With that there was a sharp revival of energy and a dash to the end of the pool, and a double back, repeating the manœuvre with which operations had begun. The last ten minutes of playing a fish have a peculiar danger in the relaxing effort of the fisherman. Not only does the creature struggle less vigorously and so throw one off guard, but the strain has told and one is tired, and then, often, comes an unexpected strong rush which proves successful—the fish is gone.

The large m’sieur, ignorant of what to expect, did not presume, did not relax, and was not taken off his guard. The boy glanced at the set face many times with benignant approval, as the man, silent, intent, fought the flagging fight as earnestly, as watchfully, as at its beginning.

“Them’s um,” Jack indorsed proceedings, as the big fish flopped listlessly at the surface, and the fisherman yet held his line delicately taut, yet led the live weight at its end this way and that. “Them’s um. Don’t take your eye off him or he’ll fool you yet,” and finished with a manner of squeal: “Holy mackerel, but he’s a he-one—I’ll bet he’s close on five.”

At which premature gloating the trout rose for one last fling and shook his mighty head and slashed with his tail and threw his strong, flexible body in a hundred directions at once, whipping the brown water into foam. The boy, crouching with the landing-net at the water’s edge, followed the infinitely quick scintillations with his eyes; the man, lifting, lowering his rod, keeping the line not too tight, not too loose, followed them, as mere human muscles might, with his playing wrist; with that the long, shining body, brown and gold and silver and pink and scarlet and spotted, stopped struggling, floated limply half out of water, and the large m’sieur, flushed, anxious, drew him slowly inshore. Jack, with the net deep in the pool four feet to the right of the defeated king of it, waited till he was close—yet not too close—till a clock in his brain sounded the psychological second, and then—swoop; the net rushed through the brown water, deep under the trout and up with a sure curve. There was a mad flopping and struggling, but the big fellow was in the meshes and Jack lifted him up, both fists gripping the handle of the heavy-weighted net, and held him so at arm’s length high in air.

“Gosh!” said Jack.

The large m’sieur did not say anything, but he lowered the butt of his rod with hands that shook, and brought out a sigh that appeared to wander up in stages from his boots. His face radiated a solemn happiness several flights farther down than words; his eyes were glued to the landing-net with its freight of glory. He sat down on the rocks with his boots casually trailing in the water and sighed profoundly again.

“I caught him,” he stated.

“Sure,” agreed Jack. “You took him, that’s as certain as the Pyramids. What’s more, you did it in style. The way you played that fish, sir, was good enough for anybody. You may not have experience,” Jack allowed candidly, “but I’ll be hanged if you haven’t got promise. You’re a wonder, sir—a plain wonder.”

By now Jack was squatting before the net, laid on a flat stone; his hunting-knife was out of the leather-fringed caribou-skin sheath on his hip, and he had it in his right hand, the dull side of the blade down, while with his left he gathered the net tighter around the still flopping great trout. The wet, dull nose, the staring eyes were uppermost. Jack gave a sharp rap on the back of the neck two or three times repeated, and the king of Profanity Pool, with a long shiver, was still. Then with big-handed dexterity he drew back the meshes and pulled him out, a splendid, shining creature twenty-two inches long.

The large m’sieur, watching the boy’s expert work, made a sudden movement. “What fly is he on?” he threw at Jack.

Jack, carefully withdrawing the net from its twists and double twists around the tail, around the leader and the flies, bent swiftly, examining. There was the Parmachene Belle, tied in a yard or two of wet net-meshes; there was the Silver Doctor, having run in a half-second a complicated course through a system of the same and caught itself in the snell of the Parmachene. That was all. The lad gave a whoop that set echoes ringing in the dark hills about Profanity Pool and the gully of the little river.

“Gosh!” shouted Jack, while the large m’sieur grinned triumphantly, “it’s the Scarlet Ibis!”

* * * * *

Three months later, on a day in November, a tall young man in good clothes, with a clean face and a hat, swung along a street up-town in New York City. The setting and the costume were changed, yet a person who might have met the bare-headed, gray-shirted, earth-streaked woodsman and his guide in the Canadian forest in August might still have known this correct city character as Jack Vance. The freedom of the woods had not yet left his buoyant heels, nor the breeziness of the hills his physiognomy; by these signs he was the same. But his mind was working harder than it had on that morning when he and Josef had found the large m’sieur fishing by Profanity Pool; his eyes were absent-minded and intense; if one might have listened to his thoughts as his long pace lifted them and him over the pavement, it might be that some such sentence as this would have come to the light:

“Now how in thunder am I to tell if that’s interstate commerce or if it isn’t?” Jack was thinking.

With the same whole-heartedness that he had put into his fishing, into his woodcraft, the boy had now flung himself into the study of the law at that hot-house for starting the delicate green sprouts which are to grow into trees of justice, the Harvard Law School. He was in New York for what he would have described as a “bat” of some days, yet his work fermented in his brain in his holiday. He was finding law, as one mostly finds things done with all one’s might, a joy and delight. Yet for all the fun of it he was badly puzzled just now, and anxious as well as eager. After exhausting the sources of information he needed more light.

“If I only knew a man who had a practical hold on it,” his mind went on, throwing out tentacles to search for help, “an older man—a clever man, a man who—” he stopped short; a brain tentacle had touched something in the dimness. Why had there come to him in a flash the familiar atmosphere of the woods, of fishing, of Josef and the little river and—in a flash again he had arrived. “Profanity Pool! The large m’sieur—Mr. Bradlee! He said he was a railroad man—he said I was to call him up and lunch with him; he said if ever he could help me about anything he’d do it—by the sign of the Scarlet Ibis. Ginger! I’m glad I thought of him. The very chap!”

He dashed into a drug-store and rushed to the telephone-booth. Here he was—Bradlee—W. R. H.—that was the man. Wall Street—yes. And he took down the receiver and gave a number. It was a bit roundabout getting Mr. Bradlee. It seemed that the approach to him was guarded by an army of clerks and secretaries.

“He must think he’s mighty precious,” Jack complained to himself.

One must send a name—“Mr. Vance,” Jack said simply. So that when at last a voice out of the long wire was speaking, the words “Yes—this is Mr. Bradlee,” came with impersonal iciness. But Jack was not given to being snubbed; his theory of the friendliness of mankind prevented that, along with other discomforts. “Oh, hello, Mr. Bradlee,” he threw back eagerly. “I hope I’m not butting into business. This is Jack Vance.”

“Who?” The chilly tone was a bit impatient.

“Jack Vance—of the Montagnard Club—we went fishing—don’t you remember—?”

The identification was cut short by a shout at the other end of the telephone in which there was no iciness or impatience at all. “Oh—Jack Vance—why, Great Scott, boy, it’s you, is it? I’m delighted to hear your voice. I was thinking about you yesterday and of how you fell down on the fly question. The Scarlet Ibis was crude, was it? What have you got to say about that now?”

Jack’s great pealing laughter went down the telephone wires in response. “You certainly pasted me on that, sir,” he agreed cheerfully, and then, “I want to know if I can bother you with a question or two about railroads,” he began, and explained the situation briefly. He had been assigned to argue a case in one of the moot courts—the mock trials of the students—of the law school; it was his first case; he wanted to win it “the worst way”; he was at a standstill about a railroad question; he needed the point of view of a practical experience.

“You’re a railroad man, aren’t you, sir?” Jack asked.

There was a second’s hesitation at the other end of the wire, and the answer came as if the speaker were smiling. “Well, yes—I’m called that.” And Mr. Bradlee’s friendly voice went on: “Tell you what, my son—we can’t discuss law over the telephone. Will you come down to lunch to-morrow at the Lawyers’ Club?”

“Why, I’d simply love to do it, thank you,” Jack agreed joyfully.

“Good. One o’clock. Come to my office. Possibly I may find—somebody who will help me advise you. We’ve got to win that case if it takes a leg—it’s a sort of Scarlet Ibis case, I consider, you see.” And with light-hearted laughter again at both ends of the wire the telephone was hung up.

Promptly at one next day a tall young man of fresh color was handed along with distinguished courtesy from one to another of such an array of officials as guards the valuable time of magnates in great offices.

“Gee!” remarked Jack casually as he landed at last in the private office and the very presence of Mr. Bradlee. “Gee, this is ‘some’ different from Adelard Martel and the tent, isn’t it, Mr. Bradlee?”

On the wall of the office, in a frame behind a bulging glass, hung one of the ugliest and one of the most satisfactory personal possessions which earth affords, a trophy trout set up by experts. Its weight, five and three-quarters pounds, was marked clearly in a corner, above the date, August 7, 19—. Hooked in the grim black mouth gleamed a red fly. This work of art was examined, criticised, and appreciated by the visitor before he took his way with his host through the swarming life of down-town to the great Equitable Building, which held the famous club restaurant.

Three men were waiting in the reading-room as the two went in, three grizzled, important personages, who rose up and greeted Jack’s large m’sieur as one entitled to consideration.

“I want to present Mr. Vance to you,” said Bradlee. “Mr. Howell—Judge Carroll—Mr. Fitzhugh.”

And Jack, gripping the hands held out with his friendly, bone-breaking hand-clasp, failed to see the wonder at his youth on the men’s faces, for the wonder in his own mind that the large m’sieur had found him worthy to meet these bully old chaps, who were quite evidently somebodys. Somebodys—who? He wondered further. Shortly he found out.

“I asked you three here,” Bradlee began, waving a comprehensive oyster-fork, “to meet Mr. Vance, for a purpose.”

A bar of red crept up the clear brown of the boy’s cheeks. He had not realized that these dignified persons had come to meet him! He would have described himself as “rattled.”