Part 5

And around the corner of the pool, out of mischief, Mr. Spafford, mad with excitement, fished his first fish with squeals of rapture and of agony. I couldn’t see him, but I could follow the plot by the noises he made, and I had to chuckle, in spite of the real job on hand. First there’d be an “Oh!” high and sharp, of excitement and hope—a trout was on; then an “O—O—Oh!” deep and mournful—he’d lost him. Then he’d adjure them.

“Come, little fishy,” said he; “nice fly—jump for fly, little fishy,” as unconscious as a kitten, and as lost in the game. And pretty soon I heard the men behind me giggling softly, and as I squinted up they were shaking _en masse_, and trying to see the débutant Izaak Walton around the trees.

About then, out of the hidden deeps the whale suddenly rose right at the rod, coming with a smooth velocity that was terrific. The tip went up, and the reel ate line; the line kept taut. But it was a miracle that did it, and if the beast had got an inch of slack he’d have shaken loose; he knew his job, the trout. And the next second the reel screamed, and off he went like a cannon-ball, out and out and out, tearing down the stream, and Walter had the rod straight forward, lowered almost to the water, giving him line by the yard. It was a tremendous rush, and I tell you I was proud of Walter. That minute and the next two or three were the most superb fishing-show I ever had the luck to be in at. For no sooner had the beast run like mad for sixty feet straight from us, than he whirled as chain lightning, and scooted for us, licketty-split. I thought that settled it; no human could manage a line at that angle, I thought. I heard Zoëtique gasp softly back of me:

“_Mais, bon Dieu, c’est fini!_”

But it wasn’t “fini.” Up flew the tip of the rod; Walter was turning the reel rapidly, and the line was ripping in without a sag, without a jerk—I never saw the equal of it. That, if you please, sir, is fishing. Also it was lightning. Quick! Heavings! It discouraged old man whale. Down he went into the rocks again, sulking, and I knew Walter would rather have him do rushes than that, for there’s nothing so anxious in all fishery. You can’t ever tell what minute’s going to be an earthquake, and you don’t know what jagged edges he’s got down there to jerk himself across, and you don’t dare pull him, and you don’t dare hold him easy. It’s all guesswork, and mighty dangerous. Moreover, for a hole, the hole was shallow, and you had less leeway with the line, and a mistake in gauging the depths would be fatal quicker than in deep water. So Walter had a handful and a brainful.

Into that breathless situation reverberated a roar. “Oh, Mr. Morgan! _Oh_, Judge! Oh, Mr. Morgan—come and get ME. I—want—to—go! It’s five o’clock! Come, and get ME! It’s five o’—”

And about there Walter looked up and frowned vaguely, and I arose and hesitated as to how to kill quickest. Walter’s eyes strayed back to the brown pool with the white bubbles doing waltzes and two-steps across it; and with that, as I stood reflecting, I was aware that Mr. Spafford was trying to come alone. All of two hundred yards—the dare-devil. I knew it by a crash as of a bull moose, and a howl following. He’d gone into a hole the first thing. “Oh, my! Oh, my!” I heard him moan, and then more crashing, and the guides splashed suppressed laughter all over me, but Walter didn’t hear. His soul was at the end of the thread that dipped out of knowledge at a point of the dark water.

And in a second we were all intent on that same point, for the trout opened up hostilities once more. Without warning he gave an enormous pull and rose to the top and shook himself, and broke water, and beat with his tail, and tossed, and jerked, and rolled, and raised the most dangerous Cain ever, and Walter’s wrist followed the ins and outs of it faster than any mind could possibly think. If your subliminal consciousness doesn’t understand fishing you might as well give up when a trout gets to that act, for no up-stairs thinking-machine ever could follow. However, Walter’s sub-qualities saw him through, and the whale went down again, visibly tired from the struggle.

And out of the woods burst our guest. So sad and bad and mad he was that I crouched before him. “Judge Morgan,” he fired at Walter, who paid no more attention than if a puppy was barking; “Judge Morgan, I’ll say nothing about the condition of my clothes.” So I took notice, and there was a six-inch square tear in the right knee of them clothes, and the piece flopped.

“Too bad,” I murmured, and he glanced at me sarcastically as who should say he knew well enough I’d put that stick to catch him, so I needn’t be hypocritical. He further addressed the court:

“Judge Morgan, I’ll suppose that my discomfort has not been caused intentionally—I’ll suppose that.”

Walter lifted the tip of the rod the least gingerly bit, and promptly lowered it; he was there.

“Judge Morgan, I’ll not further mention myself, but for Heaven’s sake, for reason’s sake, for Mr. Engelhardt’s sake, stop catching that fish and come and catch the train. I adjure you, do not throw away the prize of your career, the governorship,” and that was shrieked in large capitals. His voice trembled with emotion. He thrust his hand into his trousers-pocket, and halted a mere second; then he pulled out of that pocket as he went on—I couldn’t believe my eyes—he pulled out of that trousers-pocket a small, slimy, dead trout, and cast it from him, and pulled out another, and up to six, and discarded them on the rocks contemptuously. And I gasped, and the guides lay down and rolled, choking, but his voice went on in great exhortation: “The governorship! For a fish! Come, Judge Morgan. Be sane. There’s time, but not more than time. We must start this instant—we must hurry—but we can make the train. Judge Morgan, I entreat you—come!”

And that “come” was a howl that penetrated even Walter. When he’s annoyed he’s likely to take his glasses off. He did that now, pulling them away hurriedly with one hand, and staring up at the exhorter near-sightedly, like a troubled bat. “What’s all this?” he growled, and threw me an appealing, irritated glance. “I’m not going anywhere till I kill this fish—you ought to know that, Bob!” and then he put his glasses on and threw one surprised glance at the little dead fishes on the rocks, and settled back to his rod, and I think plain forgot Spafford and me and everything else.

I realized that the universe, barring the trout, had been put up to me, so I took the wheel. “Mr. Spafford, I’m sorry; but it’s no use. Derricks couldn’t stir him. If you want to go on, you can take two guides and make the train all right. I’m awfully sorry, but my brother wouldn’t drop his rod, as things stand, to be made czar; we might as well give up.”

“But it’s insanity! It’s—it’s criminal! It’s—”

I just agreed. “All of that,” said I. “Only it’s Walter. He’s that way, and I can’t change it. It’s pretty selfish of course”—and I looked sidewise to see if the criminal was taking in things, but not an eyelash quivered.

The outraged Mr. Spafford held out a disgusted hand in answer to mine. “I shall tell Mr. Engelhardt, and he will believe me, but he will not understand. No reasonable person _could_ understand that a sane man would throw away the governorship for a fish. Good-by.”

At that Walter looked up with the nice beaming smile which makes him so popular and said pleasantly: “Good-by, Mr. Spafford. Sorry you have to go. It would be nice to be governor, Mr. Spafford, but it’s necessary to finish the job I’m on.” And in two minutes more the dumfounded youth was in a canoe between Henri and Godin, and the paddles were flashing down-stream beyond the Golden Pool.

Walter played the trout twenty minutes more—forty-five minutes in all. There were more rushes, and more sulking, but the runs were shorter each time, and the brute was plainly getting tired. At last the battle was practically over, and the huge fish was swimming near the surface, rolling on its side and flapping its fins helplessly, and Walter drew it this way and that, waiting to land it till the psychological moment when it should be too tired to shy at the net and break loose, as happens often after a great fight. Zoëtique knelt by him on the rocks, intent and excited, but responsible, and dipped the net softly in the stream to make it pliable, and then held its mouth toward the moving fish, following its course, ready every second for Walter’s signal.

“Now!” said Walter, and the net swept toward the trout, and the trout, with a last effort, splashed, tore, ran—Zoëtique had missed him.

We all gasped in unison. Then for two or three minutes more the fish was played gently, carefully, back and forth, near the surface always now, and then suddenly Walter’s chin lifted, and Zoëtique, half in the water himself, brought the net around and up with a splendid sweep, and in it, high in air, flapping and splashing spray over us, was the great trout! And when the net was lowered, and Zoëtique got out his big dirk to finish the beast with a rap on the skull, _v’là!_ he fell off the fly into the net. Lightly hooked as that, and Walter had saved him! It sure was a mighty fish-fight!

My! you ought to have heard Walter sigh. And one minute later you ought to have seen him grin. It was an hour of glory. Then the guides were given cigars and drinks, as is seemly at a great killing, and then the scales were dug out. Six and seven-eighths, just short of seven, the record in the club for the Salmo-Fontinalis on a fly. Of course, they’re taken up to nine pounds in our waters in spring, but that’s trolling, and no credit to anybody. The whale of the Golden Pool holds the record, to this writing, for sporting fishing.

And here ends the first chapter. Walter claims that here ends the story, and that the sequel is a detached incident. But I am now come to man’s estate, and I happen to have a perfectly able hunch of my own about that. It’s the sequel—I give it.

We went back to camp that night, and by careful observations my brother hadn’t a regret in the world, and crowns and principalities and governorships weren’t on his mind, which was et up by a huge gloat over his fish. He was the most deeply satisfied man I ever saw, that night, after he’d “thrown away the governorship”—see Spafford as above. We trotted along back and unpacked our “_butin_,” and settled down, much like that emperor of Russia and his thirty thousand men who drew their swords and put them up again. We stayed a week, and not an uneasy glance did I surprise in Walter, but once and again an amused one with a chuckle onto it, as something recalled the Spafford episode. We got no mail and he seemed not to care. At length we broke camp definitely, and paddled down the lake in the sunshine of a glorious cold September morning, looking back longingly to where our long, low log palace, barred and empty, blinked blind, reproachful windows at us through the trees. We did hate to leave—we always do.

We got to the club-house at five in the afternoon, and everything was dead quiet; not even Demerse, the steward, was in sight. So we wandered up through the birches to the big house and stood a moment on the veranda to watch the guides bring up the _pacquetons_. Walter was bossing it, so I just stared at the last wild-woods picture I’d see for a year. Around the cup of Lac à la Croix in front of us were two sets of mountains: one stretched calm miles of greenness and sunshine into the horizon; its double dipped deep in water upside down, and the wind zigzagged wet silver across the submerged spruce spires. With that, out of the spruce spires as it appeared, leaped Demerse panting before us, excited, much-grinning.

“_Bon jour_, Demerse,” said Walter cheerfully, and shook hands and went on bossing the guides. “Godin, _je veux que vous faisait_”—he began. But Demerse wasn’t to be corked that way. Not much.

“_Bon jour, m’sieur le gouverneur_,” he burst forth. “_Mes félicitations à votre Excellence. On est b’en content de ces nouvelles, m’sieur le gouverneur_,” and he grinned and panted more.

“What the devil are you talking about?” remarked Walter impolitely, and instantly translated, with that friendly comic grin of his which nobody seems to resist. “_Quaw le diable est-ce que vous disez_, Demerse?” he said. With that Demerse burst into the club-house and brought forth bunches of papers. It was so. They’d nominated the old rascal, whether he would or not. We read that first, and Walter was interested enough and pleased enough to satisfy even Mr. Spafford. Then I lit on a head-line in huge letters, which read:

“‘Consider the Contrast. Candidates of Different Calibre. Holloway Leaves Sick Child to Make Speeches. Morgan Says’”—and then I yelped, and joy got in my legs, and I threw down the paper and leaped a leap in mid-air.

“Read it, cub; read it, you young cuss,” Walter fired at me, and I read:

“Morgan says: ‘It would be nice to be Governor, but it’s necessary to finish the job I’m on.’”

In small type below was the story about the fish. All straight, too. Spafford in deep disgust had told it to Mr. Engelhardt, and the chairman had been quick to see how to use it as a campaign catch. Holloway, Walter’s rival, had left his small boy, about to be operated on, to get to the convention, and was awfully criticised for it; so the picture of immovable old Walter sticking to his fishing made a grand set-off to Holloway’s nervousness.

We found it in paper after paper. Mr. Engelhardt said afterward that the simple account of Spafford’s despair and Walter’s solid-rock front of determination to get that trout first, and then attend to the governorship, but to get the trout first anyhow—that the account of that did more for the nomination than Walter’s presence could have done. It seemed to tickle the people to have him look after the job on hand, and be impervious to everything else till he put that through—and that’s the way the old chap is. Single-minded. I brought him up rather well, if I do say it, and I only hope this governor job—for he’s elected now, you see—isn’t going to spoil our camping-trip next summer. So does Walter.

THE REWARD OF VIRTUE

THE REWARD OF VIRTUE

This is a story about my guide, Josef Vezina. He’s a corking guide and a wonder at hunting, and all sorts of a good fellow besides, but he’s a French-Canadian _habitant_, and that means that he’s blind as a bat to some ideas perfectly evident to us. So he did a stunt last autumn one day, all out of kindness of heart, which came near getting me into a nasty hole, and would, if my friend Arthur Shackleton, my roommate at college last year, hadn’t been the best ever, and too square himself to think un-squareness of another fellow. It turned out only a joke on me after it was straightened out, but I was feeling rather shy for a while along at first.

I ought to give some idea of the sort Josef is. Well, to look at he’s a tall, lean, powerful chap of twenty-four, with slim hips and big shoulders, and black hair, and large light-blue eyes which are simply marvellous. They are wide open always, and snap back and forth over everything like lightning, and there isn’t a visible object for miles that they miss. Why, one day out on the lake in a canoe, fishing, Josef said, in his soft, respectful voice:

“M’sieur Bob!”

And I answered, “_Oui_—what is it, Josef?”

“If M’sieur will look—so—in the line of my paddle”—he held it out as lightly as a pencil—“_V’là un oiseau-de-proie_”—hawk—“on the tree across the lake.”

I looked till my eyeballs popped, and not a blessed bird could I see for minutes, and then, with much directing from Josef, I caught sight of a lump with a wriggle to it, on the top branch of a spruce like a thousand other spruces, half-way up a hillside.

It’s a treat to see him bend over a dim footprint in the moss, deep in the woods, and to watch those search-light eyes widen and brighten, and notice how he puts his rough fingers down as delicately as a lady. Then in a minute he’ll blink a quick glance and say quietly:

“_Un orignal_, M’sieur Bob—a moose. There is about an hour that he passed. It is a middle one, and he was not frightened. He but trotted.”

At first I used to say “Gosh! how can you tell all that, Josef?” and he would shrug his shoulders and look embarrassed.

“But it is easy—_c’est facile_—M’sieur. The print is not large or deeply sunken—_calé_—so the animal is of medium size. The marks are close together—he did not jump long jumps as one does to hurry, when _effrayé_. And the left hind foot and right fore foot come side by side—an animal trots so.”

“And the hour, Josef?”

For the life of him he can’t exactly explain that, but two or three times his guesses have been exactly verified. He murmurs something about whether the fern is withered which the moose crushed into his step, and whether a leaf or little twigs have fallen into it, but he lets a lot go unexplained. I reckon it’s judgment that’s come to be instinct by practice and thinking about it. For I believe he dreams hunting, he’s so crazy on the subject, and he’s sure a shark at it too.

He’s a shy fellow and won’t talk to most people, but he’s got used to me because we’ve gone off on trips. Being in the woods alone with a person, camping in one tent at night, and tramping in one another’s steps all day long; putting up with short rations and discomfort, and then having the fun and glory of killing a caribou, or getting a five-pound trout together—that game makes you feel as if you knew the other fellow pretty well. Especially if it rains—Holy Ike! We did have rain on one trip to drown a frog. Three days of it. We were off to find a lake up the right branch of the Castor Noir river, and we didn’t find it at all that “_escousse_”—as the guides say—and we got wetter every step and didn’t get dry at night so you’d notice it, and altogether it was a moist and melancholy excursion. But Josef was such a brick that I had a good time anyway—I’ve discovered that there are many varieties of good times and there’s one tied up in about every package, if you’ll look hard, and shake it out. So we used to have lots of fun building a whooping blaze at night near some little green-mossy arrangement of a brook, and making it go in spite of the rain—Josef’s a wizard at that. We’d get the tent up and chop for the all-night fire, and dry out our clothes and things—it’s wonderful how much you can. And then we’d have supper, and I never hope to taste anything as good as that fried bacon with corn-meal flapjacks. Maple sugar’s fine mixed right in too—we didn’t stop for courses. I’ve had meals at Sherry’s and they’re not in it with our bacon and flapjacks. Then Josef would fumble in his soggy pocket and bring out an old black pipe, and fumble in another pocket and bring out a marbled plug of tobacco, and slice off some with his ferocious hunting-knife, out of the caribou-skin case with fringe of the hide, which he wears always on his belt. Then, when he’d lit up, he’d start in to amuse me—I think he was deadly afraid I’d get bored before we found that lake. He’d tell me anything on an evening off in the woods like that by ourselves—especially, as I said, if it rained. He told me about his sweetheart who died, and about the hundred dollars he’d saved up in five years and then had to pay the doctor from Quebec when his father was awfully ill. He’s had a hard time in some ways, that Josef—yet he has his hunting, which is a great pleasure. I’d tell him about college and big cities, where he’s never been in his life, not even to Quebec, and he’d ask the simplest, most childlike questions about things, so that sometimes it made me feel sorry and a bit ashamed somehow to have had all the chances.

After we’d talked a while that way I’d get him to sing for me, for he’s got a corking voice and they are all musical, these _habitants_. Some of the airs were fascinating, and the words too, and afterward I got him to write down a few for me. The one I liked best began this way:

Les grands bêtes se promenent Le long de leur forêt— C’est aux bêtes une salle— Le forêt, c’est leur salle; Et le roi de la salle C’est le Roi Orignal.

Chanceux est le chasseur Et louable, qui est capable Vaincre le Roi Orignal.

I had a bit of trouble making out the words because he spells his own style and splits up syllables any way that it sounds to him. I’d like to give some of it the way he wrote it, for it sure was queer, but I’d feel as if I were playing a mean trick on poor old Josef if I did that. When he brought the songs to me, written on a piece of brown paper that came around a can of pork and beans, he shrugged his shoulders in an embarrassed way and blinked those enormous light eyes half a dozen times fast, and said:

“_Sais pas_, if M’sieur is capable to read my writing. I do not write very well—me.” Then the shoulder stunt. “M’sieur will pardon, as I have had little of instruction. I was the eldest and could go to the school but two years. It was necessary that I should work and gain money. Therefore M’sieur will pardon the writing.” And you bet I pardoned it, and you see I can’t make a joke of it after that.

All this song and dance is just to explain how Josef and I got to be a good pair, so that he’d get up any hour of the night to hunt with me, and jump at the chance; and would always manage to get me the best pool on a river for fishing, and never let me realize that I was hogging things till after I’d done it. Sometimes the other guides were up in the air at him, but Josef didn’t mind. However, the one chance that was apparently the ambition of his life he’d never yet been able to give me, and that was to kill a moose. I’d been pretty slow at getting even a caribou, and missed one or two somehow—they’re darned easy things to overshoot, for all they’re so big. But that I’d finally accomplished, and I drew a good head with thirty points to the _panaches_—horns—so Josef’s mind was at rest so far. At the present moment the principal reason he was living—you’d think—was that I should get “_un orignal_,” and I didn’t have any objections myself either.

That’s the way things stood when Arthur Shackleton came up to camp. Shacky’s the best sport going, but a greenhorn in the woods—he’d tell you so himself promptly. I saw Josef sizing him up with those huge shy eyes, as Shacky stood on the dock and fired my 30-40 Winchester at a target before we started out on the trip I’m going to tell about. Josef had one foot in the canoe, loading _pacquetons_ into it, busy as a beaver and silent as the grave, and almost too shy to glance at the bunch of “messieurs” who were popping the guns—all the same he didn’t miss a motion. He knew perfectly that Shacky had to be shown the action of the Winchester—how you saw the guard to load, and then saw it again to throw out the shell and put in a fresh cartridge. If it had been the Archangel Michael, Josef wouldn’t have taken much stock in a fellow who didn’t understand the Winchester action, and that afternoon poor old Shacky settled himself. We’d been travelling all day, paddling in canoes and tramping on portages, and we’d gone through two or three lakes and were now working up a little river full of rapids, but with long “_eaux morts_” between them. We were getting to the end of such a dead-water, and Shacky’s canoe was in front, with a guide in bow and stern, and him in the middle, with a rifle. We were behind, but neither of Shacky’s guides, Blanc or Zoëtique, saw the caribou till Josef gave a blood-curdling whisper that waked them up:

“C—caribou! C—caribou!”