Part 4

Gay blushed and said nothing. She was beginning to think that Pritchard might land a three-pounder as well as not--and she had light-heartedly agreed, in that event, to become the Countess of Merrivale. Of course, the bet was mere nonsense. But suppose, by any fleeting chance, that Pritchard should not so regard it? What _should_ she do? Suppose that Pritchard had fallen victim to a case of love at first sight? It would not, she was forced to admit (somewhat demurely), be the first instance in her own actual experience. There was a young man who had so fallen in love with her, and who, a week later, not knowing the difference--so exactly the triplets resembled each other--had proposed to Phyllis.

They drew the guide boat up onto the meadows and Pritchard, armed with a scoop-net of mesh as fine as mosquito-netting, leaned over the brook and caught one of the grayish flies that were tickling the appetite of the big trout.

This fly had a body no bigger than a gnat's.

Pritchard handed Gay a box of japanned tin. It was divided into compartments, and each compartment was half full of infinitesimal trout flies. They were so small that you had to use a pair of tweezers in handling them.

Pritchard spread his handkerchief on the grass, and Gay dumped the flies out on it and spread them for examination. And then, their heads very close together, they began to hunt for one which would match the live one that Pritchard had caught.

"But they're too small," Gay objected. "The hooks would pull right through a trout's lip."

"Not always," said Pritchard. "How about this one?"

"Too dark," said Gay.

"Here we are then--a match or not?"

The natural fly and the artificial placed side by side were wonderfully alike.

"They're as like as Lee and me," said Gay.

"Lee?"

"Three of us are triplets," she explained. "We look exactly alike--and we never forgive people who get us mixed up."

Pritchard abandoned all present thoughts of trout-fishing by scientific methods. He looked into her face with wonder.

"Do you mean to tell me," said he, "that there are two other D-D-Darlings exactly like you?"

"Exactly--a nose for a nose; an eye for an eye."

"It isn't true," he proclaimed. "There is nobody in the whole world in the least like you."

"Some time," said Gay, "you will see the three of us in a row. We shall look inscrutable and say nothing. You will not be able to tell which of us went fishing with you and which stayed at home----"

"'This little pig went to market,'" he began, and abruptly became serious. "Is that a challenge?"

"Yes," said Gay. "I fling down my gauntlet."

"And I," said Pritchard, "step forward and, in the face of all the world, lift it from the ground--and proclaim for all the world to hear that there is nobody like my lady--and that I am so prepared to prove at any place or time--come weal, come woe. Let the heavens fall!"

"If you know me from the others," Gay's eyes gleamed, "you will be the first strange young man that ever did, and I shall assign and appoint in the inmost shrines of memory a most special niche for you."

Pritchard bowed very humbly.

"That will not be necessary," he said. "If I land the three-pounder. In that case, I should be always with you."

"I wish," said Gay, "that you wouldn't refer so earnestly to a piece of nonsense. Upon repetition, a joke ceases to be a joke."

Pritchard looked troubled.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. "If it is the custom of the country to bet and then crawl, so be it. In Rome, I hasten to do as the Romans do. But I thought our bet was honorable and above-board. It seems it was just an--an Indian bet."

Gay flushed angrily.

"You shall not belittle anything American," she said. "It was a bet. I meant it. I stand by it. If you catch your big fish I marry you. And if I have to marry you, I will lead you such a dance----"

"You wouldn't have to," Pritchard put in gently, "you wouldn't have to lead me, I mean. If you and I were married, I'd just naturally dance--wouldn't I? When a man sorrows he weeps; when he rejoices he dances. It's all very simple and natural----"

He turned his face to the serene heavens, and, very gravely:

"Ah, Lord!" he said. "Vouchsafe to me, undeserving but hopeful, this day, a char--_salmo fontinalis_--to weigh a trifle over three pounds, for the sake of all that is best and sweetest in this best of all possible worlds."

If his face or voice had had a suspicion of irreverence, Gay would have laughed. Instead, she found that she wanted to cry and that her heart was beating unquietly.

Mr. Pritchard dismissed sentiment from his mind, and with loving hands began to take a powerful split-bamboo rod from its case.

IX

Gay's notion of scientific fishing might have been thus summed: Know just where to fish and use the lightest rod made. Her own trout-rod weighed two and a half ounces without the reel. Compared to it, Pritchard's was a coarse and heavy instrument. His weighed six ounces.

"You could land a salmon with that," said Gay scornfully.

"I have," said Pritchard. "It's a splendid rod. I doubt if you could break it."

"Doesn't give the fish much of a run for his money."

"But how about this, Miss Gay?"

He showed her a leader of finest water-blue catgut. It was nine feet long and tapered from the thickness of a human hair to that of a thread of spider-spinning. Gay's waning admiration glowed once more.

"That wouldn't hold a minnow," she said.

"We must see about that," he answered; "we must hope that it will hold a very large char."

He reeled off eighty or ninety feet of line, and began to grease it with a white tallow.

"What's that stuff?" Gay asked.

"Red-deer fat."

"What for?"

"To make the line float. We're fishing with a dry-fly, you know."

Gay noticed that the line was tapered from very heavy to very fine.

"Why is that?" she asked.

"It throws better--especially in a wind. The heavy part will carry a fly out into half a gale."

He reeled in the line and made his leader fast to it with a swift, running hitch, and to the line end of the leader he attached the fly which they had chosen. Upon this tiny and exquisite arrangement of fairy hook, gray silk, and feathers, he blew paraffin from a pocket atomizer that it might float and not become water-logged.

"Do we fish from the shore or the boat?" Gay asked.

"From this shore."

"You'll never reach there from this shore."

"Then I've misjudged the distance. Are you going to use the landing-net for me, in case it's necessary?"

Gay caught up the net and once more followed his stealthy advance upon the brook.

Pritchard had one preliminary look through the field-glasses, straightened his bent back, turned to her with a sorrowing face, and spoke aloud.

"He's had enough," he said. "He's stopped feeding."

Gay burst out laughing.

"And our fishing is over for the day? This shall be said of you, Mr. Pritchard, that you are a merciful man. You are not what is called in this country a 'game hog.'"

"Thank you," he said gravely. "But if you think the fishing is over for the day, you don't know a dry-fly fisherman when you see one. We made rather a late start. See, most of the fish have stopped feeding. They won't begin again much before three. The big fellow will be a little later. He has had more than the others; he is older; his digestion is no longer like chain lightning; he will sleep sounder, and dream of the golden days of his youth when a char was a trout."

"_That_," said Gay, "is distinctly unkind. I have been snubbed enough for one day. Are we to stand here, then, till three or four o'clock, till his royal highness wakes up and calls for breakfast?"

"No," said Pritchard; "though I would do so gladly, if it were necessary, in order to take this particular fish----"

"You might kneel before your rod," said Gay, "like a knight watching his arms."

"To rise in the morning and do battle for his lady--I repeat I should do so gladly if it would help my chances in the slightest. But it wouldn't."

He rested his rod very carefully across two bushes.

"The thing for us to do," he went on, "is to have lunch. I've often heard of how comfortable you American guides can make the weary, wayworn wanderer at the very shortest notice."

"Is that a challenge?"

"It is an expression of faith."

Their eyes met, and even lingered.

"In that case," said Gay, "I shall do what I may. There is cold lunch in the boat, but the wayworn one shall bask in front of a fire and look upon his food when it is piping hot. Come!"

Gay rowed him out of the brook and along the shore of the lake for a couple of miles. She was on her mettle. She wished him to know that she was no lounger in woodcraft. She put her strong young back into the work of rowing, and the fragile guide boat flew. Her cheeks glowed, and her lips were parted in a smile, but secretly she was filled with dread. She knew that she had brought food, raw and cooked; she could see the head of her axe gleaming under the middle seat; she would trust Mary for having seen to it that there was pepper and salt; but whether in the pocket of the Norfolk jacket there were matches, she could not be sure. If she stopped rowing to look, the Englishman would think that she had stopped because she was tired. And if, later, it was found that she had come away without matches, he would laugh at her and her pretenses to being a "perfectly good guide."

She beached the boat upon the sand in a wooded cove, and before Pritchard could move had drawn it high and dry out of the water. Then she laughed aloud, and would not tell him why. She had discovered in the right-hand pocket of her coat two boxes of safety-matches, and in the left pocket three.

"Don't," said Gay, "this is my job."

She lifted the boat easily and carried it into the woods. Pritchard had wished to help. She laid the boat upon soft moss at the side of a narrow, mounting trail, slung the package of lunch upon her shoulders, and caught up her axe.

"Don't I help at all?" asked Pritchard.

"You are weary and wayworn," said Gay, "and I suppose I ought to carry you, too. But I can't. Can you follow? It's not far."

A quarter of a mile up the hillside, between virgin pines which made one think bitterly of what the whole mountains might be if the science of forestry had been imported a little earlier in the century, the steep and stony trail ended in an open space, gravelly and abounding in huge bowlders, upon which the sun shone warm and bright. In the midst of the place was a spring, black and slowly bubbling. At the base of one great rock, a deep rift in whose face made a natural chimney, were traces of former fires.

"Wait here," commanded Gay.

Her axe sounded in a thicket, and she emerged presently staggering under a load of balsam. She spread it in two great, fragrant mats. Then once more she went forth with her axe and returned with fire-wood.

Pritchard, a wistful expression in his eyes, studied her goings and her comings, and listened as to music, to the sharp, true ringing of her axe.

"By Jove," said he to himself, "that isn't perspiration on her forehead--it's honest sweat!"

In spite of the bright sunshine, the heat of the fire was wonderfully welcome, and began to bring out the strong, delicious aroma of the balsam. Gay sat upon her heels before the fire and cooked. There was a sound of boiling and bubbling. The fragrance of coffee mingled with the balsam and floated heavenward. During the swift preparation of lunch they hardly spoke. Twice Pritchard begged to help and was twice refused.

She spread a cloth between the mats of balsam upon one of which Pritchard reclined, and she laid out hot plates and bright silver with demure precision.

"Miss Gay," he said very earnestly, "I came to chuckle; I thought that at least you would burn the chicken and get smoke in your eyes, but I remain to worship the deity of woodcraft. An Indian could not do more swiftly or so well."

Gay swelled a little. She had worked very hard; nothing had gone wrong, so far. She was not in the least ashamed of herself. But her greatest triumph was to come.

Uncas, the chipmunk, had that morning gone for a stroll in the forest. He had the spring fever. He had crossed Placid Brook, by a fallen log; he had climbed trees, hunted for last year's nuts, and fought battles of repartee with other chipmunks. About lunch time, thinking to return to Arthur and recount the tale of his wanderings, he smelled a smell of cooking and heard a sound of voices, one of which was familiar to him. He climbed a bowlder overlooking the clearing, and began to scold. Gay and Pritchard looked up.

"My word!" said Pritchard, "what a bold little beggar."

Now, to Gay, the figure of Uncas, well larded with regular meals, was not to be confounded with the slim little stripes of the spring woods. She knew him at once, and she spoke nonchalantly to Pritchard.

"If you're a great deal in the woods," she said, "you scrape acquaintance with many of the inhabitants. That little pig and I are old friends. You embarrass him a little. He doesn't know you. If you weren't here, he'd come right into my lap and beg."

Pritchard looked at her gravely.

"Truly?" he said.

"I think he will anyway," said Gay, and she made sounds to Uncas which reassured him and brought him presently on a tearing run for her lap. Here, when he had been fed, he yawned, stretched himself, and fell asleep.

"Mowgli's sister!" said Pritchard reverently. "Child, are there the scars of wolves' teeth on your wrists and ankles?"

"No, octogenarian," said Gay; "there aren't any marks of any kind. What time is it?"

"It is half-past two."

"Then you shall smoke a cigarette, while I wash dishes."

She slid the complaining Uncas from her lap to the ground.

"Unfortunately," said Pritchard, "I didn't bring a cigarette."

"And you've been dying for a smoke all this time? Why don't you ask the guide for what you want?"

"Have you such a thing?"

"I have."

"But you--you yourself don't--do you?" He looked troubled.

"No," said Gay. "But my father was always forgetting his, and it made him so miserable I got into the habit of carrying a full case years ago whenever we went on expeditions. He used to be so surprised and delighted. Sometimes I think he used to forget his on purpose, so that I could have the triumph of producing mine."

Pritchard smoked at ease. Gay "washed up." Uncas, roused once more from slumber by the call of one of his kind, shook himself and trotted off into the forest.

Gay, scouring a pan, was beginning to feel that she had known Pritchard a long time. She had made him comfortable, cared for him in the wild woods, and the knowledge warmed her heart.

Pritchard was saying to himself:

"We like the same sort of things--why not each other?"

"Miss Gay," he said aloud.

"What?"

"In case I land the three-pounder and over, I think I ought to tell you that I'm not very rich, and I know you aren't. Would that matter to you? I've just about enough," he went on tantalizingly, "to take a girl on ripping good trips into central Africa or Australia, but I can't keep any great state in England--Merrivale isn't a show place, you know--just a few grouse and pheasants and things, and pretty good fishin'."

"However much," said Gay, "I may regret my _bet_, there was nothing Indian about it. I'm sure that you are a clean, upright young man. I'm a decent sort of girl, though I say it that shouldn't. We might do worse. I've heard that love-matches aren't always what they are cracked up to be. And I'm quite sure that I want to go to Africa and hunt big game."

"Thank you," said Pritchard humbly. "And at least there would be love on one side."

"Nonsense," said Gay briskly. "I'm ready, if you are."

Pritchard jumped to his feet and threw away his cigarette.

"Now," he said, "that you've proved everything, _won't_ you let me help?"

Gay refused him doubtfully, and then with a burst of generosity:

"Why, yes," she said, "and, by the way, Mr. Pritchard, there was no magic about the chipmunk. He's one my brother trained. He lives at The Camp, and he was just out for a stroll and happened in on us. I don't want you to find out that I'm a fraud from any one--but me."

X

The big trout was once more feeding. And Pritchard began to cast his diminutive fly up-stream and across. But he cast and got out line by a system that was new to Gay. He did not "whip" the brook; he whipped the air above it. He never allowed his fly to touch the water but drew it back sharply, and, at the same time, reeled out more line with his left hand, when it had fallen to within an inch or two of the surface. His casts, straight as a rifle-shot, lengthened, and reached out toward the bowlder point near which the big trout was feeding, until he was throwing, and with consummate ease, a line longer than Gay had ever seen thrown.

"It's beautiful," she whispered. "Will you teach me?"

"Of course," he answered.

His fly hovered just above the ring which the trout had just made. Pritchard lengthened his line a foot, and cast again and again, with no further change but of an inch or two in direction.

"There's a little current," he explained. "If we dropped the fly into the middle of the ring, it would float just over his tail and he wouldn't see it. He's looking up-stream, whence his blessings flow. The fly must float straight down at him, dragging its leader, and not dragged by it."

All the while he talked, he continued casting with compact, forceful strokes of his right wrist and forearm. At last, his judgment being satisfied by the hovering position attained by fly and leader, he relaxed his grip of the rod; the fly fell upon the water like thistle-down, floated five or six inches, and was sucked under by the big trout.

Pritchard struck hard.

There was a second's pause, while the big trout, pained and surprised, tried to gather his scattered wits. Three quarters of Pritchard's line floated loosely across the brook, but the leader and the fly remained under, and Pritchard knew that he had hooked his fish.

Then, and it was sudden--like an explosion--the whole length of floating line disappeared, and the tip of Pritchard's powerful rod was dragged under after it.

The reel screamed.

"It's a whale!" shouted Gay, forgetting how much depended upon the size of the fish, "a whale!"

The time for stealthy movements and talk in whispers was over. Gay laughed, shouted, exhorted, while Pritchard, his lips parted, his cheeks flushed, gayly fought the great fish.

"Go easy; go easy!" cried Gay. "That hook will never hold him."

But Pritchard knew his implements, and fished with a kind of joyous, strong fury.

"When you hang 'em," he exulted, "land em."

The trout was a great noble potentate of those waters. Years ago he had abandoned the stealthy ways of lesser fish. He came into the middle of the brook where the water is deep and there is freedom from weeds and sunken timber, and then up and down and across and across, with blind, furious rushes he fought his fight.

It was the strong man without science against the strong man who knows how to box. The steady, furious rushes, snubbed and controlled, became jerky and spasmodic; in a roar and swirl of water the king trout showed his gleaming and enormous back; a second later the sunset colors of his side and the white of his belly. Inch by inch, swollen by impotent fury, galvanically struggling and rushing, he followed the drag of the leader toward the beach, where, ankle-deep in the water, Gay crouched with the landing-net.

She trembled from head to foot as a well-bred pointer trembles when he has found a covey of quail and holds them in control, waiting for his master to walk in upon them.

The big trout, still fighting, turning, and raging, came toward the mouth of the half-submerged net.

"How big is he, Miss Gay?"

The voice was cool and steady.

"He's five pounds if he's an ounce," her voice trembled. "He's the biggest trout that ever swam.

"He _isn't_ a trout," said Pritchard; "he's a char."

If Gay could have seen Pritchard's face, she would have been struck for the first time by a sort of serene beauty that pervaded some of its expressions. The smile which he turned upon her crouching figure had in it a something almost angelic.

"Bring him a little nearer," she cried, "just a little."

"You're sure he weighs more than three pounds?"

"Sure--sure--don't talk, land him, land him----"

For answer Pritchard heaved strongly upward upon his rod and lifted the mighty fish clear of the water. One titanic convulsion of tortured muscles, and what was to be expected happened. The leader broke a few inches from the trout's lip, and he returned splashing to his native element, swam off slowly, just under the surface, then dove deep, and was seen no more.

"Oh!" cried Gay. "Why _did_ you? Why _did_ you?"

She had forgotten everything but the fact that the most splendid of all trout had been lost.

"Why did you?" she cried again.

"Because," he said serenely and gently, smiling into her grieved and flushed face, "I wouldn't have you as the payment of a bet. I will have you as a gift or not at all."

They returned to The Camp, Pritchard rowing.

"I owe you your prospective dividends for the year," he said. "If they are large, I shall have to give you my note and pay as I can."

She did not answer.

"I think you are angry with me," he said. "I'd give more than a penny for your thoughts."

"I was thinking," said she, "that you are very good at fishing, but that the art of rowing an Adirondack guide boat has been left out of you."

"Truly," he said, "was that what you were thinking?"

"No," she said; "I was thinking other things. I was thinking that I ought to go down on my knees and thank you for breaking the leader. You see, I'd made up my mind to keep my word. And, well, of course, it's a great escape for me.

"Why? Was the prospect of marrying me so awful?"

"The prospect of marrying a man who would rather lose a five-pound fish than marry me--was awful."

Pritchard stopped rowing, and his laughter went abroad over the quiet lake until presently Gay's forehead smoothed and, after a prelude of dimples, she joined gayly in.

When Pritchard could speak, he said:

"You don't really think that, do you?"

"I don't know what I think," said Gay. "I'm just horrid and cross and spoiled. Don't let's talk about it any more."

"But I said," said he, "I said 'As a bet, no; but as a gift'--oh, with what rapture and delight!"

"Do you mean that?" She looked him in the face with level eyes.

Once more he stopped rowing.

"I love you," he said, "with my whole heart and soul."

"Don't," said Gay, "don't spoil a day that, for all its ups and downs, has been a good day, a day that, on the whole, I've loved--and let's hurry, please, because I stood in the water and it was icy."

After that Pritchard rowed with heroic force and determination; he lacked, however, the knack which overlapping oar handles demand, and at every fifteenth or sixteenth stroke knocked a piece of "bark" from his knuckles.

Smarting with pain, he smiled gently at her from time to time.

"Will you guide me to-morrow?"

"To-morrow," she said, "there will be enough real guides to go around."

"You really are, aren't you?" he said.

"What?"

"Angry with me."

"Oh, no--I think--that what you said--what you said--was a foolish thing to say. If I came to you with my sisters Lee and Phyllis, you wouldn't know which of the three I was, and yet--you said--you said----"

"It isn't a question of words--it's a question of feeling. Do you really think I shouldn't know you from your sisters?"

"I am sure of it," said Gay.

"But if you weren't?"

"Then I should still think that you had tried to be foolish but I shouldn't be angry."

"How," said Pritchard, his eyes twinkling, "shall I convince the girl I love--that I know her by sight?"

Gay laughed. The idea seemed rather comical to her.