Saddle And Mocassin Part 6

"I noosed un, sir, I allus nooses 'em. You can't get 'em out with the net, they's too artful. They lies right close on the ground, and lets the net rub over 'em."

Incited to continue, Locke plunges into a dissertation on the art of snaring jack, against which he is very naturally the sworn foe. He proudly recounts how he one day removed eighteen of these cannibals from his water, and, on another occasion, snared a leviathan of nineteen pounds eight ounces. Every now and then producing from an inner pocket a small telescope, the lens of which he polishes on his velveteen cuff, he pauses to reconnoitre suspiciously some distant figures in Nun's Walk, near which he has a small backwater full of "store" trout, that cause him a good deal of anxiety.

"In fact," he continues, a little abstractedly, after one of these surveys, "they's reg'lar reptiles, they jack, and you can't never quite get rid of 'em. You has to keep 'em down. I'm allus looking for 'em.

Now, maybe, you won't believe me, sir, when I tell you that, that there little bit of backwater alongside Nun's Waark gives me moore trouble than all this here put together. I'll just take a cast round there, and see what they chaps there is about. Don't you leave none of your things lying about wheere they Herefords can get at 'em," he warns us, as he prepares to move off, indicating some white-faced cattle grazing in the neighbourhood. "They's moore destructive than our beasts about here.

They'll chew up a mackintosh, or a basket--anything. Now, maybe, you won't believe what I'm going to say, sir, but they eat up my coat once--moleskin it war--and my dinner was in the pockets. Walking pikes I calls they Herefords."

Beyond St. Catherine's Hill heavy rain clouds, fringed with long "drifting locks," are pa.s.sing slowly across the scene, and a few drops of the shower reach us. But in a little while the magnificent skyscape of mountainous c.u.muli, mellowing in the afternoon light, regains its brilliancy, and my energetic companion marches off by himself, convinced that he had put up "the fly" at last. As for me I remain smoking on a rail, lazy and unambitious no doubt, but supremely contented. Perhaps my appreciation of the moment's ease is not a little enhanced by watching another laboriously drying his fly, and crouching low as he creeps along the bank. And so I sit, and let my glance go wandering across the meads to the big elms, over against Nun's Walk and Abbots Barton Farm, where crowded cities of rooks may be seen, the movements of whose black inhabitants are clearly distinguishable in the half-naked boughs; and on and on to scalloped ranks of trees in the farther distance, that, in the scanty foliage of the season, stand out against the horizon like fret-work fans; till, finally, by many a hedge, and field, and ditch, I come back to the river-side again.

The silvery whisper of this spring's young rushes mingles with the harsher rustling of last year's dead blades, and the softened sleepy wash of water at a hatch-hole hard by. Locke says he took a five-pound trout out of that little hatch-hole some years ago, and though of course I believe him, I cannot help casually wondering whether--as an old hunter in Alaska once cautiously added to a choice yarn that he had been telling me about a three-headed fish--"he was the only man who saw it"? With its swelling s.p.a.ces of gla.s.sy smoothness, mantling with opalescent gleams of colour, with its glittering arabesque and tracery of swirl and ripple, its tiny, short-lived surface whirlpools, the full-bosomed river glides by, bearing its now rapidly acc.u.mulating cargo of fly. And in serried hosts the swifts and swallows have congregated above its course, and are busy skirmishing to and fro there. Now mingling and now scattering, crossing and recrossing one another, they clamber up against little currents of wind, and poise themselves, then dive, and skim the surface of the water, daintily picking therefrom fly after fly, and rarely making that slight fault which breaks the deep tones in the distance of the river's reach, with a small fan-shaped flash of silver spray! The fly is up! By twos and threes they came at first, but hundreds inadequately number the unbroken swarms that now cover the water, and Olives of every shade dance past from ripple to ripple in alluring pageantry.

In the whole range of Nature there is probably nothing more exquisitely, coquettishly graceful, than are these water insects. With the stamp of refinement that marks the typically aristocratic maiden, they somehow combine the traditional piquancy of the French actress in opera bouffe.

Nothing can possibly appear more appetising. But these epicurean fish are spoiled. The splendid condition they show at this early season of the year proves that they are overfed; and even under the temptation of such a banquet as the present, they indulge with more or less deliberation.

We are fishing a plain ca.n.a.l-looking piece of water--a kind of upper-school, only frequented by fish of good size, and under a dishevelled tuft of brown rushes on the opposite bank a trout is feeding, taking with the regularity of clock-work about three flies a minute. The little gleam of transparent wings can be seen approaching the fatal spot, undulating with the motion of the tide. There is a slight disturbance on the surface, a subdued rich "gulp" is heard, and a few expanding rings are drifting from the scene of the disaster, whilst the course of the hapless fly is pursued by a short-lived bubble. Again and again the tragedy is repeated, and, at length, opportunely subst.i.tuted for the genuine delicacy, a Light-Olive of silk, feathers, and steel floats over the swirl that marks the masked lair. There is a sudden commotion, a tremendous splashing, and a second later a good fish is making a determined rush for a neighbouring sanctuary of heavy weed. It is a question of pull devil, pull baker. If he reach the weed, he will inevitably escape with the fly and half the collar, and in the absolute necessity of stopping him the b.u.t.t is forcibly applied and a breakage risked at once. Fortunately the fine tackle stands the strain, and, foiled in his purpose, the trout turns suddenly and shoots down stream at a pace that makes the reel sing merrily. For a little while now he sulks in deep water, but, brought to the surface, catches sight of us and darts across the river, following this effort up by a succession of short and savage dashes. Some nice steering and manipulation coax him safely through a dangerous archipelago of weed, and then, though with lowered head, he still endeavours to plough on down stream, the constant strain of tackle begins to tire him. From time to time he yields temporarily to the power that turns him open-jawed against the current, and at length, almost a hundred yards below where he first was hooked, a two-pound-and-a-half fish, in the perfection of beauty and condition, glides into the net. He had fought so gallantly that he deserved to escape.

Before the rise ceases another fish, of within an ounce of two pounds, completes our brace. Then a long period of tranquillity ensues, and it becomes evident that if the trout move again to-day it will be in the evening, and for the evening fishing we do not intend to wait. Pausing to make an occasional cast over a likely spot, therefore, we work back towards Winchester.

In a mood of exquisite serenity the last phase of afternoon is closing.

There is no wind. The sky is filled with soft gold and silver clouds, dimmed by transparent veils of pearliest gray. Black rooks plodding lazily homewards are relieved against its pure tones, and an occasional couple of duck cross its broad fields with strenuous haste that jars oddly with the ineffable calm up there. Upreared in virtual isolation, Winchester Cathedral stretches its great length on the town like a stranded whale--possessed, though, of a majestic dignity and repose that I am afraid the simile does not convey. A curious contrast exists between its ma.s.sive tower and the sharp, pretentious little spires of the modern churches near it, which seem to be tiptoeing enviously to attract unmerited attention. By his works shall a man be known. Does the difference in the style of these buildings indicate any parallel change in the character of the race that raised them?

CHAPTER VI.

ON PEND D'OREILLE LAKE.

With his back against a pine-log, B. sits cleaning his gun, and, for the moment unoccupied, I smoke and watch "Texas" singeing a plucked grouse over the camp-fire. Opposite to him, "Mac" is engaged in baking a damper in an enormous frying-pan, the ringed handle of which is propped against a deadwood stick. The fire itself, built just above the highest water-mark, is composed of drift-wood and confined between two pine-logs, on either end of which are arranged our tin cooking utensils.

In the background lies the lake.

And who is B.? who "Texas"? who "Mac"? What lake is here alluded to? B.

is an old travelling companion of mine; the reader has met him before.

The lake is that called Pend d'Oreille, in northern Idaho, Texas and Mac (partners, and, respectively, an ex-cowboy and unsuccessful miner) are a couple of waifs, whom we found spending the summer in hunting round its edges.

An oddly a.s.sorted pair they were, these two. Texas, the incarnation of action and life, was _vif_, cheery, and good-natured, industrious, ambitious, and roughly but genuinely polite--a man who economised labour, and yet whose hands were never idle, who foresaw events, and as far as possible prepared for them himself. If he were ostensibly wasting his time here, it was because, driven out of Texas by the "chills," he was endeavouring to reinstate his health, before resuming regular work.

He chewed "baccer," talked "stock," washed dishes, had towels drying, water boiling, coffee cooling, an eye for pa.s.sing events, and an ear for transient sounds, simultaneously. What he did, he, nevertheless, did thoroughly, and withal he was intelligent, and talked shrewd sense.

Texas was a true _gamin_ in appearance. There was an irrepressible air of c.o.c.k-sparrow-like bravado about him. His boyish figure was clad in a blue flax shirt, brown flax overalls, and moca.s.sins. His perky nose, of a sun-burnt, fiery red, seemed to be in an everlasting condition of strenuous rivalry with the perky peak of his black cloth cap, and his small bright eyes sparkled in a small round face, of leathery-complexioned features, partially hidden by a dusty-coloured beard and moustache. He c.o.c.ked his eye, he c.o.c.ked his nose, he c.o.c.ked his elbow. Cheek in his presence would have hung its head abashed. He had the effect upon one of a pick-me-up, and you often caught yourself involuntarily smiling as you looked at him.

Mac (an abbreviation, by the way, of "Macaroni"), an old mining enthusiast, was an Italian by birth, and looked like the typical European organ-grinder--a resemblance heightened by the broad black sombrero that he wore. He was one of those easy-going, good-natured men, who inevitably obtain nicknames, and the familiar prefix "old." Old Mac was a capital cook, and though always willing to be employed, was not given, like Texas, to initiating work of his own proper motion. Texas lived entirely in the present; Mac chiefly in the past, or future, in a ruined palace, or brand-new castle in the air. Absently twisting a spear of gra.s.s, or piece of string, in his fingers, he would sit by the hour, cross-legged, gazing into the camp-fire, with eyes that smouldered and darkened, glowed and again grew shadowed, as he dreamt of magnificent "prospects," big "leads," and "twenty-stamp mills," or failure, and the enforced sale of claims at insignificant prices, for lack of "a little more" capital to develop their hidden treasures.

Sometimes he would break abruptly into the conversation with an irrelevant remark concerning mines, or mining, and, seduced by the subject, launch out, and unfold the schemes he nourished for employing that wealth which he would probably never acquire. He had found a good mine once--a well-known mine, which produced $17,000,000 after he had sold the prospect for $1,000.

No occupation is so fascinating as that of mining, it would seem. Once a miner always a miner. Found in any other walk in life, the old prospector is only "lying by" to tide over evil times, or "making a raise" to enable him to return to his favourite pursuit. Even if he resolve to abandon it, sooner or later resolution fails him, and, metaphorically speaking, it is at the mouth of the shaft that he dies.

Nor is there one in a thousand of these men but dies a pauper. Still they are not to be pitied. It matters little how a man dies; the material point is, how he lives. And the lives of these men are spent on the sh.o.r.es of enchanting mirage lakes, they themselves the very genii of wealth, in fancy. If life be a dream, theirs at any rate is a pleasant one, for, in expectation, they enjoy more happiness than is ever achieved by the most fortunate of practical men. And since expectation is the better part of happiness, and they never live to see their idols and ideals shattered, they are doubly to be envied. Perpetually, as it were, beneath the influence of opium, present miseries but lightly affect them, and they revel in "fine phrensies," the magnificence, if not sensuous splendour of which may fairly vie with the gorgeous visions of an Eastern imagination stimulated by majoon.

For a few dollars Texas and Mac had purchased a kind of duck punt, that an amateur undertaker had apparently begun to build as a coffin for his mother-in-law, or some other but little beloved relative. It combined the lightness and symmetry of a wood pile with the sea-going qualities of a crate, and the fact that its present owners had navigated the lake in it for some weeks in safety, afforded a most interesting instance of the inexhaustible mercy of Providence.

It would be useless to recount what led us to this Ultima Thule, or how it further happened that we took ship haphazard with a brace of loafers, and went in quest of game there. Rub the Aladdin's lamp of imagination, and transport yourself to our camp-fire; do so, at least, if you admit the charm of a vagabond life in a fine climate, the enchantment of fine skies, fine days, and finer nights spent at Musette's Hotel de la Belle etoile, undisturbed, though, by the "_courants d'air_" she dreaded.

With doubtful hearts we had embarked in the modified coffin. Laden down with baggage it had had a more than usually unseaworthy appearance. But although once or twice we had shipped seas, and once had been nearly swamped by a billow at least four inches high, after a voyage of six miles we had safely reached the point where the reader first discovered us. Then, whilst B. and Mac had gone out to shoot some grouse, Texas and I had chosen a site for camp, shifted the baggage, lit a fire, and placed in readiness our cooking apparatus and stores.

The million-voiced hum of tiny surf breaking upon the sand, some fifty yards away, was heard in long, low chords, singing a song writ long before the era of man, but whether betokening prophecy or strange record, an eternal requiem or only a pa.s.sing overture, equally unintelligible now. In the crests of the little knot of cotton-wood trees by which we were located, the wind was stirring with a touch so light that it barely tilted the topmost leaves. But in endless corridors of quill-fringed pines, in leagues upon leagues of forest behind us, it had gathered force, and softened by distance, enriched exquisitely in sweetness, in a chorus audible only when sought for above the fairy clashing of leafy cymbals near at hand, its organ tones rose and fell like the measured breathing of a great sound that slept.

"So the bull chased you too, Texas, did he?" said B., looking up from his gun-barrels, as he continued a conversation with reference to an incident that had lately occurred on a small neighbouring cattle-ranch.

"That's what he did, now," replied the ex-cowboy sharply; and he paused to elaborate the singeing of an awkward corner in the anatomy of one of the grouse. "That's what he did--sure! The old son of a gun put after me once. A durned nasty old cuss he is, and don't you forget it!"

"How did it happen?"

"Oh, I was crossing the fields on foot, and the bull he was feeling kinder ugly, I guess; that's all there was to it."

"And he came for you?"

"When he'd got up steam he did. He stamped, and tore, and frothed, and swelled, and primed, and snorted fit to bust 'fore he started. Then fust thing I knew, he dropped his head and put after me on all-fours--horns in front. I backed a piece, but the bull he kept coming, so, as I wasn't looking for any foot race, I jest drew a bead on him, and was going to shoot when Owens [from the ranch] runs down shouting 'not to kill him.'

_He_ drove him off; but the old bull hated to quit--the worst kind."

The autumn evening came early, and closed on us quickly, and save for one red cloud that lingered there, the blue sky was already growing silvery and gray, on the dark bosom of the lake only a few flickering lines of gold and scarlet were playing still, and the purple islands seemed to recede and partially dissolve in the swimming light and air when Texas called us to supper.

Is there any gossip in the world more delightful than that which takes place round a camp-fire? Are there any meetings that leave such soothing impressions and recollections? Look back and note the host of faces, fates, incidents, even of local sounds that the thought of a camp-fire recalls. Yes, local sounds! With the everlasting restlessness, and melancholy of the sough of the wind from the sea, is heard once more the shy, fresh whispering of gra.s.s on the veldt or prairie, the silken _frou-frou_ of bamboo foliage, the tinkling of pine-ta.s.sels, the murmur of falling water. And mingled with the memory of such voices as these, there is the distant thunder of an avalanche or of the hippo, re-entering his native stream, the reverberating roar of the lion, the wild, weird cries of lesser beasts of the bush or jungle, the notes of night-birds, the "Number one, all's well! Number two, all's well!" of the beleaguered camp; the "Lights out" bugle-call, or the sudden alarm of rifles, and the rush of many feet.

Round a Western frontier camp-fire the conversation is always interesting. The change and incident that occurs in the lives of the men who collect there, gives them a fund of ideas not common to their cla.s.s in Europe. The surliest old "tough" amongst them has experience of some line of country, some business, some isolated community, or fashion of life that is well worth while to listen to. Texas had punched cattle from Lower California to Louisiana; Mac had prospected from Mexico to Puget Sound. But besides this, B. was a perfect mine of wealth in Western lore. We had a wide country to range over, therefore, and not until the wood pile that we had collected was almost exhausted did we seek our blankets that night. One of B.'s yarns must be recorded here.

"Away back in the good old times of the West--when fortunes were made and lost in a day, and one went to bed a pauper and woke a millionaire, or _vice versa_--I was cruising round, looking up new mines with an old sea-captain, named Rogers. We were coming down from Virginia City on the stage, and late one evening we got into ----, and found everything in the shape of accommodation occupied. It so happened, however, that Rogers met a friend called Bob Malone, who kept a livery stable there, and he invited us to his place, and put us up for the night. The next morning we hired a buggy from him, to drive out and look at a new 'prospect' that we had some idea of buying, and coming back the horse ran away, and broke a little iron bar under the buggy--did, in fact, about ten dollars mischief to it. The following day we got a room at one of the saloons, and stopped about a week longer there. In the course of that time we tried on two or three occasions to get Malone's bill for damages. But he put us off, and put us off, saying that 'it didn't matter;' 'he had been too busy to attend to it;' 'there wasn't any hurry about it,' and so forth. And it wasn't until just as we were absolutely going off on the stage, that he came up and gave it to the Captain. We were in a hurry, the coach was starting, and there wasn't any time to look into it, so Rogers glanced at the total and paid it. We pulled out, and got on the road, and by-and-by I leant forward to the Captain, who sat on the box-seat, and asked him what I had to give him for my share of the bill. Then he remembered it, and fetched it out, and looked it through. This was how it ran:

Dollars.

"To Carpenter's Work on Buggy . . . 20 To Blacksmith's Work on Buggy. . . 20 To Painter's Work on Buggy . . . . 20 To Damage to Buggy . . . . 20 ---- Total . . . 80 ====

"Well, the old fellow swore by all the G.o.ds of sea or land, and all the ports that he had ever been swindled in, that it was the stiffest bill that he had struck yet. And even after I had paid him my half of it, every now and then as we went along, he would pull it out of his pocket, and take another look at it. But that didn't seem to do him any good, for the more he studied it the madder he got, until finally, when we stopped for lunch, the first thing he did was to get some paper, and write Malone a letter. I forget how it ran, but the gist of it was that, 'In view of the extravagant total of the bill, he thought that Mr.

Malone had taken the opportunity afforded by the injury done to his buggy to charge in a delicate manner for the hospitality that we had received from him. But that since Mr. Malone was a friend of his, not of mine, and he (the Captain) did not like to charge me for hospitality which he had indirectly been the means of _offering_ me, he should be glad to know the exact state of the case, etc., etc.'

"Some time afterwards, I happened to be going up to ---- again, so I got the bill from Rogers, and when I had leisure just dropped in to call on Malone. 'By the way, Malone,' said I, in the course of conversation, 'that was a devil of a bill that you slipped on us the other day.'

"That started him! 'Of all the ungentlemanly and disgraceful letters that he had ever seen, heard, or read of, the Captain's was the worst,'

he said. 'He had never been so insulted in his life. After all his kindness to us--after the hospitality that he had tendered us--after taking us into the bosom of his family circle, to have a letter written to him in such terms was a perfect outrage! He couldn't have believed it, if he hadn't seen it.'

"'Well,' said I, 'that depends, of course, on how you look at it. Now, d.i.c.k Rose wants to give me forty dollars for that bill.' (Rose was the rival livery-stable keeper in the place.)

"'The ---- he does! What for?'

"'Why, he wants to paste it up on his gate, and label it "Bob Malone's Bill," for the boys to come and look at; it would be sure to get into the papers, and there'd be no end of chaff about it. Of course it would be an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Rose.' 'But you ain't going to sell it to him?'

'Why not?' 'What, sell another chap my bill?' 'Why shouldn't I,' said I, 'if I can get half the total for it?' 'Oh!--well, I _am_----Well! Well, there, if it comes to that, I guess I can give as much for my bill as anybody else. ---- me if I am going to have anybody buy a bill of mine!'

'But I didn't say that I was going to _take_ forty dollars for it,' I said. 'The ---- you didn't! What _do_ you want, then?' 'Well, if you want to buy that bill, I guess I could let _you_ have it for sixty dollars; but you'll have to make up your mind about it at once.' The end of it was that Malone brought out the money, and I handed him the bill.

I gave the old Captain thirty dollars, and I think he was better pleased with it than he would have been if he had struck a big Bonanza."