When Life Was Young Part 35

After about the same interval of time and in the same odd, migratory manner, the beautiful school came around four times more in succession; and every time I swung out a handsome one. Kate then took the pole and caught one. Then Ellen caught one; and afterwards Theodora took her turn and succeeded in landing a fine fellow which flopped off the dam once, but was finally secured. In the scramble to save this last one, however, I rolled a loose stone off the dam into the water; and either owing to the splash made by the stone, or because the trout had completed their survey of the pond, they did not return. We saw nothing more of the school although we had not caught a fifth part of them.

After waiting fifteen or twenty minutes we went along the sh.o.r.e on both sides of the pond but could not discern them anywheres. It is likely that they had gone back to the larger pond, two miles distant.

At that time, the very odd circ.u.mstances attending the capture of these trout did not greatly surprise me; for I knew almost nothing of fishing.

But within a considerable experience since, I have never seen anything like it.

We laid the nine large trout in a row on the dam, side by side, and then strung them on a forked maple branch. They were indeed beauties! The largest was found that night to weigh three pounds and three quarters; and the smallest two pounds and an ounce. The whole string weighed over twenty-two pounds. Going homeward, we first took turns carrying them, then hung them on a pole for two to carry.

Our folks were at supper when we arrived at the house door with our cedar and our fish. When they saw those trout, they all jumped up from the table. Addison and Halse had never caught anything which could compare with them for size; both of the boys stared in astonishment.

"Where in the world did you catch those whopping trout?" was then the question which we had to answer in detail.

Kate carried three of them home with her; and we had six for our share.

The Old Squire dressed two of the largest; and grandmother rolled them in meal and fried them with pork for our supper. I thought at the time that I had never tasted anything one half as good in my life!

Next morning Addison got up at half past four and having hastily milked his two cows, went over to the old mill-pond, to try his own hand at fishing there. He found Tom Edwards there already; but neither of them caught a trout, nor saw one. Addison went again a day or two after; and the story having got abroad, more than twenty persons fished there during the next fortnight, but caught no trout.

Evidently it was a transient school. I never caught a trout in the mill-pond, afterwards; although the following year Addison made a great catch in a branch of the Foy stream below the dam under somewhat peculiar circ.u.mstances.

At the far end of the dam, a hundred feet from the flume, there was an "ap.r.o.n," beneath a waste-way, where formerly the overflow of water went out and found its way for a hundred and fifty yards, perhaps, by another channel along the foot of a steep bank; then, issuing through a dense willow thicket, it joined the main stream from the flume.

Water rarely flowed here now, except in time of freshets, or during the spring and fall rains; and there was such a prodigious tangle of alder, willow, clematis and other vines that for years no one had penetrated it. From a fisherman's point of view there seemed no inducement to do so, since this secondary channel appeared to be dry for most of the time.

In point of fact, however, and unknown to us, there was a very deep hole at the foot of the high bank where the channel was obstructed by a ledge. The hole thus formed was thirty or forty feet in length, and at the deepest place under the bank the water was six or seven feet in depth; but such was the tangle of brush above, below and all about it that one would never have suspected its existence.

An experienced and observing fisherman would have noted, however, that always, even in midsummer, there was a tiny rill of water issuing through the willows to join the main stream; and that, too, when not a drop of water was running over the waste-way of the dam. He would have noted also that this was unusually clear, cold water, like water from a spring. There was, in fact, a copious spring at the foot of the bank near the deep hole; and this hole was maintained by the spring, and not by the water from above the dam.

Addison was a born observer, a naturalist by nature; and on one of these hopeful trips to the mill-pond, he had searched out and found that hidden hole on the old waste-way channel, below the dam. When he had forced his way through the tangled ma.s.s of willows, alders and vines and discovered the pool, he found eighteen or nineteen splendid speckled trout in it.

Either these trout had come over the waste-way of the dam in time of freshet, and had been unable to get out through the rick of small drift stuff at the foot of the hole; or else perhaps they were trout that had come in there as small fry and had been there for years, till they had grown to their present size. Certain it is that they were now two-and three-pound trout.

Did Addison come home in haste to tell us of his discovery? Not at all.

He did not even allow himself to catch one of the trout at that time, for he knew that Halstead and I had seen him set off for the old mill-pond. He came home without a fish, and remarked at the dinner-table that it was of no use to fish for trout in that old pond--which was true enough.

The next wet day, however, he said at breakfast to the Old Squire, "If you don't want me, sir, for an hour or two this morning, I guess I'll go down the Horr Brook and see if I can catch a few trout."

Gramp nodded, and we saw Addison dig his worms and set off. The Horr Brook was on the west side of the farm, while the old mill-pond lay to the southeast. What Addison did was to fish down the Horr Brook for about a mile, to the meadows where the lake woods began. He then made a rapid detour around through the woods to the Foy Brook, and caught four trout out of the hidden preserve below the old dam. Afterwards he went back as he had come to the Horr Brook, then strolled leisurely home with eight pounds of trout.

Of course there was astonishment and questions. "You never caught those trout in the Horr Brook!" Halstead exclaimed. But Addison only laughed.

"Ad, did you get those beauties out of the old mill-pond?" demanded Ellen.

"No," said Addison, but he would answer no more questions.

About two weeks after that he set off fishing to the Horr Brook again, and again returned with two big trout. n.o.body else who fished there had caught anything weighing more than half a pound; and in the lake, at that time, there was nothing except pickerel. But all that Addison would say was that he did not have any trouble in catching such trout.

The mystery of those trout puzzled us deeply. Not only Halstead and I, but Thomas Edwards, Edgar Wilbur and the Murch boys all did our best to find out where and how Addison fished, but quite without success.

Cold weather was now at hand and the fishing over; Addison astonished us, however, by bringing home two n.o.ble trout for Thanksgiving day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THOSE BIG TROUT.]

The next spring, about May 1st, he went off fishing, un.o.bserved, and brought home two more big trout. After that if he so much as took down his fish-pole, the rumor of it went round, and more than one boy made ready to follow him. For we were all persuaded that he had discovered some wonderful new brook or trout preserve.

Not even the girls could endure the grin of superior skill which Addison wore when he came home with those big trout. Theodora and Ellen also began to watch him; and the two girls, with Catherine Edwards, hatched a scheme for tracking him. Thomas had a little half-bred c.o.c.ker spaniel puppy, called Tyro, which had a great notion of running after members of the family by scent. If Thomas had gone out, and Kate wished to discover his whereabouts, she would show him one of Thomas's shoes and say, "Go find him!" Tyro would go coursing around till he took Thomas's track, then race away till he came upon him.

The girls saved up one of Addison's socks, and on a lowery day in June, when they made pretty sure that he had stolen off fishing, Ellen ran over for Kate and Tyro. Thomas was with them when they came back, and Halstead and I joined in the hunt. The sock was brought out for Tyro to scent; then away he ran till he struck Addison's trail, and dashed out through the west field and down into the valley of the Horr Brook.

All six of us followed in great glee, but kept as quiet as possible. It proved a long, hot chase; for when Tyro had gone along the brook as far as the lake woods, he suddenly tacked and ran on an almost straight course through the woods and across the bushy pasture-lands, stopping only now and then for us to catch up. When we came out on the Foy Brook at a distance below the old dam, the dog ran directly up the stream till he came to the place where the little rill from the hidden hole joined it; then he scrambled in among the thick willows.

We were a little way behind, and knowing that the dog would soon come out at the mill-pond, we climbed up the bank among the low pines on the hither side of the brook.

Tyro was not a noisy dog, but a few moments after he entered the thicket we heard him give one little bark, as if of joy.

"He's found him!" whispered Kate. "Let's keep still!"

Nothing happened for some minutes; then we saw Addison's head appear among the brush, as if to look around. For some time he stood there, still as a mouse, peering about and listening. Evidently he suspected that some one was with the dog, most likely Thomas, and that he had gone to the mill-pond to fish; but we were not more than fifty feet away, lying up in the thick pine brush.

After looking and listening for a long while, Addison drew back into the thicket, but soon reappeared with two large trout, and was hurrying away down the brook when we all shouted, "Oho!"

Addison stopped, looking both sheepish and wrathful; but we pounced on him, laughing so much that he was compelled to own up that he was beaten. He showed us the hole--after we had crept into the thicket--and the ledge where he had sat so many times to fish. "But there are only four more big trout," he said. "I meant to leave them here, and put in twenty smaller ones to grow up."

The girls thought it best to do so, and Halstead and I agreed to the plan; but three or four days later, when Theodora, Ellen and Addison went over to see the hole again, we found that the four large trout had disappeared. We always suspected that Thomas caught them, or that he told the Murch boys or Alfred Batchelder of the hole. Yet an otter may possibly have found it. In May, two years afterward, Halstead and I caught six very pretty half-pound trout there, but no one since has ever found such a school of beauties as Addison discovered.

CHAPTER XXI

TOM'S FORT

During the next week there was what is termed by Congregationalists a "Conference Meeting," at the town of Hebron, distant fifteen miles from the Old Squire's. Gram and he made it a rule to attend these meetings; and on this occasion they set off on Monday afternoon with old Sol and the light driving wagon, in Sunday attire, and did not return till the following Monday. Wealthy went with them; but the rest of us young folks were left, with many instructions, to keep house and look after things at the farm.

Haying was now over; and the wheat and barley were in; but an acre more of late-sown oats still remained to be harvested, also an acre of buckwheat. There was not a little solicitude felt for this acre of buckwheat. With it were connected visions of future buckwheat cakes and maple sirup. I was a.s.sured by Ellen and the others who had come to the farm in advance of me, that the maple mola.s.ses and candy "flapjacks,"

made on pans of hard snow, during the previous spring, had been something to smack one's mouth for.

The Old Squire had bidden Addison, who was practically in charge, to mow the oats on Tuesday, and the buckwheat on Thursday, if the weather continued good. Asa Doane was coming to a.s.sist us. The oats were to be turned on Wednesday and drawn in on Friday. The buckwheat would need to lie in the swath till the next week and be turned once or twice, in order to cure properly.

We had also a half acre of weeds to pull, in a part of the potato field which had thus far been hoed but once; and an acre of stubble to clear of stones, preparatory to ploughing. The Old Squire did not believe that abundant leisure is good for boys, left alone under such circ.u.mstances.

"If you get the loose stones all off the stubble and have time, you can begin to draw off the stone heaps from the piece which we are going to break up in the south field," he said finally, as he got into the wagon and took the reins to drive away. But he laughed when he said it; and Addison laughed, too; for we thought that he had already laid out a long stint for us. Halstead was grumbling about it to himself. "Wonder if he thinks we can do a whole season's work in a week," he exclaimed, spitefully. "Never saw such a man to lay off work! Wants a week to play in, himself, but expects us to stay at home and dig like slaves!"

"Oh, he doesn't want us to hurt ourselves," said Addison. "He will be satisfied if we manage the grain, the weeds and the stones on the stubble. It really isn't so very much for four of us. We could do it in one half the time, by working smart, and have the rest of the time to play in."

Gram had left corresponding work for the girls, indoors, besides cooking, getting the three daily meals and caring for the dairy.

We set to work that afternoon and pulled the weeds, finishing this task before five o'clock. Ellen had found time to make a brief call on Kate Edwards; and at supper, she informed us that Tom had invited us all to come to his "fort," that evening. "He is going to have a fire there and roast some of his early Pine Knot corn," continued Ellen. "He says he has got a whole basketful of ears, all nice in the milk and ready to roast."