Wild Northern Scenes Part 2

"'I don't know,' he replied, 'unless it's because he ain't of much use, and is the slipriest fish that swims.'

"Mark," continued the doctor, turning to Spalding; "I mean no personality. I am simply giving the old fisherman's words, not my own."

"Proceed with the case," said Spalding, as he sent a column of smoke curling upward from his lips, and with a gravity that was refreshing.

"Well," resumed the doctor, "the LAWYERS were thrown by themselves, and one old fat fellow, weighing, perhaps, five or six pounds, fixed his great, round, gla.s.sy eyes upon me, and opened his ugly mouth, and I thought I heard him say, interrogatively, 'Well,' as if demanding that the _case_ should proceed at once.

"'Well,' said I, in reply, 'what's out?'

"'What's out!' he answered; '_I'm_ out--I'm out of my element--out of water--out of court--and in this hot, dry atmosphere, almost out of breath. But what have I been summoned here for? I demand a copy of the complaint.'

"'My dear sir,' said I, 'I'm not a member of the court. I don't belong to the bar--I'm not the plaintiff--I'm not in the profession, nor on the bench. I'm neither sheriff, constable nor juror. I'm only a spectator. In the Rackett Woods, among the lakes and streams of that wild region, with a rod and fly, I'm at home with the trout, but;----'

"'Oh! ho!' he exclaimed with a chuckle, 'you're the chap I was consulted about down near the mouth of the Rackett the other day, by a country trout, who was on a journey to visit his relatives in the streams of Canada. He showed me a hole in his jaw, made by your hook at the mouth of the Bog river. I've filed a summons and complaint against you for a.s.sault and battery, and beg to notify you of the fact.'

"'I plead the general issue,' said I.

"'There's no such thing known to the code,' he replied.

"'I deny the fact, then,' I exclaimed.

"'That won't do,' he rejoined; "'the complaint is put in under oath, and you must answer by affidavit, of the truth of your denial.'

"You see my dilemma. I remembered the circ.u.mstance of hooking a n.o.ble trout at the place alleged, and as the affair has been settled, I'll tell you how it was. At the head of Tupper's Lake, one of the most beautiful sheets of water that the sun ever shone upon, lying alone among the mountains, surrounded by old primeval forests, walled in by palisadoes of rocks, and studded with islands, the Bog River enters; this river comes down from the hills away back in the wilderness, sometimes rushing with a roar over rocks and through gorges, sometimes plunging down precipices, and sometimes moving with a deep and sluggish current across a broad sweep of table land. For several miles back of the lake, and until a few rods of the sh.o.r.e, it is a calm, deep river. It then rushes down a steep, shelving rock some twenty feet into a great rocky basin; then down again over a shelving rock in a fall of twenty feet into another rocky basin; and then again in another fall of twenty or thirty feet, over a steep, shelving rock, shooting with a swift current far out into the lake. These falls const.i.tute a beautiful cascade, and their roar may be heard of a calm, summer evening, for miles out on the placid water.

"At the foot of these falls, in the summer season, the trout congregate; beautiful large fellows, from one to three pounds in weight; and a fly trailed across the current, or over the eddies, just at its outer edge, is a thing at which they are tolerably sure to rise. Well, last summer, I was out that way among the lakes that lie sleeping in beauty, and along the streams that flow through the old woods, playing the savage and vagabondizing in a promiscuous way. The river was low, and a broad rock, smooth and bare, sloping gently to the water's edge, under which the stream whirled as it entered the lake, and above which tall trees towered, casting over it a pleasant shade, presented a tempting place to throw the fly. I cast over the current, and trailed along towards the edge of the rock, when a three-pounder rose from his place down in the deep water. He didn't come head foremost, nor glancing upward, but rose square up to the surface, and pausing a single instant, darted forward like an arrow and seized the fly. Well, away he plunged with the hook in his jaw, bending my elastic rod like a reed, the reel hissing as the line spun away eighty or a hundred feet across the current, and far out into the lake; but he was fast, and after struggling for a time, he partially surrendered, and I reeled him in. Slowly, and with a sullen struggling, he was drawn towards the sh.o.r.e, sometimes with his head out of water, and sometimes diving towards the bottom. At last, he caught sight of me, and with renewed energy he plunged away again, clear across the current and out into the lake. But the tension of the elastic rod working against him steadily, and always, was too much for his strength, and again I reeled him in, struggling still, though faintly. Slowly, but steadily, I reeled him to my hand. He was just by the edge of the rock, almost within reach of my landing net, when, with a last desperate effort to escape, he plunged towards the bottom, made a dive under the rock, the line came against its edge, slipped gratingly for a moment, snapped, and the fish was gone. He was a beautiful trout, and beautifully he played. He deserved freedom on account of the energy with which he struggled for it.

"You will see, therefore, that, as I said, I was in a dilemma. The action against me was well brought. I could not deny the truth of the facts charged against me in the complaint. In this position of affairs, three alternatives presented themselves; first, a denial of the truth of the complaint, but that involved perjury; secondly, admission of the facts charged, but that involved conviction; and, thirdly, a compromise, and the latter one I adopted.

"'Can't this thing be settled,' said I, to the old lawyer fish of the St. Lawrence, 'without litigation? me and my four companions overboard, place us in _statu quo_, and the action shall be discontinued.'

"'Agreed,' said I, and I reached down to enter upon the performance of my part of the contract.

"'Wait a moment,' said he, curling up his shaky tail, 'the costs--who pays the costs?'

"'The costs!' I replied, 'each pays his own, of course.'

"'Not so fast,' he exclaimed, 'not quite so fast. You must pay the costs, or the suit goes on.'

"There was something human in the tenacity with which that old 'lawyer' clung to the idea of costs. There he was gasping for breath, his life depending upon the result of the negotiation, and still he insisted upon the payment of costs as a condition of compromise."

"Probably out of regard for the interest of his client," said Spalding, gravely; "but proceed with the case."

"'Fisherman,' said I," resumed the Doctor, "'what is the cost of these five _lawyers_? How much for the fee simple of the lot?'

"'They ain't worth but ninepence,' he replied.

"'Good,' said I, 'here's a shilling, York currency.'

"'Agreed,' said he, and threw in a sucker, by way of change.

"'Anything more?' I asked of the old cormorant lawyer.

"'No,' he replied; 'all right--so toss us overboard, and be quick, for my breath is getting a little short.' I threw them over, one at a time, the old fellow last, and as he slipped from my hand into the river, he thrust his ugly face out of the water, and said, coolly, 'Good morning! When you come our way again, _drop in_.'

"'No,' said I, 'I'll _drop a line._' I remembered how I 'dropped in,'

over on Long Lake, one day, and had no inclination to drop in to the St. Lawrence, especially when there are old lawyer fishes there to summon me for a.s.sault and battery on a 'Shatagee trout.'"

"Doctor," said Hank Martin, one of our boatmen, who had been listening to the Doctor's narrative, "I don't want to be considered for'ard or sa.s.sy, but I'd like to know how much of these kinds of stories we hired folks are obligated to believe?"

"Well," replied the Doctor, "there are three of you in all, and between you, you must make up a reasonable case, as Spalding would say, of faith in everything you may hear. This you may do by dividing it up among you."

"Very good," said Martin, with imperturbable gravity; "I only wanted a fair understanding of the matter on the start."

CHAPTER V.

A FRIGHTENED ANIMAL--TROLLING FOR TROUT--THE BOATMAN'S STORY.

We sat in front of our tents, enjoying the delightful breeze that swept quietly over the lake, and watching the stars as they stole out from the depths. The whippoorwill piped away in the old forests, and the frogs bellowed like ten thousand buffaloes along the sh.o.r.e. The roar of their hoa.r.s.e voices went rolling over the lake, through the old woods, and surging up against the mountains to be thrown back by the echoes that dwell among the hills. We had knocked the ashes from our pipes, and were about retiring to our tents for the night, when a long wake in the water across the line of the moon's reflection, attracted our attention. It was evidently made by some animal swimming, and the Doctor and Martin started in pursuit. It proved to be a deer which was apparently making its way to an island, midway across the lake. They had no desire to slaughter it, and they concluded to drive it ash.o.r.e where we were. They headed it in the proper direction, and followed the terrified animal as it swam for life towards the island on which we were encamped. We understood their purpose, and sat perfectly silent. The deer struck the island directly in front of our tent, and dashed forward in wild affright, right through the midst of us, towards the thicket in our rear, glad to be rid of his pursuers on the water. As he bounded past us, we sprang up and shouted, and if ever a dumb animal was astonished it was that deer. He leaped up a dozen feet into the air, bleated out in the extremity of his terror, and plunged madly forward, as if a whole legion of fiends were at his tail. The stag hounds which were tied to a sapling, by their fierce baying, added vigor to his flight. We heard his snort at every bound across the island, and his plunge into the lake on the other side.

In the morning we sent forward our boatman with the tents and baggage to an island on the Upper Saranac, and coasted this pleasant little lake. On the right, as you approach the head, is a deep bay, skirted by a natural meadow, where the rank wild gra.s.s, and the pond lilies that grow along the sh.o.r.e furnish a rich pasture for the deer. We saw several feeding quietly like sheep, on the little plain and upon the lily pads in the edge of the water. We paddled silently to within a dozen rods of them, when, as they discovered us, they dashed snorting and whistling away.

On the right of this meadow, and among the tall forest trees are great boulders which, piled up and partly obscured by the undergrowth, resemble from the lake the ma.s.sive ruins of some ancient fortification. We landed by a spring, which came bubbling up from beneath one of these great moss-covered rocks, to lunch. It was a pleasant spot, and while we sat there dozens of small birds, of the size and general appearance of the cuckoo, save in their hooked beaks, attracted by the scent of our cold meats, came hopping tamely about on the lower limbs of the forest trees around us. They were called by our boatmen, "meat hawks," and have less fear of man than any wild birds that I have ever seen.

We crossed the carrying place of a quarter of a mile around the rapids, in which distance the river falls some sixty feet, roaring and tumbling down ledges and boiling in mad fury around boulders. We entered the Upper Saranac at the hour appointed, and found our tents pitched and a dinner of venison and trout awaiting us on the island selected for our encampment.

As the sun sank behind the hills, the breeze died away, and the lake lay without a ripple around as, so calm, so smooth, and still, that it seemed to have sunk quietly to sleep in its forest bed. The fish were jumping in every direction, and while the rest of us sat smoking our meerchaums after dinner, or rather supper, Smith rigged his trolling rod, and having caught half a dozen minnows, he with Martin, rowed out upon the water to troll for the lake trout. These are a very different fish from the speckled trout of the streams and rivers. They had none of the golden specks of the latter, are of a darker hue, and much larger. They are dotted with brown spots, like freckles upon the face of a fair-skinned girl. They are shorter too, in proportion to their weight than the speckled trout. They are caught in these lakes, weighing from three to fifteen pounds, and instances have been known of their attaining to the weight of five and twenty. It is an exciting sport to take one of these large fellows on a line of two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet in length. They play beautifully when hooked, and it requires a good deal of coolness and skill to land them safely in your boat. A trolling rod for these large fish should be much stiffer, and stronger than those used for the fly, on the rivers and streams; and the reel should be stronger and higher geared than the common fly reel. Three hundred feet of line are necessary, for the fish, if he is a large one, will sometimes determine upon a long flight, and it will not do to exhaust your line in his career. In that case, he will snap it like a pack-thread. An English ba.s.s rod is the best, and with such, and a large triple action reel, the largest fish of these lakes may be secured.

Smith had trolled scarcely a quarter of a mile, when his hook was struck by a trout, and then commenced a struggle that was pleasant to witness. No sooner had the fish discovered that the hook was in his jaw, than away he dashed towards the middle of the lake. The rod was bent into a semicircle, but the game was fast; with the b.u.t.t firm between his knees and his thumb pressing the reel, the sportsman gave him a hundred and fifty feet of line, when his efforts began to relax, and as Smith began to reel him in, a moment of dead pull, a holding back like an obstinate mule occurred. The trout was slowly towed in the direction of the boat. Then, as if maddened by the force which impelled him, he dashed furiously forward, the reel answering to his movements and the line always taught, he rose to the surface leaping clear from the water, shaking his head furiously as if to throw loose the fastenings from his jaw. Failing in this, down he plunged fifty feet straight towards the bottom, making the reel hiss by his mad efforts to escape. Still the line was taught, pressing always, towing him towards the boat at every relaxation. At last he rose to the surface, panting and exhausted, permitting himself to be towed almost without an effort, to within twenty feet of his captors. When he saw them, all his fright and all his energies too seemed to be restored, and away he dashed, sciving through the water a hundred and fifty feet out into the lake. But the hook was in his jaw, and he could not escape. After half an hour of beautiful and exciting play, he surrendered or was drowned, and Smith lifted him with his landing net, a splendid ten-pound trout, into his boat. By this time the shadows of twilight were gathering over the lake, and he came ash.o.r.e. A proud man was Smith, as he lifted that fish from the boat and handed it over to the cook to be dressed for breakfast, and though we had seen the whole performance from our tents, yet he gave us in glowing and graphic detail the history of his taking that ten-pound trout.

"Captain," said Hank Wood, who had been quietly whitling out a new set of tent pins, addressing Smith, "you had a good time of it with that trout, but it was nothing to an adventer of mine with an old mossy-back, on this lake, five year ago this summer."

"How was that?" inquired Smith; and we all gathered around to hear Hank Wood's story.

"I don't know how it is," he began, as he seated himself on the log in front of the tents, with one leg hanging down, and the other drawn up with the heel of his boot caught on a projection in the bark, his knee almost even with his nose, and his fingers locked across his shin, "I don't know exactly why, but the catching of that trout makes me think of an adventer I had on this very lake, five year ago this summer. It is curious how things will lay around in a man's memory, every now and then startin' up and presentin' themselves, ready to be talked about--reeled off--as it were, and then how quietly they coil themselves away, to lay there, till some new sight, or sound, or idea, or feelin' stirs 'em into life, and they come up again fresh and plain as ever. Some people talk about forgotten things, but I don't believe that any matter that gets fairly anch.o.r.ed in a man's mind, can ever be forgotten, until age has broken the power of memory. It is there, and will stay there, in spite of the ten thousand other things that get piled in on top of it, and some day it will come popping out like a cork, just as good and distinct as new. But I was talkin' about an adventer I had with a trout, five year ago, here on the Upper Saranac. I was livin' over on the _Au Sable_ then, and came over to these parts to spend a week or so, and lay in a store of jerked venison and trout for the winter. I brought along a bag of salt, and two or three kegs that would hold a hundred pound or so apiece, and filled 'em too with as beautiful orange-meated fellows as you'd see in a day's drive. The trout were plentier than they are now. They hadn't been fished by all the sportin' men in creation, and they had a chance to grow to their nateral size. You wouldn't in them days row across any of these lakes in the trollin' season without hitchin' on to an eight, or ten, and now and then to a twenty-pounder.

"Wal, I was on the Upper Saranac, up towards the head of the lake, ten or twelve miles from here, trollin' with an old-fashioned line, about as big as a pipe stem, a hundred and fifty feet long, and a hook to match. n.o.body in them days tho't of sich contrivances as trollin'-rods, reels, and minny-gangs. You held your lines in your fingers, and when you hooked a fish, you drew him in, hand over hand, in a human way. It was in the latter part of June, and the way the black flies swarmed along the sh.o.r.e, was a thing to set anybody a scratchin' that happened to be around. It was a clear still mornin', and the sun as he went up into the heavens, blazed away, and as he walked across the sky, if he didn't pour down his heat like a furnace, I wouldn't say so. I had tolerable good luck in the forenoon, and landed on a rocky island to cook dinner. I made such a meal as a hungry man makes when he's out all alone fishin' and huntin' about these waters, and started off across the lake, with my trollin' line to the length of a hundred feet or more, draggin' through the water behind me. The breeze had freshened a little, and my boat drifted about fast enough for trollin', and feelin' a little drowsy, I tied the end of the line to the cleets across the knees of the boat, and lay down in the bottom with my hand out over the side holdin' the line. I hadn't laid there long, when I felt a twitch as if something mighty big was medlin' with the other end of the string. I started up and undertook to pull in, but you might as well undertake to drag an elephant with a thread. I couldn't move him a hair. Pretty soon the boat began to move up the lake in a way I didn't at all like. At first it went may be three miles an hour, then five, ten, twenty, forty, sixty miles the hour, round and round the lake, as if hurled along by a million of locomotives. We went skiving around among the islands, into the bays, along the sh.o.r.e, away out across the lake, crossing and re-crossing in every direction; and if there's a place about this lake we didn't visit, I should like to have somebody tell me where it is.

You may think it made my hair stand out some, to find myself flyin'

about like a streak of chain lightnin', and to see the trees and rocks flyin' like mad the other way. I tried to untie the line, but it was drawn into a knot so hard, that the old Nick himself couldn't move it.

I looked for my knife to cut it, but it had, somehow, got overboard in our flight, besides flyin' about at the rate of sixty mile an hour, kept a fellow pretty busy holdin' on, keepin' his place in the boat.

"After an hour or two we came to a pause, and the old feller that was towin' me about, walked up to the surface, and stickin' his head out of the water, 'Good mornin',' says he, in a very perlite sort of way.

'Good mornin',' says I, back again. 'How goes it?' says he. 'All right,' says I. 'Step this way and I'll take the hook out of your gums.' 'Thank you for nothing,' says he, and he opened his month like the entrance to a railroad tunnel, and blame me, if he hadn't taken a double hitch of the line around his eye tooth, while the hook hung harmless beside his jaw.

"'I've a little business down in the lower lake,' says he, 'and must be movin',' and away he bolted like a steam engine, down the lake.

When he straightened up, my hat flew more than sixty yards behind me, and the way I came down into the bottom of the boat was anything but pleasant. Away we tore down towards the outlet, the boat cuttin' and plowin' through the water, pilin' it up in great furrows ten feet high on each side. There is, as you know, sixty feet fall between the Upper Saranac and Round Lake, and the river goes boilin' and roarin', tumblin' and heavin' down the rapids and over the rocks, pitchin' in some places square down a dozen feet among the boulders. No sensible man would think of travellin' that road in a little craft like mine, unless he'd made up his mind to see how it would seem to be drowned, or smashed to pieces agin the rocks. But right down the rapids we went, swifter than an eagle in his stoop, down over the boilin'