over it awhile, the Doctor told me an incident in his experience concerning the ledge where we had precarious foothold, looking down into the seething waters several hundred feet below. The Doctor, Wm. H. Beard, the artist, Bayard Taylor and a prospector and mining man came over the trail a few years before on horseback, the Doctor in the lead, then the prospector, and, finally, the artist and the great traveler bringing up the rear. When the prospector passed the narrow ledge, barely sufficient in width to allow a horseman to squeeze along, where one has to hang, as it were, like a fly on a wall, he became conscious that his saddle girths needed tightening. With the recklessness peculiar to his craft, he slipped off his mule, and was engaged in the necessary adjustment of his belly-band when Beard reached the narrow ledge and had to stop. The first intimation the Doctor had of anything wrong came in the way of an emphatic adjuration, that might have been heard half a mile, for the blessed prospector to get out of that. The Doctor said he was glad the artist was not given to profanity, though he said a great deal to the miner that the Doctor could not understand; it did not sound like English nor Dutch, nor any language the Doctor had ever heard, but hurled at the head of the miner from a two-foot trail hanging over five or six hundred feet of perpendicular granite, it seemed to have an accelerating effect. The miner led his mule to more convenient quarters without finishing his task, and the artist followed, not in silence, however: he did not seem to be able to get through his business with that miner for an hour.
Looking down into the chasm, I suggested that it did not seem particularly “pokerish.” The Doctor said it was well enough to say so when one was afoot, “but just try it horseback,” in that ambiguous sort of way that always rouses one’s determination to undertake it. I did a few days after, but in returning I led my horse.
Getting through with his anecdote, the Doctor pointed to another pile of rocks half a mile further up the stream, and called my especial attention to a pool beneath, which, even at that distance, placed me under conviction that I could see trout therein, two feet long at least. I started to get some of them. Arrived there, we shipped our tackle, and I selected a spot under a pine-tree on one side of this pregnant pool, while the Doctor took the other. I made a cast with an anxiety indescribable; I knew I would have the first strike, and I did; the fly caught in the luxuriant foliage overhead. I tried to coax the blasted thing loose, but the more I prayed and persuaded the more obstinately the line interlaced itself. If there is anything more exasperating than to get a line fastened in a pine-tree, I want to know what it is; a “picked-up dinner” on wash-day is bliss in comparison. Not being able to untangle the line, I tried to pull down the tree; then I took a seat on the bank and patiently renewed my leader. Meanwhile the Doctor was threshing the peaceful waters industriously. I asked him if he had caught anything; he said he was going to very soon, and threshed away. When I got my line fixed I murmured, “but deliver us from evil,” and got out of the reach of that pine, when I labored faithfully for full fifteen minutes, till finally we scared up a trout about six inches long. He came browsing around with his head half out of water and an inquiring expression plainly visible in his bright eyes, then he disappeared wiggling his tail in derision. We worked away in hope of bringing the scaly monster once more to the surface. A second sight of him would have been comforting; but his curiosity was evidently satisfied. I asked the Doctor if this was one of the trout pools he had been bragging about, and he said it was; he had always caught trout out of that hole, and the stories he told me of the numbers he had lifted out of that place “in the short space of an hour,” were marvelous. While listening and trying to believe him I felt a sudden jerk at my rod. Up to that moment I had entertained no special antipathy to stop-reels. But with one leader unattainable in the profuse growth overhead, and another serving as a sort of submarine union-jack to an unknown denizen of the pool, with no prospect of satisfaction, I felt—not like Patience. The trout must have been a monster, of course, or he never would have snapped that gut with so little ceremony. I shall not soon forget the sensation; it was a single and sudden blow without pause for a second pull, as though his troutship in passing that way had snapped up that fly and gone on about his business or pleasure, without realizing in the remotest degree that he had done anything more than take a midge floating on the surface of his habitation. To avoid a repetition of the calamity, I cheerfully tied the check to a crossbar of the reel, looped on another leader, and resumed, with an angler’s vow registered in heaven, which I have religiously kept.
With that commendable resignation born of experience, I worked that pool for half an hour, gave up in disgust and started down stream—the Doctor followed in humiliation. We whipped every foot of the way down through the cañon to our horses, but not a fin rewarded our efforts. The forenoon was gone; I felt sorry for the Doctor; my sympathies went out to him as they always do for the under dog in the fight. I had no heart to express anything but unbounded satisfaction for the morning’s enjoyment. But I believe he thinks to this day I was lying.
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