They were not our
prey, for they would not rise at a fly, and we knew it. All the
same, when one made his leap against the weir, and landed on the
foot-plank with a jar that shook the board I was standing on, I
would fain have claimed him for my own capture.
Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and the whiskey.
California sniffed up-stream and down-stream, across the racing
water, chose his ground, and let the gaudy fly drop in the tail
of a riffle. I was getting my rod together, when I heard the
joyous shriek of the reel and the yells of California, and three
feet of living silver leaped into the air far across the water.
The forces were engaged.
The salmon tore up-stream, the tense line cutting the water like
a tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking.
What happened thereafter I cannot tell. California swore and
prayed, and Portland shouted advice, and I did all three for what
appeared to be half a day, but was in reality a little over a
quarter of an hour, and sullenly our fish came home with spurts
of temper, dashes head on and sarabands in the air, but home to
the bank came he, and the remorseless reel gathered up the thread
of his life inch by inch. We landed him in a little bay, and the
spring weight in his gorgeous gills checked at eleven and one
half pounds. Eleven and one half pounds of fighting salmon! We
danced a war-dance on the pebbles, and California caught me round
the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs, while he
shouted: - "Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now you catch your
fish! Twenty-four years I've waited for this!"
I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above the
weir, and all but foul-hooked a blue-and-black water-snake with a
coral mouth who coiled herself on a stone and hissed
male-dictions.
The next cast - ah, the pride of it, the regal splendor of it! the
thrill that ran down from finger-tip to toe! Then the water
boiled. He broke for the fly and got it. There remained enough
sense in me to give him all he wanted when he jumped not once,
but twenty times, before the up-stream flight that ran my line
out to the last half-dozen turns, and I saw the nickelled
reel-bar glitter under the thinning green coils. My thumb was
burned deep when I strove to stopper the line.
I did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing
weir, praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away.
