Tales of lonely trails by Zane Grey (free novel 24 .TXT) 📕

The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however, that I could not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation was close to ten thousand feet and the air at that height was thin and rare. After each series of lusty strokes I had to rest. R.C., who could handle an axe as he used to swing a baseball bat, made fun of my efforts. Whereupon I relinquished the tool to him, and chuckled at his discomfiture.

After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up fly rods, and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness we had felt when we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The lake glistened green in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the foot of the magnificent black slopes.

The water was full of little floating particles that Teague called wild rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like eastern lakes during dog days. It did not look propitious for fishing, but Teague reassured us. The outlet of this lake was the head of White River. We tried the outlet first, but trout were not rising there. Then we began wading and casting along a shallow bar of the lake. Teague had instructed us to cast, then drag the flies slowly across the surface of the water, in imitation of a swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and several times, when the leader was close to me and my rod far back, I had strikes. With my rod in that position I could not hook the trout. Then I cast my own way, letting the flies sink a little. To my surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes and could not hook the fish.

R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right over the ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave him the most unaccountable fiendish pleasure.

"These are educated trout," he said. "It takes a skillful fisherman to make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game of the sea, which is your forte. But here you are N.G.... Watch me cast!"

I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water boiled, and he hooked two good-sized trout at once. Quite speechless with envy and admiration I watched him play them and eventually beach them. They were cutthroat trout, silvery-sided and marked with the red slash along their gills that gave them their name. I did not catch any while wading, but from the bank I spied one, and dropping a fly in front of his nose, I got him. R.C. caught four more, all about a pound in weight, and then he had a strike that broke his leader. He did not have another leader, so we walked back to camp.

Wild flowers colored the open slopes leading down out of the forest. Golden rod, golden daisies, and bluebells were plentiful and very pretty. Here I found my first columbine, the beautiful flower that is the emblem of Colorado. In vivid contrast to its blue, Indian paint brush thinly dotted the slopes and varied in color from red to pink and from white to yellow.

My favorite of all wild flowers—the purple asters—were there too, on tall nodding stems, with pale faces held up to the light. The reflection of mountain and forest in Trappers Lake was clear and beautiful.

The hounds bayed our approach to camp. We both made a great show about beginning our little camp tasks, but we did not last very long. The sun felt so good and it was so pleasant to lounge under a pine. One of the blessings of outdoor life was that a man could be like an Indian and do nothing. So from rest I passed to dreams and from dreams to sleep.

In the afternoon R.C. and I went out again to try for trout. The lake appeared to be getting thicker with that floating muck and we could not raise a fish. Then we tried the outlet again. Here the current was swift. I found a place between two willow banks where trout were breaking on the surface. It took a long cast for me, but about every tenth attempt I would get a fly over the right place and raise a fish. They were small, but that did not detract from my gratification. The light on the water was just right for me to see the trout rise, and that was a beautiful sight as well as a distinct advantage. I had caught four when a shout from R.C. called me quickly down stream. I found him standing in the middle of a swift chute with his rod bent double and a long line out.

"Got a whale!" he yelled. "See him—down there—in that white water. See him flash red!... Go down there and land him for me. Hurry! He's got all the line!"

I ran below to an open place in the willows. Here the stream was shallow and very swift. In the white water I caught a flashing gleam of red. Then I saw the shine of the leader. But I could not reach it without wading in. When I did this the trout lunged out. He looked crimson and silver. I could have put my fist in his mouth.

"Grab the leader! Yank him out!" yelled R.C. in desperation. "There! He's got all the line."

"But it'd be better to wade down," I yelled back.

He shouted that the water was too deep and for me to save his fish. This was an awful predicament for me. I knew the instant I grasped the leader that the big trout would break it or pull free. The same situation, with different kinds of fish, had presented itself many times on my numberless fishing jaunts with R.C. and they all crowded to my mind. Nevertheless I had no choice. Plunging in to my knees I frantically reached for the leader. The red trout made a surge. I missed him. R.C. yelled that something would break. That was no news to me. Another plunge brought me in touch with the leader. Then I essayed to lead the huge cutthroat ashore. He was heavy. But he was tired and that gave birth to hopes. Near the shore as I was about to lift him he woke up, swam round me twice, then ran between my legs.

When, a little later, R.C. came panting down stream I was sitting on the bank, all wet, with one knee skinned and I was holding his broken leader in my hands. Strange to say, he went into a rage! Blamed me for the loss of that big trout! Under such circumstances it was always best to maintain silence and I did so as long as I could. After his paroxysm had spent itself and he had become somewhat near a rational being once more he asked me:

"Was he big?"

"Oh—a whale of a trout!" I replied.

"Humph! Well, how big?"

Thereupon I enlarged upon the exceeding size and beauty of that trout. I made him out very much bigger than he actually looked to me and I minutely described his beauty and wonderful gaping mouth. R.C. groaned and that was my revenge.

We returned to camp early, and I took occasion to scrape acquaintance with the dogs. It was a strangely assorted pack—four Airedales, one bloodhound and seven other hounds of mixed breeds. There were also three pup hounds, white and yellow, very pretty dogs, and like all pups, noisy and mischievous. They made friends easily. This applied also to one of the Airedales, a dog recently presented to Teague by some estimable old lady who had called him Kaiser and made a pet of him. As might have been expected of a dog, even an Airedale, with that name, he was no good. But he was very affectionate, and exceedingly funny. When he was approached he had a trick of standing up, holding up his forepaws in an appealing sort of way, with his head twisted in the most absurd manner. This was when he was chained—otherwise he would have been climbing up on anyone who gave him the chance. He was the most jealous dog I ever saw. He could not be kept chained very long because he always freed himself. At meal time he would slip noiselessly behind some one and steal the first morsel he could snatch. Bill was always rapping Kaiser with pans or billets of firewood.

Next morning was clear and cold. We had breakfast, and then saddled up to ride to Big Fish Lake. For an hour we rode up and down ridges of heavy spruce, along a trail. We saw elk and deer sign. Elk tracks appeared almost as large as cow tracks. When we left the trail to climb into heavy timber we began to look for game. The forest was dark, green and brown, silent as a grave. No squirrels or birds or sign of life! We had a hard ride up and down steep slopes. A feature was the open swaths made by avalanches. The ice and snow had cut a path through the timber, and the young shoots of spruce were springing up. I imagined the roar made by that tremendous slide.

We found elk tracks everywhere and some fresh sign, where the grass had been turned recently, and also much old and fresh sign where the elk had skinned the saplings by rubbing their antlers to get rid of the velvet. Some of these rubs looked like blazes made by an axe. The Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a she-coyote that evidently had a den somewhere, for she barked angrily at the dog and at us. Fox could not catch her. She led him round in a circle, and we could not see her in the thick brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato note again.

We crossed many little parks, bright and green, blooming with wild asters and Indian paint brush and golden daisies. The patches of red and purple were exceedingly beautiful. Everywhere we rode we were knee deep in flowers. At length we came out of the heavy timber down upon Big Fish Lake. This lake was about half a mile across, deep blue-green in color, with rocky shores. Upon the opposite side were beaver mounds. We could see big trout swimming round, but they would not rise to a fly. R.C. went out in an old boat and paddled to the head of the lake and fished at the inlet. Here he caught a fine trout. I went around and up the little river that fed the lake. It curved swiftly through a meadow, and had deep, dark eddies under mossy, flowering banks. At other places the stream ran swiftly over clean gravel beds. It was musical and