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VOL. 29.

THE AMERICAN ANGLER.

JUNE, 1899.

No. 6.

THE PROFESSOR.

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HE Doctor, the boy and I wander up the hill below the springs, with the cold spring in the little glade just inside the cañon's mouth as our objective point. Arrived at the summit, we stop to take breath, and after we fill our lungs I tell the Doctor something he knew how easily the natives of these hills move with the impediment of light air.

I stood on the same place once, looking down into the valley, when a Ute turned the corner of the bath-house two

hundred yards below me. He spread out his arms with a clutch on each side of his blanket, drew them together folded across his breast, and paused there statue-like looking up towards me. Suddenly he slipped his blanket to one arm and started on the run; leaping the fence that separated the bath-house grounds from the road, he gave a whoop and on up the steep he came leaping, with steps as agile as those of some other yet no wilder buck. He seemed to touch the ground with his moccasined feet as though they were winged, and before I might fairly count one hundred paused in front of me with a smile upon his face to greet mine. One long inspira

tion was all he asked, this copper-hued Apollo; and he stood there bared to the waist, and waving his right arm as if to take in the horizon, brought his hand toward his mouth, with the remark: "Heap good." I said "Heap good " also, wondering what sort of chance I would. have with a thousand yards start and he desiring a scalp. It generally takes me ten minutes to walk up that hill, with a pause every few rods, and when I get to the top I want to lie down.

Reaching the spring, the boy, of course, gets down on his hands and knees and pokes his face into the cool nectar; then takes it out, with a diamond quivering on his chubby nose to set off the roses in his cheeks. The Doctor and I prefer the old fruit-can perched on the dead branch of an adjacent willow. I imagine the water might taste better out of crystal, thin-rimmed and clear, with the sound of a bell. But this is a sentiment merely; a wellcleaned gourd is my weakness when it hangs by a willow-hid spring.

The boy declares war upon a little garter snake. How long the antipathy lingers. I used to think it the result of education, until I once saw a town-bred baby pick up a striped snake and lispingly inquire of me if it were not "a pity twing." The horror of the blue eyes, and the hysteric laugh in reply to mine,

as he shook off the writhing reptile, made me think the abhorrence might be natural. While the boy pursues the representative of the first enemy, the attention of the Doctor and myself is attracted to another figure coming down. the trail-a man with a gun on his shoulder-he looked seven feet high. It was the Professor, a friend of the Doctor.

The Doctor suggested that we invite the Professor to make one of our party to the Yampa. I asked if he thought the Professor, who was a stranger to me, would be a good companion in camp. The Doctor said he was a very learned man, a very cheerful man, not loquacious, obliging and a good cook. Being possessed of these essentials to happiness, a combination of qualities purely ideal with me, I thought we could not get on without him. I wondered how I had imagined that the slightest enjoyment ever entered into any former outing. Without this paragon, this hitherto possibility merely, our trip would be a failure. But I consoled my self with the reflection that "he that is robb'd, not wanting that which is stolen, let him not know it, and he is not robb'd at all." Before knowing the Professor, I had imagined life worth living. What was it to be now!

The Professor was a wrinkled little man, with little round black eyes and a big nose. I had always entertained a reverence for a big nose; had always understood that a man with a big nose must necessarily be incapable of anything small. With the Doctor's preface heralding the Professor's virtues, I was prepared, of course, for this index of greatness. The Professor, upon the invitation being extended, expressed a willingness amounting to anxiety to go; but he had doubts as to his being able to get away "just at this time." He had important affairs to look after,

connected with a new method of curing rabbit skins. The rodents were plentiful, and the period was a crisis with him; his customary diet had been pone and bacon, but now he had a prospect of a competency, in fact more: ease, perhaps luxury; he had his hand upon it, so to speak. It was suggested that the rabbits would not probably diminish during his absence with us. The intimation touched him favorably, and he said he would "see about it." If it did not rain in the morning he might make up his mind to relieve us. I reminded him that the rainy season was over, but he said he had dreamed about toads the night before, and besides the moon promised falling weather; he affirmed this with the air of one conscious of his intimate relations with the planet in question, and I was concluded.

Being anxious to find a man of my acquaintance named Jones-Henry Jones-I inquired of the Professor if he knew of such an one living in the vicinity. He said he didn't know Henry, but proceeded to name over all the Joneses of whom he had any recollection, as if in hope of producing one of mutual acquaintance. Failing in this he seemed pained, and finally insisted that I must have known Pochen Jones, whose father had worked at the fulling business in some remote New England village.

"Why, of course, you must have known Pochen," insisted the Professor; "everybody knew him. He was a little the nearest man I ever met, and one of the laziest, but sociable and kind o' homelike. I have known him to hitch up his old clay bank mare and drive ten miles to borrow half a dozen nails, but he always returned what he borrowed. He generally managed to drop in about dinner time, either going somewhere, or to borrow, or bring back something; sometimes he was alone, but most gen

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if he had ever dined with Pochen. first and only laugh I ever knew the Professor to indulge in came as the first response to my inquiry. It frightened me; he seemed to rattle inside and out, and between gasps, I heard him repeating my question to himself: "Dine with Pochen?" Finally he looked up with a countenance as bright as a new wooden weather-vane, gathered in sufficient mountain air and said :

"I knew Pochen goin' on five year and he never dined at home; it wasn't his habit."

Pochen, it seemed, never got further west than Indiana, where he escaped the ague, being "too lazy to shake," and eventually died of cucumbers, a donation from a philanthropic neighbor, which Pochen had tried to save. Having buried this member of the Jones family, the Professor was about further to express his gratification at having unearthed one known to us both, but his purpose was suddenly arrested at sight of a cotton-tail, and he went for it at once.

The boy during the recital of the ob. sequies had put in a triumphant appearance with the mutilated remains of the garter snake, and wanted to know if the Professor was not to make one of our party. I told him it was doubtful, whereupon I was informed that the Professor must go, that he knew "just lots o' things," and withal could tie "a daisy fly." I was constrained to say I would use my best endeavors to prevail on the Professor, and just then detected a smile on the Doctor's countenance. Discipline must be maintained on the mountains as well as at home, and by the time I had concluded informing the boy that the "daisy fly" was new to me, the Professor returned with the rabbit. Having skinned the animal and stretched the pelt, he wanted to take my pet bam

boo in his hand I surrendered it as I would have given up the boy at three weeks to a strange nurse and stand by, ready to relieve him at the first exhibition of awkwardness. But the Professor handled and looked it over as though he had been born and brought up fraternally with that identical rod; then he wanted to try a cast with it. Less apprehensive than at his first attentions, I consented. While the Doctor and I sat on a boulder near by, the Professor stepped to within a couple yards of the stream and sent his namesake out some twenty feet. As the swift current bore the fly away on its bosom, he reeled off quite as much more line. The desired length reached, he, facing down-stream, suddenly raised the rod and at the same time turned to squarely face the opposite bank, retrieved his fly, and sent it out over the riffle into the quieter water of the pool beyond. I watched the line leave its curvature and straighten out. The forward sweep of the rod and sudden stop I cannot commend, as though he were about to retrieve again but changed his mind, and the fly seemed to settle down as though it had skipped from the opposite shore to moisten its toes. Before I had time to think I should not be guilty of envy, there was a splash just where the fly alighted and the Professor was unexpectedly struggling with a beautiful trout.

With the same spirit that doubtless, at the first intimation of a dog fight, prompts the bibulous frontiersman to drop his noontide "appetizer" untasted and rush into the village street, the Doctor and I rose to our feet. The pioneer loves his stimulant, so did I my rod; as he forgets his whiskey with the prospect of "metal more attractive," so did I the rod. There were no hidden rocks nor bushes to interfere, while the Professor quietly played his capture to

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