Silas Strong 15

Silas Strong 15

They were the heralds of the great king of which Strong had complained

that night he laid his heart bare and whose name was Business--a king

who ruled not with the sword, but with flattery and temptation and

artful devices. The Emperor knew that they were the men who had bought

his stronghold; that they were come to shove the frontier of their

king far beyond the Lost River country; that axes and saws and dams and

flooded flats and whirling wheels and naked hill-sides would soon follow

them.

 

"How are you, Mr. Strong?" said the elder Migley, who, by his son, was

familiarly called "Pop." He overflowed with geniality. "Glad to see you.

Hot an' dry out in the clearing. Little track-worn. Thought we'd come

in here for a breath o' fresh air an' a week or two o' sport. Have a

drink?"

 

He winked one eye in a significant manner, which seemed to say that he

had plenty and was out for a good time.

 

"N-no th-thanks," said Strong, as he surveyed the stout figure of the

elder Migley.

 

Here was one of the royal family of Business, in dress neatly symbolic,

for Mr. Migley wore a light suit of clothes divided into checks of

considerable magnitude by stripes that ran, as it were, north, south,

east, and west. The broad convexity of his front resembled, in some

degree, an atlas globe. One might have located any part of his system

by degrees of latitude and longitude. His equator was represented by a

large golden chain which curved in a great arc from one pocket of his

waistcoat to the other. As he walked one might have imagined that he

was moving in his orbit. His large, full face was adorned with a

chin-whisker and a selfish and prosperous-looking nose. It had got

possession of nearly all the color in his countenance, and occupied more

than its share of space. The son, "Tom," had older manners and a more

severe face. He carried with him a look of world-weariness and a

sense of all-embracing knowledge so frequently derived from youthful

experience. He was the-only-son type of domestic tyrant--overfed,

selfish, brutal, wearied by adulation, crowned with curly hair.

 

"Look at that boy," the elder Migley whispered, pointing at the fat

young man of twenty-three who sat on a door-sill cleaning his rifle.

"Ain't he a picture? Got a fast mark in Hash-ford Seminary." Mr. Migley

owned a number of trotting-horses, and his conversation was always

flavored with the cant of the stable.

 

Strong looked sadly at the fat young man, who was, indeed, the very

personification of pulp, and thought of the doom of the woods.

 

The elder Migley, as if able to read the mind of Strong, offered him

the consolation of a cigar. Then he reached to the pegs above him and

lowered a quaking whip of greenheart which he had put together soon

after his arrival.

 

"Heft it," he whispered, pressing his rod upon the Emperor. "Ain't that

a dandy?"

 

He looked into the eyes of the woodsman. He winked a kind of challenge,

and added, "Seems to me that ought to fetch 'em."

 

"Mebbe," Strong answered, gently swaying the rod. He was never too free

in committing himself.

 

"Got it for Tommy," said the new sportsman. "Ketched a four-pounder

with it--ask him if I didn't." Mr. Migley had the habit of

self-corroboration, and Strong used to say that he never believed that

kind of a liar.

 

"Le's go an' try 'em," Migley suggested.

 

The Emperor smoked thoughtfully a moment.

 

"D-down river, bym-by," he said, pointing at the cook-tent as if he had

now to prepare the dinner.

 

Strong had seen the Migleys before, although he had never entertained

them. They had paunched and pouted in territory not far remote from Lost

River, and won a reputation which had travelled among the guides. They

worked hard, and hurried out of the woods with all the fish and meat

they could carry, and no respect for any law save one--the law of

gravitation. They sat down or lay upon their backs every half-hour. Now,

it seemed, they were to abandon the vulgar art of the pouter for one

more gentle and becoming.

 

Strong hastened to the cook-tent, where he found Sinth treating the

children to sugared cakes and words of motherly fondness.

 

"Teenty little dears!" she was saying when Silas entered the door.

 

She rose quickly, and hurried to the stove with a kind of shame on her

countenance. Silas kept a sober face while he went for the water-pail,

as if he had not "took notice." His joy broke free and expressed itself

in loud laughter on his way to the spring.

 

"Snook!" Sinth exclaimed, her face red with embarrassment as she heard

him. She poked the fire with great energy, and added: "Let the fool

laugh. I don't care if he did hear me."

 

A new impulse from the heart of nature entered the Migley breast. Father

and son were seeking an opportunity to use their muscles. The son seized

a girder above his head and began to chin it; the father went to work

with an axe, and his enthusiasm fell in heavy blows upon a beech log.

 

Strong peered through the window at him and muttered the one

contemptuous word, "W-woodpecker!"

 

A poor chopper in that part of the country was always classed with the

woodpeckers.

 

Dinner over, the elder Migley opened his tin fishing-box and displayed

an assortment of cheap flies and leaders.

 

"Well, captain," said the young man, as he turned to Strong, "if you'll

show us where the trout live, we'll show you who they belong to." He

passed judgment and bestowed rank upon a great many people, and most of

his brevets, if he had been frank with them, would have put his life in

peril.

 

"Pop" Migley touched a rib of the Emperor with his big, coercive thumb,

shut one eye, and produced a kind of snore in his larynx.

 

The wit of his son had increased the cheerfulness of Mr. Migley. He

began telling coarse tales, and continued until, as the Emperor would

say, he had "emptied his reel." The man who talked too much always had

a "big reel," in the thought of the Emperor, and "slack line" was the

phrase he applied to empty words.

 

With everything ready for sport, they proceeded to the landing on Lost

River and were soon seated in a long canoe.

 

"We'll t-try Dunmore's trout," said Strong as they left the shore.

 

"Dunmore's trout?" said the elder Migley.

 

"Ay-uh," the Emperor answered. "He hitched onto an' l-lost him."

 

"Oh, it's that fish I've heard about that grabbed off one of Dunmore's

flies," said the elder Migley.

 

"Uh-huh," the Emperor assented.

 

As a matter of fact, the old gentleman who lived on the shore of

Buckhorn had done a good deal of talking about this remarkable fish.

 

Father and son sat with rods in hand while Strong worked through the

still water and down a long rush of rapids and halted below them near a

deep pool flecked with foam.

 

"C-cast," said he.

 

With a wild swish and a spasmodic movement of arm and shoulder, "Pop"

Migley, who sat amidships, tipped the canoe until it took water.

 

Strong dashed his paddle and recovered balance. The young man swore.

 

"C-cast yer _f-flies_," Strong suggested, and his emphasis clearly

indicated that the fisherman should cease casting his body.

 

Again the _nouveau_ worked his rod, whipping its point to the water fore

and aft. Flies and leader clawed over the back of Silas Strong, fetching

his hat off. Before he could recover, the young man went into action.

Strong ducked in time to save an ear, splashing his paddle again to keep

the canoe on its bottom. The tail-fly had caught above his elbow. When

Strong tried to loosen its hold the young man was tugging at the

line. Strong endeavored to speak, but somehow the words wouldn't come.

Suddenly the other rod came back with a powerful swing and smote him on

the top of his head.

 

He had been trying to say "See here," but his tongue had halted on the

s. Then he took a new tack, as it were, and tried a phrase which began

with the letter g, and had fair success with it.

 

Both Migleys gave a start of surprise. The Emperor waited to recover

self-control and felt a touch of remorse.

 

"Le' me c-climb a t-tree," he suggested, presently.

 

The elder Migley burst into loud laughter.

 

"Stop fooling!" said the young man. "I'd like to get some fish."

 

He swung his rod, and was again tugging at the shirt-sleeve of the

Emperor.

 

Strong blew as he clung to the leader.

 

"C-cast c-crossways," he commanded, with a gesture.

 

The fishermen rested a moment. A hundred feet or so below them Strong

saw a squirrel crossing the still water. Suddenly there was a movement

behind him, and he sank out of sight. In half a moment he rose again,

swimming with frantic haste to reach a clump of alder branches. Strong

knew the mysterious villain of this little drama of the river, but said

not a word of what he had seen.

 

The "sports" resumed fishing with less confidence and more care. Soon

they were able to reach off twenty feet or so, but they raked the air

with deadly violence, and every moment one leader was laying hold of the

other or catching in a tree-top. Strong pulled down bough after bough to

free the flies. Presently they were caught high in a balsam.

 

"Take us where there's trout. What do you think we're fishing for,

anyway?" said young Migley.