Betty Zane - Zane Grey (free ebook novel .txt) 📗

and clusters of maidenhair fern growing on it. From under an overhanging rock on the bank a spring of crystal water bubbled forth.

Alfred rigged up the rods, and baiting a hook directed Betty to throw her line well out into the current and let it float down into the eddy. She complied, and hardly had the line reached the circle of the eddy, where bits of white foam floated round and round, when there was a slight splash, a scream from Betty and she was standing up in the canoe holding tightly to her rod.

“Be careful!” exclaimed Alfred. “Sit down. You will have the canoe upset in a moment. Hold your rod steady and keep the line taut. That’s right. Now lead him round toward me. There,” and grasping the line he lifted a fine rock bass over the side of the canoe.

“Oh! I always get so intensely excited,” breathlessly cried Betty. “I can’t help it. Jonathan always declares he will never take me fishing again. Let me see the fish. It’s a goggle-eye. Isn’t he pretty? Look how funny he bats his eyes,” and she laughed gleefully as she gingerly picked up the fish by the tail and dropped him into the water. “Now, Mr. Goggle-eye, if you are wise, in future you will beware of tempting looking bugs.”

For an hour they had splendid sport. The pool teemed with sunfish. The bait would scarcely touch the water when the little orange colored fellows would rush for it. Now and then a black bass darted wickedly through the school of sunfish and stole the morsel from them. Or a sharp-nosed fiery-eyed pickerel⁠—vulture of the water⁠—rising to the surface, and, supreme in his indifference to man or fish, would swim lazily round until he had discovered the cause of all this commotion among the smaller fishes, and then, opening wide his jaws would take the bait with one voracious snap.

Presently something took hold of Betty’s line and moved out toward the middle of the pool. She struck and the next instant her rod was bent double and the tip under water.

“Pull your rod up!” shouted Alfred. “Here, hand it to me.”

But it was too late. A surge right and left, a vicious tug, and Betty’s line floated on the surface of the water.

“Now, isn’t that too bad? He has broken my line. Goodness, I never before felt such a strong fish. What shall I do?”

“You should be thankful you were not pulled in. I have been in a state of fear ever since we commenced fishing. You move round in this canoe as though it were a raft. Let me paddle out to that little ripple and try once there; then we will stop. I know you are tired.”

Near the center of the pool a half submerged rock checked the current and caused a little ripple of the water. Several times Alfred had seen the dark shadow of a large fish followed by a swirl of the water, and the frantic leaping of little bright-sided minnows in all directions. As his hook, baited with a lively shiner, floated over the spot, a long, yellow object shot from out that shaded lair. There was a splash, not unlike that made by the sharp edge of a paddle impelled by a short, powerful stroke, the minnow disappeared, and the broad tail of the fish flapped on the water. The instant Alfred struck, the water boiled and the big fish leaped clear into the air, shaking himself convulsively to get rid of the hook. He made mad rushes up and down the pool, under the canoe, into the swift current and against the rocks, but all to no avail. Steadily Alfred increased the strain on the line and gradually it began to tell, for the plunges of the fish became shorter and less frequent. Once again, in a last magnificent effort, he leaped straight into the air, and failing to get loose, gave up the struggle and was drawn gasping and exhausted to the side of the canoe.

“Are you afraid to touch him?” asked Alfred.

“Indeed I am not,” answered Betty.

“Then run your hand gently down the line, slip your fingers in under his gills and lift him over the side carefully.”

“Five pounds,” exclaimed Alfred, when the fish lay at his feet. “This is the largest black bass I ever caught. It is pity to take such a beautiful fish out of his element.”

“Let him go, then. May I?” said Betty.

“No, you have allowed them all to go, even the pickerel, which I think ought to be killed. We will keep this fellow alive, and place him in that nice clear pool over in the fort-yard.”

“I like to watch you play a fish,” said Betty. “Jonathan always hauls them right out. You are so skillful. You let this fish run so far and then you checked him. Then you gave him a line to go the other way, and no doubt he felt free once more when you stopped him again.”

“You are expressing a sentiment which has been, is, and always will be particularly pleasing to the fair sex, I believe,” observed Alfred, smiling rather grimly as he wound up his line.

“Would you mind being explicit?” she questioned.

Alfred had laughed and was about to answer when the whip-like crack of a rifle came from the hillside. The echoes of the shot reverberated from hill to hill and were finally lost far down the valley.

“What can that be?” exclaimed Alfred anxiously, recalling Colonel Zane’s odd manner when they were about to leave the house.

“I am not sure, but I think that is my turkey, unless Lew Wetzel happened to miss his aim,” said Betty, laughing. “And that is such an unprecedented thing that it can hardly be considered. Turkeys are scarce this season. Jonathan says the foxes and wolves ate up the broods. Lew heard this turkey calling and he made little Harry Bennet, who had started out with his gun, stay at home and went after