Page:Barbour--Captain Chub.djvu/368

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
350
CAPTAIN CHUB

beneath him north and south for as far as the eye could reach. There was a small group of sumac-bushes beside the road here, and he threw himself down in the scanty shade it afforded and rested for a few minutes. Then he climbed a stone wall, crossed an upland meadow, and so came to a stream. It was rather a good-sized affair and very noisy, for it was hurrying down-hill over a bed of boulders. Pools were few and far between here, but he followed the stream up as it wound around the side of the hill, and eventually found a place where a big lichen-covered rock backed the water up into a shallow basin. The place didn’t look as though it held many trout, but he selected a fly and made his cast. At the end of ten minutes or so he had landed a miserable little fish, not much more than a fingerling, which under ordinary circumstances he would have disdained to keep. But it was already approaching mid-afternoon, and he couldn’t afford to be particular. Two more youngsters were added to his string during the next quarter of an hour, and then Chub decided that he had enough for his purpose, for he only wanted to convince the Gipsies that he was a bona fide trout-fisher and not