all he wanted when he jumped not once, but twenty times, before the
up-stream flight that ran my line out to the last half-dozen turns, and
I saw the nickelled reel-bar glitter under the thinning green coils. My
thumb was burned deep when I strove to stopper the line.

I did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing weir,
praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away. And the prayer was
heard. As I bowed back, the butt of the rod on my left hip-bone and the
top joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned and accepted
each inch of slack that I could by any means get in as a favor from on
high. There lie several sorts of success in this world that taste well
in the moment of enjoyment, but I question whether the stealthy theft of
line from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing and
why you are doing it is not sweeter than any other victory within human
scope. Like California's fish, he ran at me head on, and leaped against
the line, but the Lord gave me two hundred and fifty pairs of fingers in
that hour. The banks and the pine-trees danced dizzily round me, but I
only reeled--reeled as for life--reeled for hours, and at the end of
the reeling continued to give him the butt while he sulked in a pool.
California was further up the reach, and with the corner of my eye I
could see him casting with long casts and much skill. Then he struck,
and my fish broke for the weir in the same instant, and down the reach
we came, California and I, reel answering reel even as the morning stars
sing together.

The first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. We were both at
work now in deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to stall off a
down-stream rush for shaggy water just above the weir, and at the same
time to get the fish into the shallow bay down-stream that gave the
best practicable landing. Portland bid us both be of good heart, and
volunteered to take the rod from my hands.

I would rather have died among the pebbles than surrender my right to
play and land a salmon, weight unknown, with an eight-ounce rod. I
heard California, at my ear, it seemed, gasping: "He's a fighter from
Fightersville, sure!" as his fish made a fresh break across the stream.
I saw Portland fall off a log fence, break the overhanging bank, and
clatter down to the pebbles, all sand and landing-net, and I dropped on
a log to rest for a moment. As I drew breath the weary hands slackened
their hold