when he wasn't fishing for pure sport. On this
sunny stretch, so clear in the red glow of approaching sunset that the
bottom was plainly visible, he could see the fat old patriarchs lazing
the late afternoon away. But he was soon rousing them to find out what
that little shining thing could be that darted so rapidly through their
habitat,--that tiny bit of metallic white so unlike anything their jaded
appetites had yet negotiated.

The bright silver blade, only a quarter inch in width, perhaps three
times as long, spun against the current, cavorting along jerk by jerk,
(with time between jerks for the scaly ones to think it over), soon began
to get results. As the trout were all on the bottom resting till twilight
should set in, Pedro craftily allowed the spinner to sink till it all but
raked the bottom before beginning that tantalizing play.

Norris, too, tried a spinner, though he chose rapid water. There was one
great beauty, green above and orange beneath, that baited his fancy. For
some time he dangled the lure before he felt the heavy fish. Then a long
rush, that sent his line whistling out like lightning, a moment's quiet,
followed by another rush, and he had landed a great beauty of a
five-pounder with the hook hard fast in his jaws.

After that Norris returned to camp, where Ace and Ted were already
jubilantly comparing notes. Long Lester came in with a bag of birds and
rabbits.

Of course their catch had to be broiled. Pedro arrived in time to join
them in "which will you have, or trout,"--for the game had been saved for
breakfast. The boys ate with relish, though without salt, and later
listened to Long Lester telling tales with his boots to the bon-fire,
bronze faced, nonchalant. At 8,000 feet, the air grew noticeably cooler
with the turning of the wind down-canyon, and the boys heaped down-wood
liberally in a pyramid. The dry evergreens snapped in a shower of sparks
as the full moon, silvering the snow-clad peaks, deepened the shadows
under the trees.

On the fragrance of crushed fir boughs they finally slept, all thought of
the morrow drowned in dreams.

Out of the painted sunsets and yellow sands of the Salton Sea, land of
centipedes and cactus, blistering sun, and parching thirst, and all
things cruel and ugly, had come Sanchez, a Mexican, with his son and an
old man who had been his servant, to lay ties for the narrow gauge
railway that was to zig-zag up the canyon walls for a lumber
company. Kin