he pole and with a swing downstream kept Mr. Trout going until
he shot out to the edge of the pond, and there Fitz tumbled on top of
him and grabbed him with one hand by the gills.

When we held him up we gave our Patrol yell:

B. S. A.! B. S. A.!
Elks! Elks! Hoo-ray!
Oooooooooooo!

CHAPTER IV

THE BEAVER MAN

For he was a great one, that trout! He was the big fellow that everybody
had been after, because he was twenty-six inches long and weighed four
pounds and had only one eye! That was good woodcraft, for a boy twelve
years old to sneak up on him and catch him with a willow pole and a line
tied fast and a grasshopper, when regular fishermen with fine outfits
had been trying right along. Of course they'll say we didn't give him
any show--but after he was hooked there was no use in torturing him. The
hooking is the principal part.

Jed showed us how he had worked. He hadn't raised anything in the first
hole, by the bank, and he had gone on to another place that looked good.
Lots of people had fished this second place; there was a regular path to
it through the weeds, on the shore side; and below it, along the
shallows, the mud was full of tracks. But Jed had been smart. A trout
usually lies with his head up-stream, so as to gobble whatever comes
down. But here the current set in with a back-action, so that it made a
little eddy right against the bank--and a trout in that particular spot
would have his nose _downstream_. So Jed fished from the direction
opposite to that from which other persons had fished. He went around,
and approached from up-stream, awfully careful not to make any noise or
raise any settlings. Then he reached far and bounced his hopper from the
bank into the edge--as if it had fallen of itself--and it was gobbled
quick as a wink and the old trout pulled Jed in, too.

So in fishing as in other scouting, I guess, you ought to do what the
enemy isn't expecting you to do.

My trout was just a minnow beside of Jed's; and the two of them were all
we could eat, so we quit; Jed and I stripped off our wet clothes and
took a rub with a towel and sat in dry underclothes, while the wet stuff
was hung up in the sun. We felt fine.

That was a great dinner. We rolled the trout in mud and baked them
whole. And we had fried potatoes, hot bread (or what people would call
biscuits), and wild raspberries with condensed milk. General Ashley and
Kit Carson had brought in a bucket of them. T