Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/118

 suspicious. In fact, judging from the shrewd way you have, ah, inconvenienced me, I'd say your chances were excellent."

Well, I guess I got to dreaming too much about those nine rainbow, because I let the bend go out of my rod.

Instantly, he broke water high in the air, got the slack he needed and shook the hook loose. Then he circled right at my feet and sent a splash of cold water all over me with his tremendous tail. "Hah! I told you you couldn't hold me," he gloated gleefully.

I could have sat down and cried, but I didn't let on. "What do you mean?" I said. "You made me a bargain, and being a sportsman I kept my part by letting you off. After all, I did come out here to fish for rainbow. So, thanks for tipping me off about the upper pool," I added with what dignity I could muster.

"Don't mention it," he replied sarcastically.

Well, he'd made up my mind for me, so I stripped off the earphones and the sling attached to the spotter, and I climbed the rocks alongside the falls. There was the pool, just as the steelhead had described it, mossy rock and all.

Then my last hope curdled. The pool was only about two feet deep, and clear as a mill pond. No game fish in his right mind would hesitate in that exposed water for ten seconds.

Mad? I threw down my rod, grabbed up a knobby tree branch for a club and scrambled back to the lower pool with murder in my eyes.

"How's fishing?" the steelhead asked, his gills fluttering with hysteria.

I picked up the fish-spotter, case, earphones and all and heaved it at the big brute, then I swung that tree limb and launched myself out at him.

Naturally, I was no match for him in his own element. My waders filled up and I almost drowned before I managed to struggle down into the shallow rapids where the water was only hip deep. And the damned steelhead kept circling me and slapping water in my face all the way to shore.

The last I saw of him he disappeared around the bend in the river.

I didn't even dive for the fish-spotter. It's still soaking at the bottom of that pool, and it can stay down there for all of me. All it did was prove one thing.

Fish are just as big liars as fishermen. THE END 118