Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/191

Rh pool across from them, and Taylor's eyes were there as well, and the fly went there again and again as a fish broke the white-flecked velvet blue of deep water rising from his lair to fall back with mighty splashes.

For twenty minutes Taylor sent his fly in, picked it up, dried it by false casts, drove it forward and let it rush over the pool; and the trout kept feeding all about that lure, selecting from the myriads of flies that swept over him only those which meant life—not death.

Rhythmatically, like a machine, the man cast, and finally the girl's eyes left the fish to watch him in silhouette against the sky, which had become pale orange. His hat was off and his profile was cleanly cut. She could see the ripple of arm and shoulder muscles beneath his shirt, could watch the good poise and co-ordination of trunk with limb as his whole splendid body went into the cast. And then the fish struck!

With an expulsion of breath like a glad, muffled cry, Taylor's right arm whipped back, above and behind his head. The bamboo bent in a stiff arc. His left arm tooled the line carefully as he gave out, as he took in, and the line itself where it disappeared into the current, laid back fin after fin of silvered water as the trout plowed here and there in his depths in frantic effort to be free. Upstream, downstream, across and back; sulking, moving slowly, rushing mightily; coming to the surface and showing his dorsal fin as he dived again; roving the bottom for snags or rocks that would cut the leader; for ten minutes the fish fought with the nobility which only the speckled trout puts into his will to live, and then he came gasping to net, looking like a dying flame with the crimson of his fins, the rich coloring of his belly.