Page:Harry Castlemon - The Steel Horse.djvu/429

 over where there was anything to rust, and you could see daylight between his ribs where they had been glued together. He was ashamed to speak to me, for he had boasted that he was going to Canada to do battle with the lordly salmon. A little while afterward we heard a booming up the lake and saw a commotion in a boat whose crew were engaged in shooting wood-ducks. The Canvas Canoe took us up there in a hurry, and we found that a gun had burst in the hands of one of the party—the very dude who bought that double-barrel shot-gun. There wasn't much left of the gun, nothing but the stock and locks, in fact, but I knew him. The dude wasn't hurt, for a wonder, but he was mad, and the minute he recovered from the fright into which he had been thrown, he grabbed the wreck of that gun and sent it as for as he could into the bushes. Here I am, sound as a dollar, thanks to the good treatment I have received, supple as ever and ready to catch another black bass any time I am called upon."

The next thing that interested me was hearing a letter from Rowe Shelly read on the