Idaho -- Fiction; Ranch life -- Fiction; Western stories
She was busy then until the train came screeching down upon the station,
paused there while the conductor rushed in, got a thin slip of paper for
himself and the engineer, and rushed out again. When the train grumbled
away from the platform and went its way, it left man standing there, a
fish-basket slung from one shoulder, a trout rod carefully wrapped in
its case in his hand, a box which looked suspiciously like a case of
some bottled joy at his feet, and a loose-lipped smile upon his face.
“Howdy, Miss Georgie?” he called unctuously through the open door.
Miss Georgie barely glanced at him from under her lashes, and her
shoulders indulged themselves in an almost imperceptible twitch.
“How do you do, Mr. Baumberger?” she responded coolly, and very, very
gently pushed the door shut just as he had made up his mind to enter.
CHAPTER VIII. THE AMIABLE ANGLER
Baumberger--Johannes was the name he answered to when any of his family
called, though to the rest of the world he was simply Baumberger--was
what he himself called a true sport. Women, he maintained, were very
much like trout; and so, when this particular woman calmly turned
her back upon the smile cast at her, he did not linger there angling
uselessly, but betook himself to the store, where his worldly position,
rather than his charming personality, might be counted upon to bring him
his meed of appreciation.
Good Indian and Jack, sitting side by side upon the porch and saying
very little, he passed by with a careless nod, as being not worth his
attention. Saunders, glancing up from the absorbing last chapter of
“The Brokenhearted Bride,” also received a nod, and returned it
apathetically. Pete Hamilton, however, got a flabby handshake, a wheezy
laugh, and the announcement that he was down from Shoshone for a good,
gamy tussle with that four-pounder he had lost last time.
“And I don't go back till I get him--not if I stay here a week,” he
declared, with jocular savagery. “Took half my leader and my pet fly--I
got him with a peacock-bodied gray hackle that I revised to suit my own
notions--and, by the great immortal Jehosaphat, he looked like a whale
when he jumped up clear of the riffle, turned over, and--” His flabby,
white hand made a soaring movement to indicate the manner in which the
four-pounder had vanished.
“Better take a day off and go with me, Pete,” he suggested, getting an
unwieldy-looking pipe from the pocket of his canvas fishing-coat, and
opening his eyes at a trout-fly snagged in the mouthpiece. “Now, how
did that fly come there?” he asked aggrievedly, while he released it
daintily for all his fingers looked so fat and awkward. He stuck the
pipe in the corner of his mouth, and held up the fly with that interest
which seems fatuous to one who has no sporting blood in his veins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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