Then he fell to chuckling. And when a smooth stretch suffered him to
unclasp his cramped hold, he slapped his leg mirthfully. He was thinking
what President Whittaker of the P. K. & R. would be saying in two weeks.
President Whittaker was a rotund, flabby man, whom long indulgence in
rubber-tired broughams and double-springed private cars had softened
until he reminded one of a fat down pillow.
“Jerrard,” he had said, at parting, “if you find good fishing I'll
follow you in two weeks. I need a little outdoor relaxation myself.”
Jerrard sent an enthusiastic letter right back by the tote-road driver.
He took the word of his guide about the fishing in prospect. In his new
and ebullient spirits he felt that he could hardly wait two weeks for
the spectacle--Whittaker in the middle seat of a buck-board, on that
six-mile carry road. And when the day came, Jerrard, now bronzed, alert
and agile walked out over the Poquette Carry, paddled down to Sunkhaze,
and received his superior with open arms.
The unconsciousness of the corpulent Whittaker as he left the train,
spick and span in tweed and polished shoes appealed to Jerrard's sense of
the ludicrous so acutely that the president, following the baggage-laden
guide down to the shore of the lake, stopped and looked at his friend
with puzzled gaze.
“I say, Jerrard, you seem to be in a good humor.”
“Nothing like the ozone of the forest to make you sparkle,” chuckled the
traffic-manager.
It is unnecessary to describe the incidents of the trip across the
lake, the apprehensive flinching of the fat president whenever the canoe
lurched, and his fear of breaking through the bottom of the frail shell.
But when they were well out on the carry road in the buckboard, Jerrard,
gazing on the indescribable mixture of reproach, horror, pain and
astonishment that the president's face presented laughed until Whittaker
forgot dignity, cares and fears, and laughed, too.
Two days later, as they were eating their lunch beside the famous spring
in the north cove of Kennemagon Whittaker stretched himself luxuriously
on the gray moss, and said;
“Jerrard, it's an earthly paradise! I never had such fishing, never saw
such scenery. I want to come here every summer. I'd like to buy a tract
here. But that six-mile drive--O dear me! It makes me shiver when I
think I've got to bump back over it in two weeks.”
That evening one Rowe, a timber-land exploring prospector, whose
employment was locating tracts for the cutting of pulp stuff, stopped at
the camp and accepted hospitality for the night. After supper the three
lay in their bunks and chatted, while the guide pottered about the
household tasks.
“Much travel over the Poquette Carry?” asked Whittaker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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