Jan. is, 1898.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
49 
Camp of the **Lone Kingfisher/' 
Little Pfesqtie Isle Fiver, Michigan. 
(Conch<ded from page SO.) 
One of the Bessemer party — a j'oung fellow whose 
name I have forgotten — was going down the river next 
morning "a-troutin', ' and learning that he would not ob- 
ject to "an ole feller like me" for a companion, we ar- 
ranged for a trip about three miles below, and probably 
as far as the falls, about four miles from the i-ailroad 
bridge. I was over at their camp early in the morning, 
before the berry pickers had started for the berry patch, 
and when about ready to start we saw the Chicago party, 
with McLaughlin, disappear in the woods at the head of 
the gravel pit, where an old "tote road" led down to the 
falls. • We struck into the same road soon after, as it was 
the only route by which we could get below without 
taking to the woods and brush, but we saw no more of 
them during the day. We followed the tote road proba- 
bly a mile and a half through the woods, and into an 
old burning for a qitarter of a mile or so, and then struck 
to the right for the river, another quarter of a mile away, 
through a growth of low bushes and briers and over old 
charred tree trunks and limbs that infested the way, 
which condition of things necessitated energetic language 
to make the going a little easier. 
At the river we started in with plain worms for bait, 
as the banks were so lined with a growth of drooping 
alders — thej' nearlj'^ always droop over the water when 
you don't want them to — that in most places it was 
impossible to cast a fly. However, when I caught the 
first trout I used a fan as fly and bait nearly all the rest 
of the daj', varied occasionally with a grasshopper for a 
change of diet. 
I have found that when a trout can't be inveigled by 
a ventral or an anal fin from one of his brethren, by 
giving it the "sarcumventin' twitch," it is not much use 
to try any other lure, and I have figured it out that there 
is about as much science in fooling a wary old trout 
with it as there is in the much glorified "drop-it-on-the- 
water-like-a-snowflake" business — the time-frayed, old 
chestnut of the fly-fisher, especially when the fly is barred 
by the "bresh." This is a digression. 
We fished along down the stream for over an hour, not 
covering more than a half mile in distance (two miles I 
made it out in hard work), taking a trout now and then; 
but the sport was rather unsatisfjang, owing to the diffi- 
culty of making our way through the bushes along the 
bank. 
In many places we could not get our rods over the 
water at all, and of course it was a plain case that along 
these stretches of water that we couldn't get at, the trout 
were lying along under the banks "thicker'n fleas on a 
Florida dog." 
When we happened to find an open place or pool that 
we could fish comfortablj% it seemed that most of the 
"elusive critters" had moved to the other places that 
we couldn't fish, or had been yanked out by other cranks 
earlier in the season, and that reminds me that my part- 
ner said he knew of parties coming over from Bessemer 
in May and June and taking back "loads" of over 400 
trout at a time; others 300, .200, and on down to a score 
or less, as the season advanced. On one day of the 
previous week there had been thirty-four fishermen, by 
actual count, along the stream from where we were up 
to the bridge a short distance above it. 
to the bridge and a_ short distance above it. 
under a drain like that, and yet there were "quite a few" 
trout left in it, and we managed to fool one occasionally, 
and were satisfied. 
My partner had spent a season or two in a lumber 
camp not far from where we then were, and to him the 
stream and surrounding country were as an open book. 
When we got down to within three-quarters ~oi a mile 
or so of the falls it was well into the afternoon, and he 
said it would hardly pay us to go on down, as the 
country got rougher and rockier and the stream harder 
to fish, and as I had about enough of it and each of us 
had a fair basket of fish, we climbed tlie bank and sat 
down on a log to rest and eat a few crackers we had 
left. I sweetened my portion with some luscious red 
raspberries picked from a patch of nearby Dushes, and 
' felt that I had dined sumptuously, considering the oppor- 
tvmities. 
The only evidence of life we saw in this dreary waste 
of fire-ravaged country was a few crows and an old 
"buck" porcupine that lumbered out of our way and took 
refuge in a hole under the roots of a blackened and 
branchless old hemlock standing alone at the top of the 
bank overlooking the stream. The instinct to kill — in- 
nate in most of us- — did not overcome us, and we left the 
old fellow in peace and unharmed, to live out his life 
according to "porcupine lights." Besides, I was told, 
after we had ranged around the camp fire that evening, 
that there is a clause in the Michigan State law pro- 
tecting porcupines at all seasons, for the I'eason that they 
are about the only animal a starving and lost man in 
the woods can kill for food without weapons. 
We struck out into the burning and found the tote 
road (at least, my partner found it) 50yds. or so from 
the stream — a mere blind trail through waist-high bushes 
that I never could have followed — and headed for camp. 
He nosed out the windings of the blind path, hidden 
most of the way by overgrowing bushes, with the intui- 
tion of a fox hound, till we got into the green timber, 
where the road was broad and plain, and we reached 
camp a little before sundown, tired,' hungry and hot, 
but happy, for we had passed a very pleasant day to- 
gether and had t out enough for all. The Chicagoans 
had come in long before us, broken camp and taken the 
afternoon train back to Gogebic I_.ake. 
I dressed twenty-six trout at the foot of the spring 
basin that evening, two of about three-quarters of a 
^punid each, pit or six oj half a. pound each and the 
others' oh down to "the limit of 6in. in length, and my 
partner's bask'et looked as^ well filled^ as mine; probablv 
tKeYe were' thirty fislT in it. " However, T did not ask Mm 
how many he had taken. ' - - 
I stayed in camp the better part of the next day and 
rested, toted up some wood for the evening camp fire, 
and sat on the log in front of the tent and smoked and 
cogitated, when I was too lazy to do anything else. 
Meantime I ate some tnore trout. (You see, 1 had not 
been where I could get any trout for a couple of years, 
and my trout tooth had become "powerful pesterin,' " 
and I was trying to pacify it and make up foi" lost time.) 
I fished a little in the shank 'of the afternoon, just 
to keep my hand in, and when I got supper I ate a few 
trout — to keep my hand in, as it were. 
That day the gravel pit camp broke up and went home, 
and the following day my near neighbors pulled up and 
took the morning freight for Bessemer, leaving me for 
company only a few inquisitive, restless bluejays (did any 
one ever see a bluejaj' sit still in one place for ten' sec- 
onds?) and Mister Frisky and Mister Sassbox, the two 
little squirrels that had, as it seemed, become a part of 
my camp. 
1 sat late that night in front of my camp-fire, solitary 
and alone — the first time in a camping experience of over 
thirty years — with oxCiy the mellow "hoo-hoo" oF a great 
owl back over the ridge, and the restful melody of the 
rippling spring branch to break the utter silence of the 
night. 
The camp fire burned down, the fire in the old pipe 
went out, and I went to bed in a reminiscent and con- 
tented frame of mind and slept the sound and dreamless 
sleep that comes always to him who loves the woods and 
is content with mother earth and balsam boughs for a 
couch. 
I was up with the sun next morning, and after the 
usual ablution in the cold water at the outlet of the spring 
basin 1 made my coffee and fried my bacon and trout 
with nothing to disturb the quiet of the morning except 
the snickering and scolding of Mister Sassbox, who sat 
on a limb a couple of rods away, taking a keen interest, 
as he made it appear, in the breakfast proceedings. 
As this was to be my last day on the stream, I thought 
I would try and get a mess o' trout during the forenoon 
to take back to the boys in the main camp; and after 
clearing up the breakfast things and leaving some scraps 
for Sassbox and Frisky I went up the railroad a half 
mile to where the creek ran through some meadows — a 
sort of prairie country — -but a few rods in places from the 
track. 
The stream aloilg through' the meadows was narrow — 
3 to loyds. wide — deep and sluggish, except for an oc- 
casional short, rocky riflie, and then another stretch of 
deep, dark water below, with no perceptible current. 
In some of the pools two and three miles below the 
bridge, where the water is from 10 to 30ft. deep, it looks 
almost black, and yet the trout are very little darker 
colored than some I have taken out of streams as clear 
as spring water. 
The meadows had been a famous part of the stream 
for big trout earlier in the season — fish that would run 
from I to 2>^lbs. and over — but, like the waters below, 
it had been fished to death. 
I fished carefully along the meadows and down through 
some woods to the beginning of the cut, where the creek 
took a square turn to the right and kept on in a wide 
loop along the base of the ridge, shaped something like 
a horseshoe, around to the camp, which was not more 
than forty rods across the heel of the shoe from where 
I then was. I had been around this loop once, another 
day, and I didn't care to tackle it again, as the stream 
was rocky, rapid and shallow, except for a few small 
pools not far above the big spring, where I had taken 
my first ti'out. Besides, the day I fished around it, a 
distance of half a mile or more, 1 got into a tangle of 
weedy vines and "bresh" that I thought 1 never would 
get out of, and it was only by the hardest kind of work 
that I got myself out, and to the brow of the ridge, 
which I followed, completely "bushed" down to the camp. 
I didn't want any more of the loop, and I reeled up and 
quit for the season, with my trout tooth almost ap- 
peased. I had enough of fishing — but not enough of fish 
for the boys back in camp — for I had taken but tlu'ee 
measly little fingerlings under 4in. in length, and these 
I had returned to the water in accoi'dance with the re- 
quirements of the fish law, but with a veliemence not 
probably in accordance with its intent. 
Tlie boys would get no trout, and I would have to go 
back to camp and sneak in the back way, as it wei^e, 
and meekly take the scoring I was sure they would have 
laid up for me, and which would doubtless be "a-comin" " 
to me if I brought them no trout. 
On getting back to the camp I spread my blankets 
and bedding out on the bushes to sun and air awhile 
before packing up, and meantime, having a few dressed 
trout in a pan sitting in the shallow water at the side 
of the spring, covered with another pan with a stone on 
it to keep the varmints out, I built a fire and prepared 
my last trout dinner of the 3'ear. 
While sitting "a-straddle" of the table peeling the 
backbone out of the last trout, an ominous rumble of 
thunder in tlie west signaled the approach of one of the 
hasty storms "indigenous to that region,'' and from for- 
mer experience I was warned that I hadn't much time 
to waste in packing my bedding into the canvas bag 
and getting it under sheUer of the tent. Back over the 
ridge I could see a dark cloud rising and spreading and 
getting blacker as it came up, the thunder muttering at 
intervals and getting louder as the storm came on. 
I finished my dinner in a hurry, gave the tin cups, 
plates and pans a "lick and a promise" with the dish 
towel, packed everything but the axe into the provision 
box, and covering it with a piece of green cedar bark, 
peeled for the purpose the first day', got into the tent 
as a few big, scattering raindrops sounded the prelude 
to the downpour that I could hear roaring through the 
woods as it came over the ridge. 
For a matter of three-quarters of an hour I sat on the 
balsam boughs, with the canvas bag of bedding for a 
back-rest, and smoked the old brier root and enjoyed 
the music of the rain as it beat fiercely on the little 
tent, keenly alive to, and relishing at the same time, the 
boom and crash of the thunder and the blinding flashes 
of the lightning as they battled for the mastery in the 
black clouds overhead. 
My spirits always rise- with a' thunderstorm, and the 
blood flows with a quicker throb, for it seems as if the 
invisible Ruler of all v/ere rehearsing a symphony on 
the grand organ of the universe, with the stops aU wide 
open, to show tis mortals the sublime power of the in- 
strument when the Master is at the keyboard; but I 
may say that during a recital of this kind, with a pouring 
rain accompaniment, I had rather listen to and enjoy it 
under the shelter of a good tent. 
The storm passed on, rumbling and growling, to- 
ward the east; the sun came out again brighter than 
before, it seemed, and I got out to sniff the freshened 
odors of the woods, made more fragrant by the recent 
pelting rain. 
It was time, however, to think of getting the outfit 
over to the railroad track, for the train going my way 
would soon be due. 
I took down the little tent, still saturated with water- 
but not a drop had gone through— and rolled it in a 
bundle by itself to be dried when opportunity offered; 
then three trips took the "calamities" to the railroad, 
and it only remained to go back and take a parting 
drink out of the big spring. 
The spring is a remarkable one in volume, ptlrity and 
coldness — almost, if not quite, as cold as our spring at 
the main camp on Fresque Isle Lake (42 degrees), and 
as clear as it is possible for water to be. It gushes out 
between two great boulders at the foot of the ridge in a 
stream as large as an average sized man's thigh, and 
flows into a natural basin 9 or toft, long and about a? 
much across, tire water near the inlet being probably 
i8in. in depth. At the lower end of tlie basin it narrows 
into a strcjng stream, large enough, as it looks, to run 
a small mill, and finds its way through a dense tangle 
of overhanging and small bushes into the creek — digni- 
fied somehow into a river — about four or five rods away. 
The section men of the railroad liave thrown some old 
bridge timbers across the basin, just clear of the water, 
making a very convenient sort of a platform on which 
they walk out to fill their water barrel to take with 
them to tneir work along the track, and it was a mighty 
handy arrangement for the campers, too, as I found. 
I filled my old "tank" with the delicious water, drank 
from an old broken beer bottle left there by some bibu- 
lous camper whose notions of the fitness of things must 
have been a trifle warped, and as I turned to go Mister 
Frisky popped up on his log a few yards up the side 
hill, skurried along a few feet, and stopping with a jerk 
as sudden as a cockroach, doubled himself up sideways 
and scratched his starboard car with his starboard hind- 
foot — estimated at thirty strokes to tlte second — and then 
another jerk brought him on end, front face, and eyeing 
me curiously, as much as to say: "What! Going away? 
Well, good-by, old friend. Come back some time with 
more crackers." 
I took off my hat and waved it at him in token of part- 
ing in good fellowship, but he must have misunderstood 
the demonstration, as he flipped off the log backward, 
as it looked, and that was the last glimpse I got of Mr. 
Frisky. 
Mister Sassbox didn't make his appearance, and I was 
disappointed, for he and Frisky had been my friends and 
eaten at my board, as it were, and I was hoping that he 
would flirt out on a limb of his favorite tree near my 
fireplace and give me a good "sassin' " as a farewell. 
Anyhow, I'll not soon forget my two little four-footed 
friends of Lone Kingfisher Camp, on Little Presque Isle 
River, for their cunning capers and friendly ways had 
been a fund of entertainment for me whenever 1 was 
around the camp, and I was sorry to leave them. 
Back at the track, I tied my old red "bandanner" on 
a pole, so it would hang between the rails, and waited, 
not more than ten or fifteen minutes for the train. 
The engineer — long may he live to pull a throttle — 
stopped 'er just at the right spot, and a brakeman and 
that level-headed, big-hearted conductor, Steve Connor, 
got out and helped me hoist the outfit into the baggage 
car, and we pulled away from Little Presque Isle with 
real regrets on my part, for I had spent the better part 
of six days there in unalloyed enjoyment and comfort, 
and — it would be a whole year before I could expect to 
inveigle another trout or find another camping place so 
entirely to my pleasement. 
I mention the stopping of tlie train to take me on, only 
to show the accommodating spirit of the traimnen of the 
Chicago and Northwestern Railway Co. They will stop 
the train anywhere in the woods where tnere is a stream 
that an angler wishes to fish, and he has only to signal 
the engineeer and they stop and take him on; and they 
make friends by it for themselves and the company they 
serve. May they live long in the land and prosper. 
Ormes had promised to be ready, on the arrival of the 
train that Saturday afternoon, to start out to the lake 
with his team, and I was to go out with him, but when I 
got off at Marenisco I found he had to wait for the 
afternoon freight for some oats and baled hay that he 
wanted to take out to the resort. It took advantage of 
the enforced delay to hang the wet tent on a neighboring 
fence to dry out, and to get some supplies tor the boys, 
who had sent the order in by one of the guides at the 
resort a day or two before. When the freight arrived — 
an hour late, as is usual when one is in a hurry — and we 
were ready to start, it was past 6 o'clock in the evening, 
which meant that we would have the worst part of the 
road to drive over in the dark. It was about dark when 
Ave got to the "floating corduroy," and for an hour we 
let the patient horses plod along, trusting to their better 
"night eyes" to keep the road rather than to our ability 
to see it; but Ormes is keen of sight, a very skillful 
driver, and knows the road perfectly, and this, with the 
intelligence of Blossom and Old Bill, kept us from com- 
ing to grief at several of the bad places along the road. 
Ormes said when the moon got tip we would get along 
at a better pace and with less difliciflty, and soon after 
we got glimpses of it, as it seemed' to dodge through the 
trees off to our left, and our spirits rose with it; but in 
ten minutes it was hidden in a bank of black clouds, and 
the road Avas darker than before it had come up. The 
darkness Avas so intense that it was only when we came 
now and then to a spot where the woods was more open 
than usual that we could see the dim outlines of the 
horses; but Ormes said he could drive through by mid- 
night, however dark it might be, and Ave kept on— jolt, 
jolt, bump, bang — over roots and rocks, into mudholes 
and chuckholes, till my back Avas so Avarped and strained 
holding on that I wished for a ball and socket joint in 
it to ease some of the shocks, when a Avheel \vould drop 
with a thud into some unusually deep chuckhole. It was 
