Feb. 4, 1905.] 
^ FOREST AND STREAM. 
07 
iDWMiniiillM 
The Novitiate's Rainbow. 
San Francisco, Cal., Jan. 22.— To paraphrase a say- 
ing of the late E. W. N3^e, of New York and Laramie 
City, _ "We San Franciscans from the East" are just 
now, in the throes of the regular marked-down hoHday 
sale of rainstorm and hurricane. This is a big country 
—a large and generous empire in itself. Here one 
catches the biggest game fishes, kills the biggest bags 
of game birds, drives coaches through the biggest trees in 
the world, lodges at the biggest hotels, looks at other 
wprlds through the biggest telescope and finds every- 
thing done on a corresponding scale of bigness.- 
; Except the variety of the people, they are big of 
modesty, big of heart, small of boasting. Instance: 
My morning paper speaks of this veritable hurricane in 
Its forecast as "slightly cloudy, slight showers, fairly 
high south-westerly winds." The aforesaid winds have 
just blown the roof off the elevator shaft of the clifif 
dwelling (called for politeness' sake apartment house), 
in which the writer's family have assembled their 
Lares and Penates; the house rocks from side to side 
like Pip's wonderful saw-horse in the "Marvelous Land 
of Oz," and my better-half, only accustomed to the 
;gentle cloudburst of Colorado, ventured to ask Mr. 
Miller, the quiet-mannered carpenter who undertook 
to repair damages with tarpaulin and wagon sheets, if 
"this wasn't just dreadful?" 
"Why, no indeed, mum; this ain't nothin' to what we 
gits sometimes. Most generally we has lightnin' and 
thunder a-plenty, and the wind blows a hull lot." , And 
he changed the course of a rivulet fast disappearing 
down his collar with a swipe of his left hand and 
"swam" back to the roof, where his hammer blows 
were drowned by the booming of the wind. 
But after the storm — sunshine. And such sunshine, 
too! Perhaps to-morrow the parks and breathing places 
will be filled with people, gaily caparisoned and smiling 
of mien; they will trample down the velvety green grass 
meeting^ the horizon of one's sight at every point of 
the compass and waving its myriad tiny blades in 
welcome^ to his "Merry Sunship." There is a charm 
about this "native sunshine" I have found nowhere else. 
Mellow, like a June apple, it is, and fills one's mouth 
with a taste of youth, recalling visions of crabapple 
blossom and honeysuckle. If the babe of nursery 
rhyme, who cried for the moon, had opened his 
lachrymal ducts for the particular brand of solar ray 
that envelops San Francisco, to my mind there would 
have been nothing inconsistent in his plea. Myself, I 
feel like crying for a gleam of sunshine after being shut 
up in my bedroom four days with a stiff neck and 
nothing to cheer save the patter of the rain and the 
howling of the wind, both big with promise of great 
crops at next harvest-time. 
But it was not of this climate, this sunshine, nor this 
particular "neck of the woods" that I started to write. 
My confinement caused memory to hark back to one 
particularly beautiful fall morning in Colorado, Sept. 
18 last. All our household goods have either been 
disposed of at auction, or packed in four big trunks, 
now resting in the baggage car' of the "Overland Lim- 
iteted," and our tickets give us license to ride and ride 
and ride, till we shall come to the Golden Gate. Our 
powerful engine quickly gets down to business and soon 
we're whirling past the orchards and ranches and beet 
farms of northern Colorado. 
. Cheyenne, Wyoming, that modern Gretna Green of 
^Ifivorced ones, who want another "hack" at matrimony, 
'js hailed and passed. Our ponderous steed begins now 
a monotonous thump, thump, thump toward the town ' 
where Col. Nye began life "skinning mules" and grind- 
ing out humor for the Laramie Boomerang. 
ylt was "gittin' along to'ards dusk" when we "hit the 
.t^ail" across the Laramie plains, with their wonderful 
'shadings in red-and-yellow brick-dust soils and drab 
g'fasses. As we sat back in our varnished car, watch- 
ing the "miles go reeling into the bygone, without seeing 
any bigger game on the limitless plains than now and 
then an impudent little prairie dog, standing man-like 
at his hole with hand across his pretty white breast, 
making mocking obeisance at the passing train, I re- 
called an interview of recent date with that veteran 
engineer and railroad builder, Gen. G. M. Dodge, of 
Omaha and New York. He had just returned from 
an inspection tour over the first railroad to cleave the 
great plains and weld West and East into closer and 
ever closer bond. 
"Railroad building in the late '60s," said the grizzled old 
path-builder, sunning a gouty foot in his luxurious 
apartments at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, "was 
not like it is now. There was more zest, more risk, 
more of the wild-and-wooly about it then. Plains 
swarmed with buffalo and Indians. Uncle Sam's 
soldiers kept pretty busy killing Injuns, who opposed 
the building of the railroad, and protecting our men. 
Every engineer's corps was guarded; so was every 
grader's camp and every other working department. 
Without the soldiers my work must have failed. For meat 
the camp was supplied with buffalo in abundance, and 
buffalo robes were more common than woolen blankets. 
The streams were full of trout; no trick at all to take 
all one wanted for the whole 'mess' after knocking off 
from work. Coyotes were bold and fearless — for 
coyotes — and furnished most of the nocturnal music. 
"It has been years since I was here; the changes are 
striking. No Indians — not one. No buffalo. Only a 
tew wallows, I am told, remain to tell the story of his 
greatness. Coyotes— j'es, a few still skulk in the fast- 
lesses, but most of these, too, are gone. And trout — 
:hey, too, would be gone but for the fostering hand of 
nan. However, I am too old for the fly-rod, too old, 
[ fear. But there vyas a time"— and the doughty old 
railroad-builder's eyes sparkled youthfully, as though 
lie d hke just one more try at the leaping beauties. It 
pleased him much, said this old frontiersman, to hear 
the leading railroad experts of the country had declared 
recently that, notwithstanding the Union Pacific had 
laterally been built amid a shower of hostile arrows and 
bullets, yet every engineering problem had been so 
carefully wrought out that no change was recommended, 
fitter the lapse of thirty-five years. Fremont, the great 
pathfinder, was no more beset in his time than was this 
later pioneer whose work has made possible the rapid 
civilization of the far West. 
At Wolcott we piled off, rod and suit cases in hand, 
and sought slumber in a nearby hotel. It's a twenty- 
four tiiile ride to Saratoga, but the trip was charmingly 
negotiated behind a pair of powerful bays who simply 
walked away with the comfortable four-seated Spalding, 
into which were stored all necessary camping-out duffle, 
not forgetting some choice breakfast bacon and eggs 
to "settle the coffee." I demurred somewhat at "settled" 
coffee, allowing the "bootleg" variety the proper thing 
MR. J. B. CALDWELL S RECORD AMBER JACK. 
, - I ' •' '~ \ 
for camp; but femininity prevailed and the eggs were 
not jettisoned. Arrived at Saratoga we decided to call 
. it a day, and Fred Wolfe, hotel man and sportsman's 
friend, made us comfortable for the night. 
Off early Tuesday morning, after an inspiring and 
sustaining breakfast prepared by Mr. Wolfe, a twenty- 
mile drive on a gorgeous Colorado day fetched us to 
the Tilton ranch, situated on the North Platte River 
flowing from Colorado into Wyoming. Here we "fed" 
both team and ourselves, and "settled coffee" with 
real cream lost none of its charm for being made over 
a wood fire and quaffed from granite cups. So far no 
trout; the occasional young sage chickens and grouse 
had escaped our larder simply for lack of a gun. A 
comfortable half day's ride brought us at sunset to the 
Big Creek ranch of John Hunter. One may stop here 
and do well with the pink-bellied rainbows, if he choose, 
but we pushed on to the ranch of another Hunter, 
whose surname is "Jack." His home is about three 
miles from Pinkhamton and the same distance from the 
mouth of North Platte Cafion. The distances named 
may be fair subject of criticism. I received them at 
second hand, pass them over in silence and hope those 
who follow me will do likewise. Westerners are never 
niggardly, even in the matter of a few miles — more or 
less. 
"The Platte was just right," said Uncle Jack, a lean 
and active young-old man who knows not how many 
head of cattle he owns, and grows richer and richer 
each year in spite of himself. With a bank account 
of over $ioo,OGO_ Mr. Hunter lives in a style of such 
surprising simplicity that the modern medium-salaried 
city man would deem it discomfort to live so. How- 
ever, Mr. Hunter has lived in style in Chicago; knows ■ 
what he wants. The exterior of his nondescript log- 
house gives no intimation of the good cheer within. 
But once seated on either of the two long wooden 
benches which parallel the oilcloth-covered dining table 
in one end of the kitchen, the guest loses himself 
wondering where all those good things come from. So 
many campers and "hoboes" pass his way and have 
despitefully used him in one. way or. another that "Uncle 
Jacjv" generally bids them a'! "begone," But I had, 
known him previously, had traded him a pair of gum 
wading boots for a coyote dog, and then lost the dog. 
That made a difference. 
"I'm like Ben Franklin; I pass this way but once, and 
I want to treat everybody right. But, like President 
Roosevelt,_I'm not going to let anybody treat me wrong 
u j^"*^"^ ^'^^ enough to live on and some to leave 
the boys. I've a most discriminating tooth (he has a 
whole mouthful of them, white and sound as a dog's), 
and I like to treat it well. But Fin derned if I am 
going to wear Tuxedos and English walking coats, 
when I feel more comfortable in 75-cent overalls." 
With this picturesque remark, the gaunt old cattle king 
turned to the subject of the next day's fishing. 
'The water was just right," he repeated, and we 
were to be congratulated in that regular vacation time 
was now past. "The fish were not kept in a state of 
perpetual fright," he said, "by the passing of would-be 
sports up and down the banks." 
By the bye, Uncle Jack uses never a fly. But I have 
yet to see the fly-fisher who can cast further or better 
or more accurately than he. By this I mean in prac- 
tical work on the stream, not in tournament. Filling 
a bucket with live minnows, netted in one of the many 
shallows on the Platte, the lithe old gentleman gathers 
his line m his left hand in a score or more of four- 
foot loops, gently clutches the end of the leader about 
eighteen inches from the hook, to which the minnow 
has been previously attached through the thick part of 
the back, and after a few quick whirls, releases the 
leader from between finger and thumb of right hand 
immediately the impaled minnow sails straight up into 
the air m the intended direction. You hardly see it 
strike the water, the resultant "drag" is almost im- 
perceptible, and you wonder how in thunder the caster 
knew to such a nicety just how much line to pay out. 
^ How do you do it?" I asked. 
"Dunno; been doin' it all my life. Practice maybe 
Yes, I can cast a fly pretty fairly, thank you, but this 
way suits me best. I get the biggest trout, and that's 
what i m after. Flies is all right for fly-casters, but 
bait-castin for me all the time. It takes more science 
to cast bajt successfully, too. Try it." I did, and went 
back to flies as being easier, though I knew somewhat 
of bait-castmg for black bass in the Shenandoah and 
Delaware m years past. 
Next morning we invaded that portion of the Platte 
which meanders through a few miles of meadow land 
owned by our host. This was out of deference to my 
life comrade, now to make her first killing— maybe. 
I he latter and I had four-ounce lancewoods, very 
supple and willowy. She decided to use bait Her 
host gallantly baited and cast for her into a pool, tellino- 
her to 'let it stay thar till somethin' takes the bait and 
runs, off a bit with it; then strike him hard" 
"What will I strike him with?" «&sks the Novitiate, 
looking helpless. 
^^With your fist," said I, sassily, "you know how " 
With your rod— just so," replied the gentle old ' 
angler, illustrating. "Thank you," beamingly to her 
instructor. "Shet up," defiantly to me. 
Quickly rigging up a killing battery, I was soon 
slashing away m the still waters, reversing methods 
which lead to success earlier in the season. In these 
waters, after the crisp September weather sets in, trout 
torsake the deep holes and lie along the shallow edges 
? 1 .'i?to deep water, much to the; consternation 
ot the -Novitiate, who said several Things about my 
being Foolish and Getting a Cold and Dying, but grew 
Lalm when I Assured her my Insurance' Premiums were 
fl^'d. Casting my flies into the still water alongside 
the riffles I soon had , a strike, -returned it, and was in 
the act of making a "grand stand play" for the benefit 
ot the Novitiate who, I could see out of the corner of 
my eye was looking at me in open-mouthed admiration 
when she screamed: "Oh, oh, I got one! I got one'"' 
and began dancing about excitedly. Mine was a small 
trout and I lost no time in beaching him. Hastenino- 
to the Novitiate, who was doing all sorts of stunts and 
working hard to turn a really big one, I offered to re- 
lieve her. 
"You keep away; don't you dare touch this rod I 
landed you, and I guess I'll land this one, too just 
stand there and tell me what to do." So the next 
few minutes it was: 
^ "Give him line— let him run— reel in, reel in— don't 
tip your rod so high— there, look out— he jumps— 
steady, steady— he's got too much line— look out for 
those brush— reel slowly, slowly— keep playing ' him— 
not too fast"— and on through the stages till— "now 
walk up the beach backward"— was carefully obey.°d 
and the big fellow also "walked out on dry land " ^ ' 
Not even after it was all over and Mr. Rainbow was 
kicking in safety in the grass did the Novitiate get 
^j^l?n^^^°?' °^ something of that sort. Not she 
Why, the greedy thing, he took my minnow'" she 
exclaimed and forthwith began bawling- 
''Mr. Plunter, oh, good Mr. Hunter! do please, come 
and cast for me again!" And good Mr. Hunter came 
and did as he was commanded, looked at the fast dvine 
monarch of the pool, said, "A good four-pounder " and 
went back to his "knitting" downstream. I returned 
to my chops and succeeded within an hour in bao-mng 
five more nice little fellows, none over two pounds 
Joining the Novitiate I offered to put her catch in 
my creel, and was surprised to find a second victim 
alongside her first, both as like as two peas. 
'■J'you do that?" I queried. 
"Uh, huh!" quoth the Novice. 
"Don't believe you; you didn't holler." 
"No. Toaten, I couldn't holler; I was too dum- 
founded." 'that was convincing. iJallooing to o'n- host 
that time was up. wc wended our way across the newlv 
cut grain stubble to the house/ running, fi,j-s{: into ^ 
