FOREST AND STREAM 
366 
I would have returned him to his native ele¬ 
ment had it not been for Ralph’s request that we 
leave what drum we caught on the beach for his 
friends 'to take back to the mainland, so I 
dragged the big fish to where my sandspike stood, 
and, getting out the scales, found that he weighed 
thirty-two pounds. Then I put on a fresh bait 
and retraced my footprints in the sand to make 
sure of finding the lucky spot again. 
Scarcely had the tiny splash in the water, 
about one hundred and fifty feet out, denoted 
where my lead had fallen when I was into an¬ 
other one. The fight of this fish was vigorous 
and snappy—as well he might struggle, coming 
from a long line of fighting ancestors—but he 
seemed to lack the power of my first capture, 
and I was not surprised when I saw his size. 
Fifteen pounds was all he weighed, but a good 
eating size; so I laid him beside his elder 
brother. 
Again I followed the well worn path to the 
water’s edge, and again a fish struck the in¬ 
stant I cast out, but on beaching him I found 
to my disgust that he weighed only sixteen 
pounds. He had swallowed the hook too, and 
the dickens of a 'time I had extracting the steel 
from between his grinders. I practically had to 
sever the head to get that hook out. 
My fourth fish was a big one, a record-break¬ 
er—T shall always believe it. A channel bass, 
too! No shark, mind you! He took that bait 
with the characteristic strike of a channel bass 
Across 
One Mormon from the country, with whom I 
got into conversation, said in regard to polyga¬ 
my that he personally took no interest in the 
matter; he had one wife and did not want any 
more, “and that” said he, “is the feeling of 
nearly all in my class of life.” A second wife, 
according to his view, would almost certainly 
introduce an element of discord, and being of a 
peaceful disposition, he thought he had gone as 
far as he safely could upon the matrimonial 
road. He said he was a farmer from the 
southwesterly settlements, and seemed a well-to- 
do and intelligent man. Monday afternoon I 
strolled about the city, and saw the business 
life of the place, and after a mid-day dinner at 
the hotel, again took my place in the stage 
coach, and started for California just at one 
o’clock p. m., April 7th. As usual we had a 
handsome Concord coach to. start with, but this 
was exchanged for the humbler mud wagon at 
the first station out. There' were but two pas¬ 
sengers besides myself; one a Mormon cattle¬ 
man from Snake Valley which lies about one 
hundred and fifty miles to the southwestward, 
and the other a passenger for the Reese River 
mines in central Nevada. We were among Mor¬ 
mon settlements all the afternoon, and by dark 
were again in the mountains, the Oquirrh Range. 
The stage road took us very much to the south 
of west, to avoid the worst of the desert coun¬ 
try which lies southwest of the Great Lake. 
Our breakfast station, Tuesday morning, 1 was 
on the edge of the desert, and was as dreary a 
spot as can well be imagined; a low adobe 
and followed with a run and the contortionate 
quivering and shaking that I have felt so many 
times—then my line fell limp. On reeling in I 
found that this monster had broken the short 
chain connection between my hook and wire 
leader. I suppose the sixteen-pounder had 
crushed one of the links between his grinders. 
O, why hadn't I thought to have examined that 
bit of chain before casting out! “O, vVhy didn’t 
I?” An ocean of regret in those few words. 
While I was putting on a new hook the 
Cicerone came up alone and empty handed but 
for his rod and lantern. He reported “no 
strikes” and that the president had become tired 
of the lack of sport and returned to camp. The 
Cicerone’s eyes bulged when he saw my three 
beauties laid out in orderly array, and he lost 
no time in getting into action. He won out too, 
for before I could bait up lie had hung a good 
one and after a hard fight put a forty-pounder 
on the beach that made any one of my treas¬ 
ured three look like thirty cents. No, the 
Cicerone’s forty-pounder didn’t have any stray 
hook and bit of chain dangling from its mouth ; 
that fish is reserved for me the next time I go 
down there. 
But my luck had turned. I cast and got a 
strike and a run, but it was neither a channel 
bass strike nor a channel bass run. No quiver¬ 
ing and shaking of the head this time, but a 
steady majestic progress straight out to sea. 
With all the drag my tackle would stand I could 
By “Lexden.” 
(Continued from last week.) 
house of only two rooms, and a large stable of 
the same construction, in the middle of a valley 
of apparently endless extent from north to south, 
with rugged looking mountains or low hills 
bounding the view at from five to ten miles 
away in every other direction. We were in 
Government Creek Valley, so we were told, but 
saw no creek. There seemed to be no particu¬ 
lar reason for a station here, except that the 
sage brush was more luxuriant at this point 
than elsewhere in the flat, and there was a little 
bunch of grass scattered among it. A well had 
been dug and good water found at no great 
depth; but it was a lonely and desolate place, de¬ 
pressing apparently to the men employed. 
The weather was threatening rain, and this 
added a sombre hue, for our breakfast was a 
gloomy one, without any of the conversation 
and gossip which usually enlivened the meals 
at all stations. Shortly after our departure it 
began to rain which continued most of the day. 
The road was very bad, and as the horses 
plodded on there was nothing to see and nothing 
for us to do but to smoke and kill tinjie by 
keeping up a conversation, in the course of which 
each of us went into our respective personal af¬ 
fairs in a way one would not think of doing un¬ 
der ordinary circumstances. As night came on, 
the road got worse if possible, and from Fish 
Springs station our driver had to depend on 
his horses to keep the track. Many times it 
seemed as if the coach would go over, so uneven 
was the roadway; All that night, or nearly all, 
we seemed'to be traveling through pools of wa- 
not stop him. He minded it no more than would 
a steamboat. Then my line went slack, and sadly 
reeling in, I found that the shark had cut the 
line as neatly as if it had been cut by shears— 
fortunately near the end, so I did not lose much. 
But Nature asserts herself even when men are 
absorbed in fishing, and as the Cicerone and the 
writer were both dog tired they picked up their 
traps and dragged themselves wearily homeward, 
leaving the four big channel bass on the beach 
to make a Senegambian holiday. It was just 
midnight when we returned to the club house. 
This wonderful night had been compressed into 
exactly three hours. 
“Ralph,” sharply demanded the Cicerone next 
morning, as looking from the veranda of the 
club house he saw the buzzards feasting on those 
channel bass, “Didn’t you tell me that your 
brother and his friends were coming after those 
drum?” 
“Dey done tol me dey would, sah! Deed dey 
did! But you see, sah,” and Ralph spoke with 
embarrassment, “I spect dose crazy niggers das- 
sent go on de beach las night cos des skeered ov 
hants.” 
Good boy Ralph! He was not afraid of 
“hants”; nor of the Inlet in stormy weather; 
nor of big sharks. A true child of Nature, and 
far worthier of respect than some of the fawn¬ 
ing Pullman porters we met on our journey back 
north. 
ter with deep holes here and there, into which 
the coach would lurch, and balance for a moment 
in the air as if undecided whether to go over 
or not. At such times each of us would throw 
our weight on the high side of the vehicle, and 
often it seemed that we prevented a capsize on* 
ly by quick action. Splash! lurch! a hasty move 
of each of us to the upper side of the coach, a 
breathless moment as the vehicle balanced in 
air, and then finally deciding to stay on its 
wheels, settled back to a level. This repeated 
again and again is my recollection of that 
night’s journey. It was three or four o’clock 
in the morning when we reached Deep Creek 
station, and warmed ourselves before a com¬ 
fortable fire. Here our fellow passenger, the 
Mormon, took his luggage and left us, as he ex¬ 
pected someone from his ranch to meet him 
here with a led horse. 
Our breakfast station was some twenty miles 
beyond at the base of Kern Mountains, a short 
range bearing east and west, and rising abruptly 
from the sage covered plain. 
We were now in Nevada, and the name alone 
made me feel at home, though quite unfamiliar 
with the part where I then was. With as large 
an area as all Wisconsin and all Illinois, the 
total population of the state at the time I speak 
of was less than fifty thousand and a very 
large proportion of those who helped to make 
up this grand total was of such an unsettled 
class that they were ready to migrate on twenty- 
four hours’ notice to any neighboring state or 
territory, where a new mining development of- 
the Continent in “The Sixties” 
