Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE INCOMPLETE ANGLER. your front porch and let the sun and the soil work for you. Most fertile soil in the—”’ Thank God, the train was starting. As it slid along, the voice of the Pacific Pollyanna droned on in endless monotone to the ac- companiment of the clicking rails. An oc- casional phrase floated back: ‘“—finest in the world” ... “ bestinthe world”... “biggest in the world” . . . “say, listen, a long time ago—” Here Sewall’s mind trailed off, spanning some three thousand miles, to the shaded back stoop where Aunt Sarah was probably sitting at this hour in her green wicker rocker, steel needles clicking, left slippered toe tapping smartly in time to her hum- ming: “ A long time ago and a good ways off A woodchuck died of the whooping cough.” IT. SoME twenty years ago, when they were struggling through late adolescence, Sewall Wright and Ed Hodgdon had parted. Ed joined the sanguine throng who, for years, have been acting on H. Greeley’s advice to “oo West, young man, go West!” Per- haps Sewall didn’t know that Greeley died in 1872. At any rate, he registered a pas- sionate vow to join Ed “ in a year or so.” But his life had not turned out that way. He had stayed on near Oldtown, Maine, liv- ing on the land and in the comfortable house that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. No real estate agent had ever buttonholed him with the absurdity of raising crops on this stern and rock- bound coast; nor had he learned to asso- ciate the term “ barren” with his acres. His farming prospered. The rocky soil yielded wholesome food for him and his “ hands ”; the barren pastures fed his cat- tle; Bartlett pears and the finest MacIntosh Reds in the State of Maine ripened on his orchard slopes; and his wood lots furnished lumber for a little sawmill on the Penobscot. This mill laid the foundation for real pros- perity. At thirty-six Sewall was no longer a farmer; he was a lumberman. Tall, strong as a moose, quiet with that calm bred of 859 confidence and modesty, keen with the re- sourcefulness acquired in years of matching his wit and hands against the fickle sea- sons—he was the product of generations who had worked hard, lived cleanly, and known a very real heaven and hell. Aunt Sarah Hitchens kept house for him. His mother and father were lying, in all respectability and peace, in the family lot. Ed’s letter caught him in the lull of mid- summer: You're wasting the best part of your life— stuck off there in Oldtown. Get out of the rut. Come to California for a few weeks and you'll never want to go back. You used to like fishing. Ill take you where you can pick up a bushel in fifteen minutes. Ever hear of yellow tail? They'll be running next month. Remember our last fishing trip—the day before I left? Did he remember! Their first fly rods. Stealing along the banks of the Penobscot; fighting their way through the alders; walk- ing the boom; wading with their pants rolled to their knees. In the big pool just below old man Hodgdon’s back pasture, they had tried a Parmacheene Belle. How exactly he could recall the breathless excite- ment of the first strike! He had watched with open mouth and shaking knees while Ed reeled in a two pound speckled trout. What was this Ed said? “Yellow tail? Yellow tail?” He’d never heard of them. They sounded rather unin- teresting. But the thought of seeing Ed again, of visiting that West which he had once thought his promised land, had started him. After all, why not? He had a sub- stantial balance in the Oldtown State Bank and logging couldn’t be started until fall. Aunt Sarah’s firm old mouth had quiv- ered as she kissed him good-by. “It’s a long ways off, Sewall. You ain’t got any idea of staying out there?” “Tl send for you if I do, Aunt Sarah,” he answered, patting her comfortable shoul!- der in embarrassment. ‘““ Not for me!” she answered shortly. “T’m not a great hand to travel. I never been west of Albany and I ain’t ashamed of it” “But you’d come out to keep house for me, wouldn’t you?” ‘ oO Ccomicbooks ©