Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

630 The case was that all through the long hot summer you might any day make out his dusky, barred body and the spots on his gently waving tail as he hung, head to stream, behind a gigantic bowlder at the tail of the pool. He commanded the backwash here, and anything helpless or exhausted by the rush of water without would as likely as not be washed round behind this bowlder. If pursued by the trout, who lived farther down, but occasionally raided up as far as here, our parr vanished like a drawn whippy line into a maze of half submerged bowl- ders, where it was useless, if not unhealthy —one trout got wedged here between two bowlders, and the water beetles and others attended his funeral—to follow. The mergansers and their cousins, the divers, did not, as a rule, come here, but fished the open pool; and the only foes he had really to worry much about were the stalking, wading heron, whose beak was death; the jeweled kingfisher, who pounced down, not telling whence he came; and the neat little, bad-tempered, pugnacious, white-bellied water-shrew, who when he slept lived in the bank, but occupied mo:zt of his time running up and down the bed of the stream eating things. He was quite small, really—not more than six inches long—and very pretty; with his black jacket and white waistcoat; but his weak point was that he never seemed able to gauge his limits and was always getting into trouble with things larger than himself. Our parr was no larger, and you can imagine that a six-inch black and white devil with red, hooked teeth who could dive and swim, represented to him the personi- fication of nightmare. Besides these foes, there were also gen- erally one or two other parr hung up on the watch in this backwash, but they were all smaller than our friend. Yet, although they took jolly good care to give him room to “ swing in the fair- way,” so to speak, I would not have staked much on their good conduct had they been able to catch our friend in difficulties, for that immutable law of the wild, the sur- vival of the fittest, is even more strictly enforced under the water than in the air ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, or on the land. Sister Mercy and Dame Nature never were on speaking terms, you know, and it is safe to predict, never will be. Thus, then, our parr passed his first sum- mer. Autumn came, and the forests flamed to red, dulled over, and turned to somber, sullen abodes of silence; and winter chilled the air and later the water. Insects van- ished, or only occasionally, in the shape of a winter gnat or belated moth, gave promise of a meal, and our samlet—grow- ing only very slightly all the time—was forced to nose and delve, like any common barbel of the river, among the sand and mud for such grub as he could find. Hunger came to the stream, and murder, red of jaw, stalked abroad openly by day and night. Samlet ate weaker samlet, and trout ate trout, and samlet, too, if they got the chance; and the birds, herons, cor- morants, divers, widgeon, wild duck, water- hen, and a dozen others, ate all the lot when they could catch them. Our fish stuck to his chosen hunting ground, however, by now the largest of a small squadron of lusty survivors, who did not eat each other because they were all too nearly matched to attempt the risk—a miniature concert of the powers. Snow drew her shroud over the moun- tains, and the peaks at dawn and sunset became hues to dream about, but never for mortal men to paint. The stream took on a colder, harsher “ feel.”” And then came the big salmon up run, and the reign of terror began. Our parr, chasing a half-drowned winter rat across stream on the current, became aware of them first in the shape of two great gray-blue kelts—as the adult salmon are called—rounding a bend. They hurled themselves after him like unto torpedoes, and he made himself scarce in his bowlder refuge with only an inch to spare ’twixt their big hooked beaks and his little forked tail. They passed on, presumably taking the rapids above in their leap, and next morning the stream was full of salmon—magnificent monsters from nine to forty pounds in weight—all heading up stream to spawn. COMmicbooa S C@