Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 162: what you’re looking at

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

€34 ARGOSY-ALLESTORY WEEKLY. like a spring, there was a clash of teeth, a fountain of spray, and salmon, mackerel, and all were gone, and a considerably more than merely startled gull was rising from the sea with strenuous wing-beats that fairly whistled in the still air, That grand fish was our one-time little parr, returning to his home river for the first time after years of roving adventures in the sea. Dusk was settling down upon the river. The fisherman standing on an outcrop of rock glanced downstream to where the water and mud of the estuary lay like a sheet of bronze in the setting sun. He had been up since dawn. He yawned. ‘“Just one more cast,” said he, “ and then I'll go.” Vhe gaudy artificial fly sailed across the pool lightly as a gnat, alighted gently, al- most coaxingly, on the still, glassy water. A swirl, a boil, a leap as if a bar of silver had been flung up, and the salmon-—our salmon—-was away with the bait. Then he fought. He shot, he streaked, he squeezed be- tween all possible places, he sulked, he skipped, he darted, he dashed, he doubled, he danced nearly on end, he darted this way and that, he dived and nosed the bot- tom and the stones, trying vainly to rub off the intolerable thing that pulled and held him by the lip, he twisted and turned, he twirled, he threshed the surface into foam, he leapt fully six feet, he lay still, and he lashed with his tail at the line, he came near pretending to be done, only to spring against the butt, he circled hugely, he cavorted madly, he charged downstream like an escaped torpedo, he churned the shallows to whipped soda and milk, and at last, fighting still like seven devils, aiter thirty-nine minutes’ furious battle, he was, inch by hard-fought inch, drawn in and, in the arms of a gillie, respectfully landed. THE Le} Then, after one long stare, the fisherman whistled. And quoth he: “A marked salmon, by Jove! See the gold rmg. He must go back. Measure him quick, and weigh.” He was going to put our salmon back, that man. He said so. He was going to put him back for the honor of the fish he had caught that day, especialiy for the honor of one, a monster of fifty pounds’ weight and unknown years, who was, though neither man nor fish knew it, the father of our salmon. So his father died to save him, but I expect he would rather have lived. Nine and three-quarter pounds was the weight of our salmon, thirty-one and a quarter inches was his length, and thirteen and a half inches was his girth, and the’age, as we know, was precisely four and a half years. Therefore, as you will agree, he had not wasted time nor grown slowly while in the sea, whatever he had done in the river before. Then, with a heave and a splash, they flung him back to the water, his home, and he turned his head for the second time to the salt ocean, and went, passing on his way dozens of salmon heading up the estuary to the river to breed. He himself, however, did not return to breed till he was five and a half years old, whatever he may have meant to do before he was hooked. That was long ago, and our salmon was never caught again. But to this day, if you watch, if you wait by the spawning ground, if you have the patience and Heaven re- wards you with luck, you will surely sooner or later catch a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the mammoth Silver King, the salmon, the pride and glory of that river, who, men say, would drag the heart out of the scale at sixty pounds, and you will remember him as a friend of yours whom you have known up from babyhood—our own salmon, some- thing of whose life I have tried to tell you. END vw Lo) CHARLES ALDEN SELTZER is now competing another of his graphic stories of the West, which will begin its course in this magazine within the next few weeks. It 1s highly dramatic, and presents a hero of altogether unique conception. | comicloooks CO