Arizona cavalry; hunting knives and dirks, and the
slender steel whips of the fencers; files of Winchesters, sleeping
quietly in their racks, waiting patiently for the signal to speak the
one grim word they knew; swarms of artificial flies of every
conceivable shade, brown, gray, black, gray-brown, gray-black, with
here and there a brisk vermilion note; coils of line, from the
thickness of a pencil, spun to hold the sullen plunges of a jew-fish
off the Catalina Islands, down to the sea-green gossamers that a
vigorous fingerling might snap; hooks, snells, guts, leaders, gaffs,
cartridges, shells, and all the entrancing munitions of the sportsman,
that savored of lonely canons, deer-licks, mountain streams, quail
uplands, and the still reaches of inlet and marsh grounds, gray and
cool in the early autumn dawn.

Condy and Blix got the attention of a clerk, and Condy explained.

"I want to go fishing--we want to go fishing. We want some place where
we can go and come in the same day, and we want to catch fair-sized
fish--no minnows."

The following half-hour was charming. Never was there a clerk more
delightful. It would appear that his one object in life was that Condy
and Blix should catch fish. The affairs of the nation stood still
while he pondered, suggested, advised, and deliberated. He told them
where to go, how to get there, what train to take coming back, and who
to ask for when they arrived. They would have to wait till Monday
before going, but could return long before the fated hour of 7 P.M.

"Ask for Richardson," said the clerk; "and here, give him my card.
He'll put you on to the good spots; some places are A-1 to-day, and
to-morrow in the same place you can't kill a single fish."

Condy nudged Blix as the Mentor turned away to get his card.

"Notice that," he whispered: "KILL a fish. You don't say 'catch,' you
say 'kill'--technical detail."

Then they bought their tackle: a couple of cheap reels, lines, leaders,
sinkers, a book of assorted flies that the delightful clerk suggested,
and a beautiful little tin box painted green, and stenciled with a
gorgeous gold trout upon the lid, in which they were to keep the pint
of salted shrimps to be used as bait in addition to the flies. Blix
would get these shrimps at a little market near her home.

"But," said the clerk, "you got to get a permit to fish in that lake.
Have you got a pull with the Water Company? Are you a stockholder?"

Condy's face f