In her search for the right lead, her eyes lighted on a
fishing basket that lay on the ground not far from her own.

"Oh!" she cried. "But it's strange I didn't hear or see you!"

"Indian not make noise."

"I should say not!" she retorted, laughing.

"Trout very smart," he added quietly.

"I've caught fourteen," she volunteered eagerly. "And you?"

For answer he fetched his creel, and opened it.

"Oh!" she cried, in envy and admiration, seeing that the creel was
almost full, and that not a fish in sight was as small as her largest
prize.

"I give you some," he said, glancing at her own basket.

"No! No!" she protested quickly. "I have plenty."

She showed him her catch, which was by no means insignificant.
Nevertheless Pete took three of his largest trout, and transferred
them to her basket, ignoring her protests.

"But they are for--him, aren't they?" she asked.

"Biggest you no see. At bottom."

That satisfied her, and she watched him silently while he found her
rod, and reeled in the offending fly.

"Brown fly better now," he said. "You ought see what trout eating
before you try catch big ones."

On this he drew a book of flies from his pocket, and replaced the gray
hackle with a brown one. She questioned him eagerly, following this
plain lead; and presently they were seated on the pile of driftwood,
while he told her about the native trout and the rainbow and the
California, of little brooks far up among the mountains where the
trout were small but of a delicious flavor, of the time for flies and
the time for worms, of famous catches he had made, of the way the
Indians fished before the white man showed them patent rods and reels.
By slow degrees Pete's iron features softened, and he smiled at her,
not with his lips, but with his eyes, which were the blackest, surely,
in the world.

But Marion was not diverted from the questions that were next her
heart. With all her woman's cunning of indirection, she brought the
talk around to Philip Haig. Did he fish? Sometimes. Did he hunt? Much,
when the deer came down from the heights with the first snows.
Then--she could resist no longer.

"It must have been terrible--the accident," she said, placing a finger
on her cheek.

He looked at her strangely, while she held her breath.

"That no accident," he said at last, after what seemed to her an
interminable interval of suspense.

"No accident?" she repeated, trying not to appear too eager.

"He call