Raymond S. Spears

“ Eggs are good eating, chickens, pork, and the like—but fish? May a man fish once in a while?"
He risked the effects on his soul of fishing. The fiddler, whose example was wholly bad, had left a cut cane pole, with lines and prodigious hooks. Of worms there was no lack. Jim Carney went down to the green river, and listening to the rippling music of a shoal that glided down a smooth strata of limestone, he dropped a large worm on the smallest hook, where the current swept out of the shallows into a pool on which the late afternoon sunshine cast yellow beams into emerald depths. ”

“ There was a little clearing across the river with a small log cabin in it. Trees grew up the slopes of many hills while squirrels ranged amid the heavy branches of the forest. Birds were chirruping. Around the cabin the trees were heavy with ripe peaches.
"I presume it would cost a man a thousand dollars or two to own a place like that." Jim shook his head, looking across the river at the twenty acres of stumpy, stony clearing. "Funny I never inquired the price of land. I'll just go hail the man, take a drink of water, pick a peach from his shade tree, and be sociable." ”

“ He issued forth from Kansas City to be clear of the example of his Uncle Tim, whose prosperity was the evidence of his constancy. Seeing so much of the world had been the ruin of Jim, the wanderer thought. Shame overcame him, for how could he face the aunt he had never seen, and children whose lives were bound up in the one job of living according to the example of a strong parent who bought roofs, motorcycles, tires for trucks, and grew better wheat—a man whose retail affairs would have kept Jim busy all his life at better than any day wages he had ever known. ”

“ All across the prairies he had seen thousands who had planted trees, and raised them tenderly, with infinite pains. It hurt to be concerned with slashing trees where they were growing by the bounty of nature. Jim soon returned down the trail. A brook, bounding down the steeps of the Rockies, bade him pause. He learned from a cattleman that this was out of Two Ocean Pass—and on its way to the Mississippi.
Jim tried cowboying on the strength of the great stories he heard about the life. The foreman found Jim's skill with the axe useful in building fences and sledging lignite for the cook. ”

“ The corn was growing tall, luxuriating in the new freedom. Chickens were making the most of excellent opportunities for domestic arrangements. Pigs were indignantly discussing the most exasperating fence in the world, to wit, a pig-tight one.
"I am fish hungry," Jim told himself. "I wonder would it be a sin to lay off work before dark to-night? ”

“ Jim said. "I knew it was too pleasant, voting, for me always to enjoy the privilege."
He carried a back load of little fruit-trees to his farm, and planted them. A neighbor, his nearest, five miles distant, came to help him find his old government survey lot lines. He owned two hundred and forty acres, bottoms, hills, and river bank. Great trees grew on all but twenty-odd acres of clearing. They grew too close together for comfort. He looked at them with sympathetic eyes.
" 'Tis a job for me," he shook his head. ”

“ He was the best neighbor in the county, people said, When all the talk was going on about local improvements, he stood up and said:
"We need a good stone road from the county court to the line, where it joins on the prosperity of our next people's prosperity!"
The road was built, and then another one was built of stone, wide and substantial. Into the clearings of the mountains struck the fact that a road gave an outlet for what they could easily raise, Jim's was the only vote against the improving of the road that led to his own farm. ”

“ I sell everything but my horses and wagon for a hundred dollars."
"Is—is it safe to believe a man's ears in these parts?" Jim asked. "I—I thought I heard the—the river down there saying something?"
"I'd miss the river," the fiddler said. "For ten years, since I learned at last to play, it has told me a story that some day a man would come along and turn me loose from here. Listen while I play it!"
The fiddler struck a note, held it, then struck and held another. Jim, having heard much music, French harp, talking-machine, log camp, mine town, and the like, had also an ear for river talk. ”

“ Driving home over the rough road hurt his feelings. Never had he seen worse going. Having swamped haul-roads on logging camp jobs, he used his team of horses to work on his right of way. He persuaded a neighbor to help, and they spent many spare days improving their rough going. The days were too short for Jim, having so many things to do!
Jim learned the ways of the country, modifying them by his own experience. He raised a great crop, when he had done his own planting. Having more corn than he could use, he increased the number of his pigs. ”

“ Peaches, pears, blackberries, apples, raspberries, wild grapes and tame, persimmons, strawberries in a little patch, cherries coming on red and ripe—the fruits of the earth were his. For substance, he raised corn, potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbages, tomatoes, and all the ingredients of a mulligan, every one honestly come by. ”

“ Having drunk, he looked from his knees into the rippling, running flow.
"A pale green with milky tinge," he shook his head, "like me, running along through easy times or hard, as the case may be. Green—what! Can it be? It must be, for a fact—another brook feeding into that Mississippi. 'Tis a different green, however, not the same green like a gem stone. ”