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Updated: May 11, 2025
He who was king of all he surveyed from the old blasted pine on the crag's top, who had always heretofore been the hunter, now knew what it meant to be hunted. And the fear of it was in his eyes, I think, and softened their fierce gleam when I looked into them again, weeks later, by his own nest on the mountain. Simmo entered also into our hunting, but without enthusiasm or confidence.
As I never disturbed her nest, and always paddled away soon, she thought undoubtedly that she had fooled me, and that I knew nothing about her or her nest. Then I tried another plan. I lay down in my canoe, and had Simmo paddle me up to the nest.
Of Simmo and his axe Meeko had a mortal dread, which I could not understand till one day when I paddled silently back to camp and, instead of coming up the path, sat idly in my canoe watching the Indian, who had broken his one pipe and now sat making another out of a chunk of black alder and a length of nanny bush. Simmo was as interesting to watch, in his way, as any of the wood folk.
He took another step in my direction, brushing the leaves softly, a low, whining grunt telling of his impatience. Two more steps and he must have discovered me, when fortunately an appealing gurgle and a measured plop, plop, plop like the feet of a moose falling in shallow water sounded from the shore below, where Simmo was concealed.
And there, twenty feet above the lake, a young kingfisher one of Koskomenos' frowzy-headed, wild-eyed-youngsters was whirling wildly at the end of my line. He had seen the minnow trailing a hundred feet astern and, with more hunger than discretion, had swooped for it promptly. Simmo, feeling the tug but seeing nothing behind him, had struck promptly, and the hook went home.
I had taken two good fish, and was moving slowly by the mouth of the bay, Simmo at the paddle, when a suspicious movement on the shore attracted my attention. I passed the line to Simmo, the better to use my glasses, and was scanning the alders sharply, when a cry of wonder came from the Indian. "O bah cosh, see! das second time I catchum, Koskomenos."
A few days later Simmo and I moved camp to a grove of birches just above the alder point. From behind my tent an old game path led down to the bay where the big frogs lived. There were scores of them there; the chorus at night, with its multitude of voices running from a whistling treble to deep, deep bass, was at times tremendous.
A stake fell; the hogshead toppled over by a push from within; Simmo sprang away with a yell; and out wobbled a big porcupine, the biggest I ever saw, and tumbled away straight towards my tent. After him went the Indian, making sweeping cuts at the stupid thing with his ax, and grunting his derision at my bear cub.
Still Simmo watched, as if a bear were approaching his bait, till I whispered, "Quiee, Simmo, what is it?"
Again, if I stopped casting suddenly at the deep trout pool opposite a grassy shore, to follow with my eyes a tall, gray-blue shadow on stilts moving dimly alongshore in seven-league-boot strides for the next bog, where frogs were plenty, Simmo would point with his paddle and say: "See, Ol' Fader Longlegs go catch-um more frogs for his babies.
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