foot rod dangling from the tip. But where the rod was a live thing in Gramps' hands, in Bud's it unaccountably went dead. He whipped it back, then forward, and the dangling line splashed at the very edge of the pool.

"You forgot to pay out line," Gramps said patiently. "You didn't use your reel. Let me show you."

He took the rod a second time, and once again laid the line smoothly on the water. Although Gramps had named no target, Bud knew that he was laying the line on the water exactly where he wanted it. Gramps returned the rod and Bud tried again. He remembered to pay out line as he cast, but the line slapped the water only about a dozen feet from shore and a full eight feet downstream from the target Bud had selected.

"You're throwing it," Gramps said, "and you're throwing with your whole arm. Here." He pressed the upper part of Bud's right arm against his ribs. "That's as much as you need and use your wrist. Let the rod work for you; don't you do everything."

Forty minutes later, although he couldn't come close to Gramps' distance or, unless the wildest luck was on his side, lay the line within two feet of any target he picked, Bud felt that he was improving. At least he was able to lay the line on the surface instead of whipping it into the water. Gramps tied a nine-foot tapered leader, a spiderweb at the thick end and like gossamer at the thin end, to Bud's line and showed him how to attach a dry fly to it. Then Gramps put a drop of oil on the fly, greased ten feet of line, and took the rod.

"Watch."

The fly soared out, hovered over the pool, settled on it precisely as a live insect might have, and began to float downstream. Gramps pulled the fly away from a small trout that rose and handed the rod to Bud.

"Go ahead."

Bud's first cast snagged a ground-hugging bush twenty feet behind him. The next time the fly bellied back to float beside the floating line. Then he hooked the only willow growing on the near side of the pool. But all the same Bud was elated. He forgot that the object of this wonderful art was to catch fish and, trying to remember all Gramps had told him, he kept on casting and learning through trial and error. When, after another hour, he was able to make ten successive casts and lay his fly reasonably well, Gramps pronounced judgment,

"Guess we can try now."

Without another word he turned and led the way downstream. Bud followed, knowing that his casting had not won the old man's approval but that Gramps had not wholly disapproved either. Bud did not care or at least he tried not to think about it, for he had discovered another new world. In time, he promised himself grimly, he would be a dry fisherman equal—well, almost equal—to Gramps.

Ten minutes later, Gramps slowed to a turtle's pace. He stole stealthily toward a twenty-foot-wide rock ledge that overhung a deep pool. When he came to the near border of the ledge, he turned and whispered,

"Leave your tackle. We'll crawl the rest of the way."

Bud laid his rod down carefully and, dropping to all fours, crawled beside Gramps toward the water. Five feet from the edge, Gramps dropped to his belly and began to inch toward the pool.

"No fast moves and show no more of yourself than you have to," Gramps whispered.

Bud nodded and wriggled toward the water. He peered down from the ledge and saw a broad, long pool formed by the ledge and fed by rushing riffles that curled around the upstream end of the ledge. On the far side the water was relatively shallow, or perhaps it only looked shallow because there was white sand on the bottom there. Schools of shiners and minnows swam lazily in that part of the pool and the white sand was pock-marked with driftwood that had floated down in flood time and, having become waterlogged, gone to the bottom.

At first glance the water at the near edge of the white sand seemed almost black. This was partly because the white sand ended and partly because the water was deeper there. Actually, it was green-blue, and the high-riding sun bored well into it.

Presently Bud saw a school of fish almost directly beneath him. The fish ranged in length from about five to nearly eighteen inches, and they lay very still in what appeared to be a quiet pocket of water, the biggest fish at the head of the school and the smallest at the end. Farther out, Bud saw more fish. The deepest part of the pool was too deep for the sun to penetrate it, and its invisible depths were tantalizing. Toward the foot of the pool, just before it was gathered in by the riffles that drained it, the trunk of a leaning sycamore jutted out about six feet over the water. The water near the sycamore was sun-sprayed, too. Bud saw flat stones on the bottom away from the bank, but in closer the bottom was in shadow and he could see nothing.

"The fish 'neath us are trout," Gramps whispered. "Those farther out are suckers and mullets. The shallows 'cross the pool are loaded with minnows and shiners. Down there Old Shark hangs out 'neath that sycamore trunk." He spoke as reverently as a fanatic Moslem referring to Mecca.

"Stay here and watch. Don't move. You do, you'll send every trout in the pool kiting under the ledge."

Gramps wriggled backward and disappeared. A few minutes later Bud saw him near the foot of the ledge standing behind a rock spire that hid him from the pool and at the same time gave him freedom of action. Gramps made a perfect cast. The fly floated lazily toward the leaning sycamore and gathered speed as the water became swifter.

Old Shark rose and Bud saw him, a great, dark shadow that left the shaded bank and rose into the clear water upstream from the leaning sycamore. Old Shark did seem more like a shark than a trout as he paused within an inch of the fly and then sank back into the shadows from which he had come.

Almost unable to tear his eyes from Old Shark's lair, Bud's attention was distracted for a moment by a ripple in the water beneath him. It was a grasshopper struggling toward the ledge; before it reached safety, a twelve-inch trout from the school rose and took it.

Twenty minutes later Gramps called,

"Your turn. Take it slow and crawl away, mind you."

Bud took his place behind the spire of rock and cast. He knew how clumsy he was in comparison with Gramps, but he didn't care, for now he knew why Gramps spoke so reverently of Old Yellowfoot and Old Shark.

When Bud's second turn was over, he went back to where Gramps was sitting well back on the ledge.

"We didn't get him," Gramps said, but if he was disappointed he did not show it. "There's always another day and we'll come again. Reckon we'd better go in after this last try, though. Mother's all alone."

Bud stayed where he was and watched Gramps walk down to cast. A grasshopper the old man's feet had disturbed came to rest on Bud's left arm. He clapped his right hand over it and held the grasshopper until Gramps shrugged, reeled in and indicated that he was finished by hooking his fly in the cork butt of his rod.

Then, taking up his own rod, Bud strung the grasshopper on over the fly and crept across the ledge. He eased his grasshopper onto the water near the school of trout and a trout, which might well have been the one that had taken the other grasshopper, darted upward and sucked in the grasshopper. Bud struck, and his rod bent and his line grew taut as the hooked trout tried frantically to escape.

"Keep the tip up! The tip up, Bud!" Gramps shouted.

With a heave that bent his rod double, Bud jerked the trout from the water and sent him ten feet back on the ledge, where he lay flapping. Bud raced back to get his catch.

"You did it!" Gramps shouted deliriously. "You did it! Your first trout on a dry fly!"

"I caught him on a grasshopper," Bud panted.

"What'd you say?" Gramps asked blankly.

"I caught him on a grasshopper."

"A hopper?"

"Yes."

"Surely you're not going to keep him?"

Bud looked at the ground without replying.