Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess by Wesley Allison Page B

spot where the water deepened
to several feet, I stopped to drink and look for fish.
    The greatest skill I ever learned, with the
single possible exception of story-telling which is more of an art
form than a skill, is that of guddling fish. Fish which have swum
up the shallow part of a stream, will often take shelter under a
rock or a ledge when they come to a deeper and slower moving part
of a river. When they do, they become prey for the guddler. He
reaches his hand under the ledge, knowing where a fish ought to be,
and carefully locates the fish’s tail. Then he begins tickling the
fish with his finger, tickling its tail, then tickling its belly,
and finally tickling right under the gills. Then with a quick
grasp, he pulls the fish from the water and tosses it up onto the
shore, ready to be cleaned, cooked, and eaten. If the temperature
of the water made the fish sluggish, you couldn’t tell it by the
ones I found, though it didn’t do me any good sticking my arm in. I
caught two lovely river trout that day, one which I cleaned and
cooked over the fire for our supper, and the other which I kept
captive by running a string through its gill, and tying one end to
a sapling, and tossing the other end, attached to the fish, back in
the water. This second fish we ate for breakfast.
    It was late the following afternoon before
we reached the intersection of the stream with the East Road. By
this time I had resolved myself to the fact that my little orphan
boy/girl was never going to speak to me again, but as we crossed
the small bridge which spanned the juxtaposition of the road and
the stream, as bridges are wont to do, she at last broke her
silence.
    “We should spend the night on this side of
the stream.”
    “Why?”
    “The forest is dangerous, especially at
night.”
    “I don’t care,” said I. “I’m not talking to
you.”
“Yes you are,” she replied.
    “No. I am not.”
    “I was not talking to you, but now I am. But
you are definitively talking to me.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “Yes you are.”
    “I’m not talking to you. I’m just telling
you that I’m not talking to you.”
    “That means that you are talking to me,
because in order to tell a person something you have to talk to
them.”
    “No you don’t.”
    “Now you are just being contrary,” said
she.
    “No I’m not.”
    “Fine,” said she. “I don’t care whether you
are talking to me or not…”
    “Yes you do.”
    “I don’t care whether you are talking to me
or not and I don’t care whether you are being contrary or not. In
either case we should spend the night on this side of the
stream.”
    “No we shouldn’t,” said I.
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because,” I explained.
    “Well as long as your reasoning is sound,”
said she.
    “No it isn’t.”
    We spent the night on the west side of the
bridge, just at the edge of the trees on that side of the stream.
By the time we made camp, it was too late for me to find any fish
to guddle, so we ate dried beef and drank coffee for our supper.
Jholeira curled up in the only blanket while I snuggled up in my
coat and set my head upon a large flat rock to use as a pillow.
    “Are you cold?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “I’m sorry I stopped talking to you. You
have been a very great help to me and you didn’t have to and here I
am wrapped up in your only blanket while you have nothing but your
coat to keep you warm.”
    “I have the fire. Besides, it is only
fitting that you have the blanket, being an orphan or a girl or a
princess or some combination of the three.”
    I stayed awake quite late watching the stars
and listening to Hysteria complain about her lack of oats. She
should have happy, as in that particular spot by the bridge there
grew not only an abundance of grass but some early flowering
szigimon, which any stable master can tell you is the very best
horse feed in the world. Many times she has had to make due with
busy grass, which is the least best horse