Abbeville Read Online Free PDF

awful weight it suddenly bore. The Dutchman stood, released it from his hand, and in one smooth motion snapped the line back behind him. The moment it had completely unfurled, he shot it forward again, laying it out across the water as straight as a saw blade.
    This first cast went about halfway across the river so that the fly landed at the upstream edge of a piece of flat water. The Dutchman stepped farther out into the current until he was up to his knees. Karl followed, and cold water filled his boots as the hopper drifted downstream, twitching.
    The Dutchman lifted the line off the water in one sweeping pull. Karl followed the fly backward through its long, beautiful loop, then forward again until it fell just an inch short of a half-submerged log along the opposite bank.
    â€œAh,” said Hoekstra.
    Karl thought it was because he had almost hooked the log, but then a large silver shape darted from beneath it. The water swirled and the hopper was gone.
    The Dutchman lifted the rod tip. There was an instant of pure suspended time before the fish came alive to its peril. It knew how to protect itself from blue heron and eagle. It knew to stay clear of otters. It only came out in the open to feed when it felt secure. But it had surely never felt the sting of sharpened iron.
    Hoekstra held the tip of the rod high and let the line hiss outthrough the guides. At some point, as the fish raced toward a tangle of fallen limbs downstream, he put his palm to the reel and slowed it down. The rod bent under the force of the fish in the current, which grew stronger against Karl’s legs as he followed the Dutchman down-river.
    â€œHere,” said Hoekstra, handing him the rod. “Now you kill something.”
    Pure wildness pulled at Karl as he felt the fish’s desperate struggle against what was written for it on the waters.
    â€œWhat do I do now?” he said.
    The Dutchman signaled Karl with a circular motion as the line grew slack. Karl understood that he should begin to reel in.
    The fish had turned under the pressure and now was moving by fits and starts back upstream toward them. Karl reeled in as fast as he could to keep the line taut so the hook stayed deep in the fish’s jaw. Finally the rod tip bent again and shook. For a moment the fish appeared on the water’s surface.
    â€œLordy,” Karl said.
    â€œGood fish,” said the Dutchman.
    It had to be more than two feet long, as big as a catfish on Otter Creek but ten times as strong.
    A smile came to Karl’s lips, then vanished.
    It was as if a gale had suddenly gone dead or every bird in the woods had hushed at once. All the tension had gone out of the line.
    â€œYou tried to use your strength,” said Hoekstra. “The fish used it against you.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Karl.
    â€œYou will learn,” said the Dutchman. “That is the difference between you and the fish. For you and me, most mistakes don’t kill us.”
    The Dutchman rerigged the line, using an artificial fly this time, tied with what looked like deer hair and feathers. He showed Karlhow to use the weight of the line and the spring of the bamboo to throw this tiny, weightless thing. Soon Karl was getting it out far enough that the fly drifted naturally in the current. Then, bang, another fish took. This time Karl was more patient and landed it. It was not such a fine fish as the first, but this one was all his. He struck its head on a rock, then laid it out on the grass of the bank.
    â€œWe’ll fill our bellies with grayling tonight,” Hoekstra said.
    Karl nodded, but his stomach was the least of it. He felt as though he had touched something fundamental, something that could be found only in cold, moving waters and the other wild things of the world.

4
    W HEN THE FIRST FROST CAME, THE CAMP began to fill up with men. By then the scouting parties had investigated tens of thousands of acres along either bank of the river,