og, found  a  hard place and
lit the match. He sat smoking and watching the river.
     Ahead the river narrowed and went into a swamp. The river became smooth
and deep and the  swamp  looked solid with  cedar  trees, their  trunks dose
together, their branches solid. It  would  not be possible to walk through a
swamp  like  that. The  branches grew so  low. You would have to keep almost
level  with  the ground to  move  at  all. You could  not crash  through the
branches. That must  be why the animals  that lived in swamps were built the
way they were. Nick thought.
     He wished he had  brought something to read.  He  felt like reading. He
did not feel like going on  into the swamp. He  looked down the river. A big
cedar slanted all the way across the stream. Beyond that the river went into
the swamp.
     Nick did not  want to go in there now. He felt a reaction  against deep
wading with the water deepening up  under his armpits, to hook big trout  in
places impossible to land them. In  the swamp the banks  were bare, the  big
cedars  came  together  overhead, the  sun  did not come through,  except in
patches; in the fast deep  water, in the  half light,  the fishing  would be
tragic. In  the swamp fishing  was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it.
He did not want to go down the stream any further today.
     He  took out  his knife, opened it and stuck it  in the  log.  Then  he
pulled  up  the  sack,  reached  into  it and  brought out one of the trout.
Holding him near the tail, hard to hold,  alive, in his hand, he whacked him
against the log. The  trout quivered, rigid. Nick laid him on the log in the
shade and broke the neck  of the other fish the same way. He  laid them side
by side on the log. They were fine trout.
     Nick cleaned them, slitting them from the  vent to the tip  of the jaw.
All  the insides and the  gills and tongue came out in one  piece. They were
both  males;  long  gray-white strips  of milt,  smooth  and clean.  All the
insides clean and  compact,  coming out all together.  Nick tossed the offal
ashore for the minks to find.
     He  washed  the  trout in the stream. When he  held them back up in the
water they looked like  live fish. Their color  was not gone yet. He  washed
his  hands  and dried them on  the log.  Then he  laid the trout on the sack
spread out  on the log, rolled them up in it,  tied the bundle and put it in
the landing net. His  knife was still  standing, blade stuck in  the log. He
cleaned it on the wood and put it in his pocket.
     Nick  stood  up on the log, holding his rod, the  landing  net  hanging
heavy, then  stepped into the water and splashed ashore. He climbed the bank
and  cut  up into  the  woods,  toward the high ground. He was going back to
camp.  He looked  back. The river just showed through the  trees. There were
plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.