The Lost Trout
Guest Contributor: Gavin Black
For the better part of a week, while industriously pursuing the blue mud with the usual confidence that accompanies ignorance, the men of the Ophir struck water instead. An event which immediately suggested retreat, reflection, and a great deal of pumping. As the water was expelled, it revealed a discovery so astonishing that it required no proof whatsoever: a cutthroat trout.
Now, it is a fact universally known, and therefore never questioned, that a cutthroat trout may be found only in the pure blue waters of Lake Tahoe.
The conclusion was obvious and wildly satisfactory to everyone who stood staring at the fish, that there must exist a connection, some hundred miles in length, linking the Ophir Mine directly to Lake Tahoe. No one had seen this passage, no one could explain how it went through solid rock, and no one felt the slightest need to do either. The trout had settled the matter. Facts of this sort are exceedingly stubborn, and once a crowd agrees upon them, they have a way of becoming fact.
This past Saturday, the better sort of citizens of Virginia City, at least those who believed themselves to be, assembled at the Ophir Mine to witness what was confidently advertised as a marvel. The Washoe Zephyr, being of a restless and uncooperative disposition, took it upon itself to liberate several bonnets and reorganize Cousin Jack’s hair without permission, but none of this was sufficient to discourage the crowd. They had come, after all, to see a man go to Lake Tahoe without the inconvenience of actually traveling there.
How did this particular damfool contrive so audacious a scheme? Why, with the confidence peculiar to men who have never paused to consider the consequences. He fashioned for himself a wooden box from the timbers of an old mine. Timbers that had already failed once at being useful. He crowned it with a balloon the Frenchman had carelessly abandoned the previous summer, no doubt after discovering it was lighter than his promises, thus returning to honest labor, which is far safer.
And how, the crowd wished to know, was this remarkable contraption meant to operate? The man who possessed talents enough to explain anything, though not always to do it, announced that water, being a creature of habit, must necessarily flow one way if it flowed the other. From this unassailable principle he reasoned that, with a few exacting cuts in the fabric of the balloon, the current would obligingly shove him along in his watertight box all the way to Lake Tahoe.
“What will you do along the way?” a woman asked, whose curiosity had not yet learned better manners.
Why, he said, pointing proudly to a most unconvincing window fastened to the side of the box, he would keep a sharp lookout for rich veins of gold, which he would carefully memorize and later return to dig up, thus managing the rare feat of prospecting a hundred miles of solid earth without the inconvenience of stopping.
The crowd watched as the man was nailed into his watertight coffin and lowered into the mine with the balloon dragging behind. Once he was safely in the waters of the Ophir, the crowd ponderously worked its way to the telegraph station to await word from Lake Tahoe.
The seconds stretched themselves into minutes, and the minutes, being ambitious, lengthened into hours. One by one, the men drifted back to their labors, having discovered that an empty pocket shows very little sympathy for an empty saloon glass. The women, recalling that they had babies at home with louder voices, departed as well.
By the time the sun began to settle behind the hill and the crowd had dwindled to only the most hopeful and idle, a sudden clicking and clacking of Morse code disturbed the quiet. Presently, a man well acquainted with dots and dashes therefore, with certainty, stepped forward and announced that the traveler had emerged safely in Lake Tahoe.
The remaining handful cheered, as small crowds always do. Having completed their civic duty, and finding no additional marvels scheduled for the afternoon, they turned and wandered off toward the finer establishments of the city.
So if anyone should feel an urge to go fishing, he need not trouble himself with the long journey to Lake Tahoe. Let him simply make his way to the Ophir Mine, where the trout are obliging, the geography is flexible, and a good story travels faster and farther than any man ever could.
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Mark Twain was setting the typeface when he heard a creak on the steps behind him, a sound that usually suggested a solicitor, or worse company. He turned to see two men at the foot of the stairs. Either man could look into a mirror and not see a difference between his reflection and the man standing beside him. Both bore an astonishing resemblance to the very fellow Mr. Twain had just finished committing to print.
“Mr. Twain,” said the man standing on the left, with the confidence of a man who robbed a bank and lived long enough to spend it, “not a single soul doubts the hornswoggle you accomplished.”
“Not even that the fabric on the balloon was a different color when we fetched it back from the lake,” said the man standing on the right, eager to show his complicity.
“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Mark Twain said while grinning like an alley cat. “You boys have fun fishing!”
Happy April Fools Day!
