The Blue Herring Mystery (7 page)

“Do you suppose they would be scapping up there this afternoon?” Djuna asked.

“It’s very prob’ble,” said Aunt Candy. “Depends on the full tide.”

“Maybe,” Djuna said, turning to Bobby, “we could get Mr. Boots to take us up there this afternoon and teach us how to scap!”

“Oh, my golly!” said Bobby, and his eyes were wide. “Do you suppose he would, Djuna?”

“Well, we can ask him,” Djuna said. He rose and said, “Shall I put the logbook back in the seachest, Aunt Candy?”

“If y’h will, please, Djuna,” said Aunt Candy, and she smiled at him. “Y’h reelly ought t’ learn about scappin’, Djuna. You’d have a heap o’ fun.”

“I’m going to!” Djuna said resolutely. “Thanks a lot, Aunt Candy, for letting us see Captain Jonas’s things.”

“Glad to have you look at ’em, Djuna,” said Aunt Candy. “Come over any time an’ bring Bobby.”

“And thanks for the swell chocolate cake and milk!” Bobby said.

“Me, too!” said Djuna.

“You’re both very welcome.” Aunt Candy went to the side door with them. She put her hand on the knob and tried to open it and it wouldn’t open. “Oh,” she said. “I forgot this door is locked. You’ll heve t’ go out th’ kitchen door.”

Djuna knew now that he
had
seen Kloop lock the door to the side porch. At least he was reasonably sure, because if Aunt Candy had locked the door she would have locked it from the inside; and the key would still have been in the door. And he didn’t think that, in the short time she had been back from town, she had been in the big front room until she took Bobby and himself in to see the harpoons.

Aunt Candy waved good-by to them from the kitchen door and they climbed on their bikes and pedaled out the driveway and down the Landing Road toward Miss Annie’s.

“Say!” Bobby said. “Do you suppose Mr. Boots really will take us scapping?”

“Uh,” Djuna said. He was deep in thought.

“Maybe he’d take us over for a little while, anyway,” Bobby went on.

“Uh,” Djuna said again.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” Bobby wanted to know.

“Oh, nothing,” Djuna said, and he grinned at Bobby. “I was just thinking about something. I think Mr. Boots will take us unless he has some work to do.”

They were surprised to find that it was twelve o’clock when they entered Miss Annie’s kitchen and found her busy getting lunch. “Land’s sake!” she said. “I was afraid you weren’t going to get back in time for lunch. Have you been over at Aunt Candy’s all this time?”

“Yes,” said Djuna, and added eagerly, “do you mind if we skip over to Mr. Boots for a moment and ask him if he will take us scapping this afternoon?”

“Scapping!” Miss Annie said. “Well, I never! Yes, but hurry! Lunch will be ready in a jiffy.”

The boys didn’t bother with their bikes. They ran; and when they arrived they were so winded they couldn’t speak. Mr. Boots went on sawing a length of board while they huffed and puffed.

“Mr. Boots,” Djuna finally gasped. “Could you take us scapping this afternoon?”

“Scapping?” he said. He stopped sawing and thought for a moment. “Well, now let’s see.” He put down his saw and went over to a workbench and picked up his newspaper, the
Riverton Gazette
. He thumbed through it for a bit, then said, “Full tide at two this afternoon. C’m over a leetle before two, an’ I’ll take you down f’r a time, while the tide’s full. Don’ forget to wear your hip boots, Djuna.”

Both boys beamed. They thanked Mr. Boots and raced back to Miss Annie’s for lunch. Having eaten more pancakes than they needed for breakfast and a large piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk since then, it didn’t seem possible that they could eat any luncheon. But they managed to consume three cream cheese and jelly sandwiches each, and two large glasses of milk. And they didn’t seem to be suffering much while they did it.

After they had helped Miss Annie tidy up around the house it was only one o’clock. They were in such a state of anticipation now that it didn’t seem they could wait another hour. Miss Annie, who was working on a braided rug in the kitchen, watched them skittering around like two water bugs on the surface of a pond. Finally she said, “Great glittering glories of Golconda! Anyone would think you were going to start for the North Pole at a quarter of two. Whyn’t you go out an’ clean your bikes again? You must have got them muddy this morning.”

This was a welcome suggestion and it didn’t seem hardly any time at all before Miss Annie stuck her head out the kitchen door and called, “It’s twenty minutes of two.” She smiled and her merry eyes twinkled as she watched them hurriedly put their bikes in the shed and, with a farewell flip of their hands, go racing up the road toward Mr. Boots’s shop.

Into the back of his pick-up truck Mr. Boots was putting a fishing net; four slender poles that were a little less than an inch in diameter and eight feet long; two longer poles — one of them a bamboo fishing pole with a short fishline fastened to the end; and a bushel basket. They watched him, but they didn’t ask any questions, because they knew he would explain the purpose of all of them when the right time came.

“Okay, boys,” he said. “Git up in the front seat an’ let’s be on our way. I only got a couple of hours.”

A few minutes later the old truck was bouncing over the Landing Road on the way to Brookville. Bobby noticed a wooden block on the floor of the truck and bent over to look at it. It was about four inches square and eight inches long and tapered slightly at one end. At the tapered end there was a three-eighth-inch hole bored all the way through the block. And, staggered at the other end, there were two holes bored in each of the four sides. Bobby stared at it for a few moments and then he could contain his curiosity no longer.

“What’s that, Mr. Boots?” he asked.

“That,” Mr. Boots said without looking down, “is called jest what it looks like. It’s a block, an’ part o’ our scappin’ net. I’ll show y’h how it works when we git there.”

And then it was just as though someone had pulled the trigger of a double-barreled shotgun. Questions came pouring out of the boys with the same speed and volume as a double charge from a shotgun.

“When do the herring begin to run, Mr. Boots?” Bobby asked, almost breathlessly.

“Usually around the first of April, jest a few,” Mr. Boots said. “Then in about two weeks they begin comin’ in by the millions. Nobody knows where they come from, or where they go after they finish spawnin’.” Mr. Boots drew a deep breath and went on, “But they ain’t true herrin’, although everyone around here
calls
’em herrin’. They’re of the herrin’ family, but their right name is alewife. No, I guess, that’s wrong, too. They’re
alewives
, there’s so many of ’em. The shad that comes up th’ North River to spawn is of the same family, only much bigger.”

“How long do they spawn?” Djuna asked. “I mean, how long do they keep coming up to spawn?”

“Oh, until about the middle of May,” said Mr. Boots. “They begin to taper off then, so that by the first of June there ain’t none.”

“Do they scap for other fish, too?” Bobby asked eagerly.

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Boots answered. “That is, they use different kinds of nets for different kinds of fish. They use fykes —”

“Oh, we saw one of those over at Aunt Candy Barnes’s!” Bobby interrupted.

“— and they use seines, stake-stop and gill nets,” Mr. Boots went on.

“Do they get anything beside herring where we’re going?” Djuna asked.

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Boots said again. “They get carp, eels, white perch an’ yellah perch, bullheads, sturgeon, ’n other kinds. But when them herrin’ is runnin’ there ain’t room in the crick for nothin’ but herrin’. You’ll see!”

“Why do they call it a scap net, Mr. Boots?” Djuna wanted to know.

“I don’t rightly know,” Mr. Boots replied, as he rubbed one hand over his white stubble of beard. “Some folks say the Indians used to make scap nets hundreds of years ago, the same way we make ’em now. Others say that the Dutch introduced the net over here three hundred years ago an’ that the word scap comes fr’m a Dutch word. But nobody seems to
really
know. I guess it’s kind o’ lost.”

“Do they scap at night?” Bobby asked. “That’s when we get shrimp down in Florida.”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Boots said for the third time. “Night or day. It all dep’nds on th’ tide. Some folks even like to scap better on a dead low tide than on a full tide, but th’ full tide is when they’re really runnin’ in hordes.”

They were at the outskirts of the little village of Brookville now, and Mr. Boots stopped talking as they approached the traffic light at the intersection of the Landing Road and the Federal Highway. After a wait of a few moments the light turned green and Mr. Boots took a right turn on to the Federal Highway, north.

“I never knew, until Aunt Candy told me, that they call this creek where we’re going the Sepasco Kill,” said Djuna.

“That’s what they call it, all right,” Mr. Boots told him. “It’s named after the Indians that used to be ’round here. There’s a road, as a matter of fact it’s what we now call the Landin’ Road, goin’ out to Edenboro, that used to be called th’ Sepasco Trail. It went fr’m the river right through Brookville and way over into Mass’chusetts.”

Mr. Boots guided the car up over the brow of a hill and then down a long, steep incline. At the bottom was a concrete bridge about one hundred and fifty feet long. But just before they came to the bridge Mr. Boots braked the car, put out his hand because the traffic was swishing by them — going in both directions at high speeds — and made a right turn into a dirt road that ran at right angles to the Federal Highway.

“Whoof!” he said as he wiped his brow, “I’m always awful glad t’ git off that Federal Highway. Don’ travel on it any more than I have to.”

They drove parallel to the Sepasco Kill for about three hundred yards. Then, through the overlacing boughs of the trees that were just beginning to leaf, they could see the sparkling waters of the Kill tumbling toward the North River.

At the bottom of the incline, where another dirt road intersected the one they were on, they took a sharp right turn through an old gateway onto another dirt road that was not much more than a wide trail. It wound around for a quarter of a mile; and then they came to a parking place where a large lilac bush grew, which meant a house had once stood there.

“Well, here we are, boys,” Mr. Boots said as he killed his motor and pulled on his hand brake. He looked around. “Funny there ain’t some cars here, but I suppose most of the scappers’ll be along later, when they git through work.”

“Shall we get all those poles and the net and the basket out of the back?” Djuna asked, as Mr. Boots stepped out of the driver’s seat with the wooden block in his hand.

“Yep, bring ’em all,” Mr. Boots said. “Better let me take them two long poles.”

They could hear the rushing waters of the Kill now; and, after they had walked about twenty feet and were at the brow of the incline that led down to the pebbled beach, they could see it.

Djuna and Bobby were silent, awed by the splendor of the rushing stream before them.

Then Mr. Boots and the boys picked their way down the steep path to the beach, and stood gazing at the tumbling waters. Directly in front of them, the stream was about fifty feet wide and the water was relatively calm, because of a bend in the creek. Across the stream there was a sheer cliff, nearly a hundred feet high, with trees growing down to the very edge. From upstream, the Kill came tumbling over and between huge boulders to create a flow of angry, hissing water. But at the bottom of the rapids its force was lessened as it widened out and spent itself against the base of the cliff. The beach on which they stood was about thirty or forty feet wide and over a hundred feet long.

“Where are the herring?” Bobby wanted to know as he carefully deposited the long slender poles and the net on the pebbles of the beach. Djuna put down the basket he was carrying, as Mr. Boots laid the block and two long poles on the stones.

“Come down here to the water’s edge,” Mr. Boots said, “an’ git y’r eye fixed an’ you can see ’em. Th’ water is pritty riley because of the spring freshets. But just watch, out there about three foot from th’ edge, where th’ water gits deeper.”

Just as he finished speaking they could see the silver bellies of a dozen herring as they half turned on their sides; and then, as they got their eyes “fixed,” they could see the thousands of blue-black backs of the herring.

“Gee, they certainly are blue, not a bit red!” exclaimed Djuna.

Near the edge of the horde of fish a twenty-pound carp held a motionless position in the stream, as if he were a spectator on a sidewalk, watching a mammoth parade go by.

“Can they really go up through those rapids there?” Bobby asked breathlessly.

“You bet your boots they can!” said Mr. Boots. “They go into the calm water up above to spawn. They can’t climb falls, like salmon, but they c’n go up them rapids as easy as a baby can fall out of its gocart. The law don’t allow no scappin’
above
the rapids.”

“Golly!” said Djuna. “Let’s get the net together and get some!”

“Well, that’s what we come f’r!” said Mr. Boots, and he leaned down and spread out the eight-foot net on the pebbles.

“How large is that mesh, Mr. Boots?” Bobby asked.

“Inch an’ a quarter,” Mr. Boots told him. “Might vary a little. Bound to, when you make ’em yourself.”

“Did you make this net, Mr. Boots?” Djuna asked, his eyes wide.

“Certain’y!” said Mr. Boots. “Didn’t you ever see me weavin’ a net?”

“I don’t believe I have,” Djuna said. “And did you make the rest of it, too? I mean, the poles and things?”

“Certain’y!” Mr. Boots said again. “I bin makin’ ’em nigh on to forty years!”

“Jeepers, how does it go together?” Bobby asked.

“Wa’l,” said Mr. Boots, “first we take these four poles — ‘bows,’ we call ’em — and fasten ’em to the four corners of the net. You notice them little loops at each corner of the net?” He didn’t wait for them to answer but went on. “Them is called ‘sims.’ We fasten the notched end of the bows to the sims with a half hitch, like this.”

“What are the bows made of, Mr. Boots?” Bobby asked.