at the counter. He turned his head to look around at me. I didn’t know him. He was a slender, graying man in his fifties, neatly dressed in pressed khakis that obviously were not his standard garb. A doctor, you would have said, or perhaps an attorney, or bank official.
He nodded pleasantly. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I said. I sat down on the stool at the left end of the counter and ordered some coffee and two eggs. We ate silently.
The other man finished and paid for his breakfast with a dollar bill. Nunn came out of the doorway leading to the rear. He was carrying a small outboard motor.
“You about ready, Godwin?” he asked.
“No hurry,” I said. “Just tell me which boat.”
“What kind of motor you got?”
I nodded to the one he was carrying. “Same thing.”
“Take number six then.”
He and the other man went out. I heard them collecting gear from the car as I finished the eggs. I stood up and took a five from my wallet, moving along the counter until I was standing over the cigar box as she made change. There was only the same money in it there’d been last night. Well what had I expected? The whole thing looked silly.
I went out. It was fully light now. I went back to the cabin and draped my bedding over a wire outside between two trees so it would sun during the day. I unlocked the station wagon and carried the motor down to the float. Nunn and his passenger were loaded and apparently ready to go, but he was fiddling with the motor. He looked up and nodded to a skiff that had a crudely painted numeral 6 on the bow. I clamped the motor on the transom and lit a cigarette before going back for my tackle.
When I came back and began putting the stuff in the skiff they were still sitting there. The gray-haired man was looking impatient, but he said nothing. Nunn appeared in no hurry to start; he was still puttering around the motor and bailing out the skiff. When I had my gear loaded he made a couple of half-hearted pulls with the starter rope.
“I thought you overhauled these motors,” he said with a sour glance in my direction.
“We did,” I said. “Try opening the shut-off valve.”
He grunted and turned it. On the next pull the motor took hold. “Follow us if you want to,” he said, throttling it down so he could be heard. “Best fishing is up where we’re going.”
“Thanks,” I said, wondering at this burst of generosity. His passenger was paying for his guide services; it was a little strange he’d offer them to me for nothing.
They started up the inlet between the walls, of trees. I cranked the motor and followed, with no intention of sticking with them all the way up. I liked to fish alone, aside from the fact it was discourteous from a sporting standpoint to freeload where somebody else was picking up the tab for the guide.
Javier was not a single large lake in the accepted sense of the word; it was rather a lake system. The only open body of water of any size was at the lower end, an expanse of fairly shallow water perhaps a little less than a mile wide and only slightly longer. Beyond that it was a vast network of sloughs, channels, and swampy areas in heavy timber, all connected by waterways passable to outboard craft. Some of the sloughs and channels were quite extensive, running up to a quarter mile in width. I wasn’t afraid of becoming lost: years of hunting and fishing had made me at home in this kind of terrain, and in my tackle box I carried a large-scale county map that showed it all in detail. We came out of the inlet into open water, keeping close to the weed beds and old snags of trees along the eastern side. The sun was not up yet, and the air was cool and fresh. Once I saw a flash of white in the edge of the timber as we startled a deer drinking in the shallows. The swirls of feeding bass could be seen now and then among the pads.
Nunn veered off to the left and entered a channel in the upper end. I continued straight ahead. In a few minutes I cut the motor and let the boat drift as I began setting up the fly-rod. I was near the north