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a nod his way. It wasn’t the time spent fishing that mattered, though that was part of it; it was the risks taken protecting the fish. Walter didn’t take him in until Hank snuck into the hatchery by the cover of darkness and poisoned the smolt tanks. It was this selfless act, an act aimed at protecting the river’s wild fish, and that earned Hank acknowledgment—tenure, really—among the old guard. Walter had, a generation prior, earned his own tenure by detonating the irrigation channel built by the State, a crime he repeated three times until the State grew tired of rebuilding. But now, the Morells of the world were granted entrance into the circle simply because of their technical proficiency: They fished custom rods, built innovative lines, tied new flies—and caught fish. Morell had proved his devotion to steelheading, but had he really proved his devotion to steelhead?
    It was the Internet, Hank knew, that had catalyzed the shift in guide culture. Whereas river knowledge used to be seen as the product of years of on-the-river observation and experimentation—and hence, the valley’s most valuable commodity—now it was seen as just a few mouse clicks away, its value on par with all the random facts available on Wikipedia. These young kids had divorced information from the time required to gather it. To them, information wasn’t passed between generations, it was passed between computers.
    The guides of Danny’s generation were responsible for letting Morell in too soon. They were the transition generation; they’d learned the secrets the old way (Danny, that hothead, had firebombed Cherry Creek Timber’s regional office), but some of them had failed to keep those secrets properly guarded. This infuriated Walter. Just a year back, he put a brick through a young guide’s window. Hank and the other senior guides were done sharing their secrets—and they still had plenty—with anyone who couldn’t remember where they werethe day Kennedy was shot. Except with Danny himself of course, who had been more or less raised by the guides and so had proper appreciation for a secret’s incalculable value.
    *
    W ALTER WAS RIGHT where Hank expected to find him, sitting on the picnic table out back of his small one-story home, spinning moose hair. He lived here alone, and had since his wife left him some twenty years back. When Walter saw Hank approaching, he opened the cooler at his feet and produced an IPA from the Salmon Tail Brewery thirty-two miles downstream. Walter still traded with the brew master, flies for cases, trips for kegs.
    â€œFigured you’d drag your ass up here at some point.” A small pair of reading glasses hung from the tip of Walter’s nose. He clipped a clump of hair, and the hot breeze carried the loose fibers over the lawn. There, in the grass, sparkled fragments of tinsel and floss and pink hackle, a summer’s worth of trimmings. “Were you out all night?”
    â€œDidn’t do a lick of good.”
    â€œI heard.” Walter clipped another clump. “Bet you ten he’s a floater and they find him in tidewater next week.”
    â€œNot much of a gamble at this point. Seems the real wager is in how he lost it.”
    â€œNatural or artificial causes?” Walter had yet to look at Hank. They often spoke to each other like this, as if they were speaking to themselves. “You’re the only one of us that got a look at that bowl of glass he oars.”
    Hank picked up one of the finished patterns on the table. A sphere of tightly packed moose hair at the front, a red floss body, a half-dozen strands of silver tinsel streaming back an inch past the hook. “Still fiddling with it?”
    â€œMostly a matter of getting the thing to fish right now. Course, that’s all it ever is.”
    Hank chuckled at the old man singing his old songs, and swigged his beer to hide it. Once, to prove that fly