HOW THE SPLIT-STONE LAKE WAS NAMED
As Moise was even hungrier than John, there seemed no objection to eating another meal even before sundown. The evening came off fair and cool, so that the mosquitoes did not bother the campers. As the chill of the mountain night came on, the boys put on their blanket coats and pulled the bed-rolls close up to the fire, near which the men both sat smoking quietly. Already the boys were beginning to learn reticence in camp with men like these, and not to interrupt with too many questions; but at length Jesse’s eagerness to hear Moise’s story could no longer be restrained.
“You promised to tell us something to-night, Moise,” said he. “What’s it going to be?”
“First I’ll must got ready for story,” said Moise. “In the camp my people eat when they tell story. I’ll fix some of those sheep meat now.”
Borrowing his big knife from Alex, Moise now cut himself a sharp-pointed stick of wood, two or three feet long, and stuck one end of this into each end of the side of sheep ribs which lay at the meat pile. Finding a thong, he tied it to the middle of the stick, and making himself a tall tripod for a support, he suspended the piece of meat directly over the fire at some distance above, so that it could not burn, but would revolve and cook slowly.
“Suppose in a half-hour I’ll can tell story now,” said Moise, laughing pleasantly. “No use how much sheep meat you eat, always you eat more!”
At last, however, at what must have been nine or ten o’clock at night, at least, perhaps later, after Moise had cut for each of the boys a smoking hot rib of the delicious mountain mutton, he sat back, a rib-bone in his own hand, and kept his promise about the story.
“I’ll tol’ you last night, young mens,” he said, “how about those Wiesacajac, the spirit that goes aroun’ in the woods. Now in the fur country east of the mountains is a lake where a rock is on the shore, split in two piece, an’ the people call that the Split-Stone Lake. Listen, I speak. I tell now how the lake he’s got that name.