HOUSE IN LILY LAKE
The ditch guard returned with a rifle, and came to stay. The first beaver to come within range was shot. The guard again removed the dam, made a fire about twenty feet from the ditch, and planned to spend the night on guard, rifle in hand. Toward morning he became drowsy, sat down by the fire, heard the air in the pines at his back, watched the star-sown water, and finally fell asleep. While he thus slept, with his rifle across his lap, the beaver placed another—their last—obstruction before the outrushing water.
On awakening, the sleeper tore out the dam and stood guard over the ditch. All that afternoon a number of beaver hovered about, watching for an opportunity to stop the water again. Their opportunity never came, and three who ventured too near the rifleman gave up their lives,—reddening the clear water with their life-blood in vain.
The lake was drained, and the colonists abandoned their homes. One night, a few days after the final attempt to blockade the ditch, an unwilling beaver emigrant party climbed silently out of the uncovered entrance of their house and made their way quietly, slowly, beneath the stars, across the mountain, descending thence to Wind River, where they founded a new colony.
Winter came to the old lake-bed, and the lily roots froze and died. The beaver houses rapidly crumbled, and for a few years the picturesque ruins of the beaver settlement, like many a settlement abandoned by man, stood pathetically in the midst of wilderness desolation. Slowly the water rose to its old level in the lake, as the outlet ditch gradually filled with swelling turf and drifting sticks and trash. Then the lilies came back with rafts of green and boats of gold to enliven this lakelet of repose.
One autumn morning, while returning to my cabin after a night near the stars on Lily Mountain, I paused on a crag to watch the changing morning light down Wind River Cañon. While thus engaged, Flat-top and a party of colonists came along a game trail within a few yards of me, evidently bound for the lake, which was only a short distance away. I silently followed them. This was my introduction to Flat-top.
On the shore these seven adventurers paused for a moment to behold the scene, or, possibly, to dream of empire; then they waddled out into the water and made a circuit of the lake. Probably Flat-top had been here before as an explorer. Within two hours after their arrival these colonists began building for a permanent settlement.
It was late to begin winter preparation. The clean, white aspens had shed their golden leaves and stood waiting to welcome the snows. This lateness may account for the makeshift of a hut which the colonists constructed. This was built against the bank with only one edge in the water; the entrance to it was a twelve-foot tunnel that ended in the lake-bottom where the water was two feet deep.
The beaver were collecting green aspen and willow cuttings in the water by the tunnel-entrance when the lake froze over. Fortunately for the colonists, with their scanty supply of food, the winter was a short one, and by the first of April they were able to dig the roots of water plants along the shallow shore where the ice had melted. One settler succumbed during the winter, but by summer the others had commenced work on a permanent house, which was completed before harvest time.