Into the broken country we plunged, where the scarlet of the vine aspen softened into amber; the shades of purple lake, that distinguished the fallen and decayed trunks, graduated into cinnamons and browns; the claret-hued bark of living pines contrasted with the charcoal of dead trees, which bore the indelible legend of a fire that had swept the hills a few summers ago. Passing into a section of the country that had suffered more severely from its ravages, we found the new growth of pine saplings standing almost as thick as corn in a corn-field. It was tedious work thrusting a way through this miniature forest; and not less troublesome was it to traverse some of the intervening valleys, where the fire had not penetrated, and where fallen trunks, the accumulation of long decades, crossed one another in inextricable confusion, like gigantic squills. Sometimes, by emulating Blondin, it was possible to advance unimpeded for forty or fifty—even a hundred feet along the naked stem of a tree that lay athwart its brethren. But this was rare, and the incidental croppers rendered clambering in and out of the log wells the most satisfactory mode of progress after all.
Occasionally we came to a partially bare-backed ridge where deer-tracks were numerous, and where usually we should have been likely to find game. But prolonged drought had rendered everything as dry as touchwood. Every twig, every fern, every leaf, every blade of grass crackled if touched. It was impossible to approach game noiselessly until after a rainfall, and the futility of endeavouring to do so was strikingly illustrated to us once.
We were resting upon a hill-side, when a series of reports, that fairly mimicked the "hammer" of distant rifle-firing in a wood, reached us. For the moment I thought that it was firing, but attention immediately corrected the impression. The sound approached, and though it might have been heard a mile away in the perfectly still air, it was evidently only the echo of breaking twigs and sticks, caused by a deer moving rapidly through a narrow bottom.
We reached the small lake we were in search of. In its hollow of purple pines it lay like a basket, woven of feathery reflections, filled with silver clouds, fragments of dusky blue, and floating aquatic foliage and flowers. Fish were rising wherever the windless surface was unobstructed by vegetation, and surely they could not have had a more delightful abode than was this crystal crypt, with its sapphire shadows, and myriad slender columns of emerald stalks.
On the way back to camp Texas shot two grouse with his revolver. Grouse here, by the way, remain perched on the branches of a tree until one is within ten or fifteen yards of them.
B. and Mac had returned before us. B. (an old hunter in the States) had grasped the situation, and thenceforward refused to undertake the heavy work tramping through these woods entailed, when it was practically labour wasted. In future he devoted his attention to fishing and duck shooting. It was possible to bag a few stray duck, but although at certain seasons of the year the fishing is unrivalled in Pend d'Oreille Lake, when we were there, it was not worth mentioning.
We shifted camp, and for two or three days I persevered unsuccessfully with the rifle. Once, selecting the bald summit of a ridge where there were plenty of deer-trails as our point of operations, Texas and I lay hidden and watched from late in the afternoon till dark, when we bivouacked on the ground. But we saw no game, although two or three times during the night we heard deer moving.
Disappointed of sport on the lake itself, we commenced the ascent of its tributary, Pack River. Five portages in the first four miles, however, and the fact that there was no prospect of the surrounding country growing any clearer, cooled our enthusiasm for exploration, and, eventually, having added a duck, a brace of plover, and three brook-trout to our game list, we returned to the lake, determined to seek other if not happier hunting-grounds.
The reader is disgusted—deceived, perhaps, in the expectation of perusing an account of dire slaughter. Undoubtedly, the supposition that game was to be killed on Pend d'Oreille Lake in September, was a delusion. But delusions, illusions, and the like are the salt of life. Only the illusions do not pall; only the illusions do not pass away. True disappointment lies in complete success. One thing, at any rate, we were not deceived about. Pend d'Oreille was very beautiful, and it is worth something to be able to close your eyes, and see it as I saw it on the morning that we left—as I see it now, in fact, although two thousand miles of mountain and prairie lie between us as I write.
A slender shaft of blue smoke rises straight from the smouldering embers of our last night's fire on the beach. The air is fresh and still—there is no stillness, though, like that of the expectant pause which heralds the roar of day, no freshness like the evanescent freshness of sunrise. Texas is gathering drift-wood at high-water mark. Down where the boat is drawn up on the sands, the dark figure of Old Mac, in his broad black sombrero, is keenly outlined against the steely waters. Already the leaden sky is luminous with dawn; its pearly tones, as delicate in their nuances of shading as the neck of a dove, flush faintly and uncertainly. Cloud-edge after cloud-edge grows dazzling with silvery light, and, at length, the sun lifts the last clinging shred of the lake's gauze coverlet of mist, and reveals it in its bed of soft and hazy hills, motionless and pale for a moment before it is dyed with, surely the loveliest tint of rose that even Nature ever displayed. The first breath of the morning wind steals down from the mountains, to kiss its tranquil surface; it shivers, trembles, breaks into shattered light and motion like a thing of life awaking, and once more the old song of the waters has softly recommenced.