[LAKE ANGUS McDONALD]
[CHAPTER III]
LAKE ANGUS McDONALD AND THE MAN FOR WHOM IT WAS NAMED
WITHIN the range of Sin-yal-min, which rises abruptly from the valley of the Flathead to altitudes of perpetual snow, in a ravine sunk deep into the heart of the mountains, is Lake Angus McDonald. Though but a few miles distant the bells of Saint Ignatius Mission gather the children of the soil to prayer, no hand has marred the untamed beauty of this lake and its surrounding mountain steeps where the eagle builds his nest in security and the mountain goat and bighorn sheep play unmolested and unafraid.
The prospect is a magnificent one as the roadway uncoils its irregular, tawny length from rolling hills into the level sea of green where only a year or two ago the buffalo grazed in peace. Beyond, the jagged summits of Sin-yal-min toss their crests against the sky, their own impalpable blue a shade more intense than the summer heavens, their silvered pinnacles one with the drifting cloud. A delicate, shimmering thread like the gossamer tissue of a spider's web spins its length from the ethereal brow of the mountains to the lifted arms of the foothills below. The yellow road runs through the valley, passes the emerald patch around the Mission and thence onward to blue shadows of peaks where gorges flow like purple seas and distant trees are points of azure. The swelling foothills bear one up, the valley melts away far beneath and sweet-breathed woods sigh their balsam on the breeze. The pass becomes more difficult, the growth thickens. Among the trees broad-leafed thimble berry, brew berry and goose berry blossom and bear; wild clematis builds pyramids of green and white over the bushes; syringa bursts into pale-starred flower, and a shrub, feathery, delicate, sends forth long, tender stems which break into an intangible mist of bloom.
Suddenly out of the tangled forests, a sheet of water, smooth and clear, appears, spreading its quicksilver depths among peaks that still bear their burden of the glacial age. And in the polished mirror of those waters is reflected the perfect image of its mountain crown. First, the purplish green of timbered slopes, then the naked, beetling crags and deep crevasse with its heart of ice. A heavy silence broods here, broken only by the wildly lonesome cry of the raven quavering in lessening undulations of tone through the recesses of the crags. Two Indians near the shore flit away among the leaves, timid as deer in their native haunts. Such is Lake Angus McDonald, and yonder, presiding over all, shouldering its perpetual burden of ice, is McDonald's Peak. Strangely beautiful are these living monuments to the name and fame of a man, and one naturally asks who was this Angus McDonald that his memory should endure in the eternal mountains within the crystal cup of this snow-fed lake?
The question is worth the answering. Angus McDonald was a Highland Scotchman, sent out into the western wilderness by the Hudson Bay Company. There must have lurked in his robust blood the mastering love of freedom and adventure which led the scions of the House of McDonald to such strange and varied destinies; which made such characters in the Scottish hills as Rob Roy and clothed the kilted clans with a romantic colour totally wanting in their stolid brethren of the Lowlands. In any event, it is certain that Angus McDonald, once within the magic of the wild, flung aside the ties that bound him to the outer world and became in dress, in manner of life and in heart, an Indian. He took unto himself an Indian wife, begot sons who were Indians in colour and form and like his adopted people, he hunted upon the heights, moved his tipi from valley to mountain as capricious notion prompted, and finally made for himself and his family a home in the valley of Sin-yal-min not far below that lake and peak which do honor to his memory. Physically he was a man of towering stature, standing over six feet in his moccasins; his shoulders were broad and he was very erect. His leonine head was clad with a heavy shock of hair, and his beard, during his later years, snow white, hung to his waist. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes, clear, blue and penetrating. A picturesque figure he must have been, clad in full buckskin leggins and shirt with a blanket wrapped around him. He was known among the Indians and whites through the length and breadth of the country about, and no more strange or striking character quickened the adventure-bearing epoch which we call the Early Days.
As he was free to the point of lightness in his nature, trampling down and discarding every shackle of conventionality, he was likewise bound but nominally by the Christian creed. He believed in reincarnation and his one desire was that in the hereafter, when his soul should be sent to tenant the new body, he might be re-born in the form of a wild, white horse, with proud, arched neck and earth-scorning hoofs, dashing wind-swift over the broad prairies into the sheltering hills.