ON PEND D'OREILLE LAKE.
With his back against a pine-log, B. sits cleaning his gun, and, for the
moment unoccupied, I smoke and watch "Texas" singeing a plucked grouse
over the camp-fire. Opposite to him, "Mac" is engaged in baking a damper
in an enormous frying-pan, the ringed handle of which is propped against
a deadwood stick. The fire itself, built just above the highest
water-mark, is composed of drift-wood and confined between two
pine-logs, on either end of which are arranged our tin cooking utensils.
In the background lies the lake.
And who is B.? who "Texas"? who "Mac"? What lake is here alluded to? B.
is an old travelling companion of mine; the reader has met him before.
The lake is that called Pend d'Oreille, in northern Idaho, Texas and
Mac (partners, and, respectively, an ex-cowboy and unsuccessful miner)
are a couple of waifs, whom we found spending the summer in hunting
round its edges.
An oddly assorted pair they were, these two. Texas, the incarnation of
action and life, was _vif_, cheery, and good-natured, industrious,
ambitious, and roughly but genuinely polite--a man who economised
labour, and yet whose hands were never idle, who foresaw events, and as
far as possible prepared for them himself. If he were ostensibly wasting
his time here, it was because, driven out of Texas by the "chills," he
was endeavouring to reinstate his health, before resuming regular work.
He chewed "baccer," talked "stock," washed dishes, had towels drying,
water boiling, coffee cooling, an eye for passing events, and an ear for
transient sounds, simultaneously. What he did, he, nevertheless, did
thoroughly, and withal he was intelligent, and talked shrewd sense.
Texas was a true _gamin_ in appearance. There was an irrepressible air
of cock-sparrow-like bravado about him. His boyish figure was clad in a
blue flax shirt, brown flax overalls, and mocassins. His perky nose, of
a sun-burnt, fiery red, seemed to be in an everlasting condition of
strenuous rivalry with the perky peak of his black cloth cap, and his
small bright eyes sparkled in a small round face, of
leathery-complexioned features, partially hidden by a dusty-coloured
beard and moustache. He cocked his eye, he cocked his nose, he cocked
his elbow. Cheek in his presence would have hung its head abashed. He
had the effect upon one of a pick-me-up, and you often caught yourself
involuntarily smiling as you looked at him.
Mac (an abbreviation, by the way, of "Macaroni"), an old mining
enthusiast, was an Italian by birth, and looked like the typical
European organ-grinder--a resemblance heightened by the broad black
sombrero that he wore. He was one of those easy-going, good-natured men,
who inevitably obtain nicknames, and the familiar prefix "old." Old Mac
was a capital cook, and though always willing to be employed, was not
given, like Texas, to initiating work of his own proper motion. Texas
lived entirely in the present; Mac chiefly in the past, or future, in a
ruined palace, or brand-new castle in the air. Absently twisting a
spear of grass, or piece of string, in his fingers, he would sit by the
hour, cross-legged, gazing into the camp-fire, with eyes that smouldered
and darkened, glowed and again grew shadowed, as he dreamt of
magnificent "prospects," big "leads," and "twenty-stamp mills," or
failure, and the enforced sale of claims at insignificant prices, for
lack of "a little more" capital to develop their hidden treasures.
Sometimes he would break abruptly into the conversation with an
irrelevant remark concerning mines, or mining, and, seduced by the
subject, launch out, and unfold the schemes he nourished for employing
that wealth which he would probably never acquire. He had found a good
mine once--a well-known mine, which produced $17,000,000 after he had
sold the prospect for $1,000.
No occupation is so fascinating as that of mining, it would seem. Once a
miner always a miner. Found in any other walk in life, the old
prospector is only "lying by" to tide over evil times, or "making a
raise" to enable him to return to his favourite pursuit. Even if he
resolve to abandon it, sooner or later resolution fails him, and,
metaphorically speaking, it is at the mouth of the shaft that he dies.
Nor is there one in a thousand of these men but dies a pauper. Still
they are not to be pitied. It matters little how a man dies; the
material point is, how he lives. And the lives of these men are spent on
the shores of enchanting mirage lakes, they themselves the very genii of
wealth, in fancy. If life be a dream, theirs at any rate is a pleasant
one, for, in expectation, they enjoy more happiness than is ever
achieved by the most fortunate of practical men. And since expectation
is the better part of happiness, and they never live to see their idols
and ideals shattered, they are doubly to be envied. Perpetually, as it
were, beneath the influence of opium, present miseries but lightly
affect them, and they revel in "fine phrensies," the magnificence, if
not sensuous splendour of which may fairly vie with the gorgeous visions
of an Eastern imagination stimulated by majoon.
For a few dollars Texas and Mac had purchased a kind of duck punt, that
an amateur undertaker had apparently begun to build as a coffin for his
mother-in-law, or some other but little beloved relative. It combined
the lightness and symmetry of a wood pile with the sea-going qualities
of a crate, and the fact that its present owners had navigated the lake
in it for some weeks in safety, afforded a most interesting instance of
the inexhaustible mercy of Providence.
It would be useless to recount what led us to this Ultima Thule, or how
it further happened that we took ship haphazard with a brace of loafers,
and went in quest of game there. Rub the Aladdin's lamp of imagination,
and transport yourself to our camp-fire; do so, at least, if you admit
the charm of a vagabond life in a fine climate, the enchantment of fine
skies, fine days, and finer nights spent at Musette's Hotel de la Belle
Etoile, undisturbed, though, by the "_courants d'air_" she dreaded.
With doubtful hearts we had embarked in the modified coffin. Laden down
with baggage it had had a more than usually unseaworthy appearance. But
although once or twice we had shipped seas, and once had been nearly
swamped by a billow at least four inches high, after a voyage of six
miles we had safely reached the point where the reader first discovered
us. Then, whilst B. and Mac had gone out to shoot some grouse, Texas
and I had chosen a site for camp, shifted the baggage, lit a fire, and
placed in readiness our cooking apparatus and stores.
The million-voiced hum of tiny surf breaking upon the sand, some fifty
yards away, was heard in long, low chords, singing a song writ long
before the era of man, but whether betokening prophecy or strange
record, an eternal requiem or only a passing overture, equally
unintelligible now. In the crests of the little knot of cotton-wood
trees by which we were located, the wind was stirring with a touch so
light that it barely tilted the topmost leaves. But in endless corridors
of quill-fringed pines, in leagues upon leagues of forest behind us, it
had gathered force, and softened by distance, enriched exquisitely in
sweetness, in a chorus audible only when sought for above the fairy
clashing of leafy cymbals near at hand, its organ tones rose and fell
like the measured breathing of a great sound that slept.
"So the bull chased you too, Texas, did he?" said B., looking up from
his gun-barrels, as he continued a conversation with reference to an
incident that had lately occurred on a small neighbouring cattle-ranch.
"That's what he did, now," replied the ex-cowboy sharply; and he paused
to elaborate the singeing of an awkward corner in the anatomy of one of
the grouse. "That's what he did--sure! The old son of a gun put after me
once. A durned nasty old cuss he is, and don't you forget it!"
"How did it happen?"
"Oh, I was crossing the fields on foot, and the bull he was feeling
kinder ugly, I guess; that's all there was to it."
"And he came for you?"
"When he'd got up steam he did. He stamped, and tore, and frothed, and
swelled, and primed, and snorted fit to bust 'fore he started. Then fust
thing I knew, he dropped his head and put after me on all-fours--horns
in front. I backed a piece, but the bull he kept coming, so, as I wasn't
looking for any foot race, I jest drew a bead on him, and was going to
shoot when Owens [from the ranch] runs down shouting 'not to kill him.'
_He_ drove him off; but the old bull hated to quit--the worst kind."
The autumn evening came early, and closed on us quickly, and save for
one red cloud that lingered there, the blue sky was already growing
silvery and gray, on the dark bosom of the lake only a few flickering
lines of gold and scarlet were playing still, and the purple islands
seemed to recede and partially dissolve in the swimming light and air
when Texas called us to supper.
Is there any gossip in the world more delightful than that which takes
place round a camp-fire? Are there any meetings that leave such soothing
impressions and recollections? Look back and note the host of faces,
fates, incidents, even of local sounds that the thought of a camp-fire
recalls. Yes, local sounds! With the everlasting restlessness, and
melancholy of the sough of the wind from the sea, is heard once more the
shy, fresh whispering of grass on the veldt or prairie, the silken
_frou-frou_ of bamboo foliage, the tinkling of pine-tassels, the murmur
of falling water. And mingled with the memory of such voices as these,
there is the distant thunder of an avalanche or of the hippo,
re-entering his native stream, the reverberating roar of the lion, the
wild, weird cries of lesser beasts of the bush or jungle, the notes of
night-birds, the "Number one, all's well! Number two, all's well!" of
the beleaguered camp; the "Lights out" bugle-call, or the sudden alarm
of rifles, and the rush of many feet.
Round a Western frontier camp-fire the conversation is always
interesting. The change and incident that occurs in the lives of the men
who collect there, gives them a fund of ideas not common to their class
in Europe. The surliest old "tough" amongst them has experience of some
line of country, some business, some isolated community, or fashion of
life that is well worth while to listen to. Texas had punched cattle
from Lower California to Louisiana; Mac had prospected from Mexico to
Puget Sound. But besides this, B. was a perfect mine of wealth in
Western lore. We had a wide country to range over, therefore, and not
until the wood pile that we had collected was almost exhausted did we
seek our blankets that night. One of B.'s yarns must be recorded here.
"Away back in the good old times of the West--when fortunes were made
and lost in a day, and one went to bed a pauper and woke a millionaire,
or _vice versa_--I was cruising round, looking up new mines with an old
sea-captain, named Rogers. We were coming down from Virginia City on the
stage, and late one evening we got into ----, and found everything in
the shape of accommodation occupied. It so happened, however, that
Rogers met a friend called Bob Malone, who kept a livery stable there,
and he invited us to his place, and put us up for the night. The next
morning we hired a buggy from him, to drive out and look at a new
'prospect' that we had some idea of buying, and coming back the horse
ran away, and broke a little iron bar under the buggy--did, in fact,
about ten dollars mischief to it. The following day we got a room at one
of the saloons, and stopped about a week longer there. In the course of
that time we tried on two or three occasions to get Malone's bill for
damages. But he put us off, and put us off, saying that 'it didn't
matter;' 'he had been too busy to attend to it;' 'there wasn't any hurry
about it,' and so forth. And it wasn't until just as we were absolutely
going off on the stage, that he came up and gave it to the Captain. We
were in a hurry, the coach was starting, and there wasn't any time to
look into it, so Rogers glanced at the total and paid it. We pulled out,
and got on the road, and by-and-by I leant forward to the Captain, who
sat on the box-seat, and asked him what I had to give him for my share
of the bill. Then he remembered it, and fetched it out, and looked it
through. This was how it ran:
Dollars.
"To Carpenter's Work on Buggy . . . 20
To Blacksmith's Work on Buggy. . . 20
To Painter's Work on Buggy . . . . 20
To Damage to Buggy . . . . 20
----
Total . . . 80
====
"Well, the old fellow swore by all the gods of sea or land, and all the
ports that he had ever been swindled in, that it was the stiffest bill
that he had struck yet. And even after I had paid him my half of it,
every now and then as we went along, he would pull it out of his pocket,
and take another look at it. But that didn't seem to do him any good,
for the more he studied it the madder he got, until finally, when we
stopped for lunch, the first thing he did was to get some paper, and
write Malone a letter. I forget how it ran, but the gist of it was that,
'In view of the extravagant total of the bill, he thought that Mr.
Malone had taken the opportunity afforded by the injury done to his
buggy to charge in a delicate manner for the hospitality that we had
received from him. But that since Mr. Malone was a friend of his, not
of mine, and he (the Captain) did not like to charge me for hospitality
which he had indirectly been the means of _offering_ me, he should be
glad to know the exact state of the case, etc., etc.'
"Some time afterwards, I happened to be going up to ---- again, so I got
the bill from Rogers, and when I had leisure just dropped in to call on
Malone. 'By the way, Malone,' said I, in the course of conversation,
'that was a devil of a bill that you slipped on us the other day.'
"That started him! 'Of all the ungentlemanly and disgraceful letters
that he had ever seen, heard, or read of, the Captain's was the worst,'
he said. 'He had never been so insulted in his life. After all his
kindness to us--after the hospitality that he had tendered us--after
taking us into the bosom of his family circle, to have a letter written
to him in such terms was a perfect outrage! He couldn't have believed
it, if he hadn't seen it.'
"'Well,' said I, 'that depends, of course, on how you look at it. Now,
Dick Rose wants to give me forty dollars for that bill.' (Rose was the
rival livery-stable keeper in the place.)
"'The ---- he does! What for?'
"'Why, he wants to paste it up on his gate, and label it "Bob Malone's
Bill," for the boys to come and look at; it would be sure to get into
the papers, and there'd be no end of chaff about it. Of course it would
be an advertisement for Rose.' 'But you ain't going to sell it to him?'
'Why not?' 'What, sell another chap my bill?' 'Why shouldn't I,' said I,
'if I can get half the total for it?' 'Oh!--well, I _am_----Well! Well,
there, if it comes to that, I guess I can give as much for my bill as
anybody else. ---- me if I am going to have anybody buy a bill of mine!'
'But I didn't say that I was going to _take_ forty dollars for it,' I
said. 'The ---- you didn't! What _do_ you want, then?' 'Well, if you
want to buy that bill, I guess I could let _you_ have it for sixty
dollars; but you'll have to make up your mind about it at once.' The end
of it was that Malone brought out the money, and I handed him the bill.
I gave the old Captain thirty dollars, and I think he was better pleased
with it than he would have been if he had struck a big Bonanza."
Early morning saw us under way in different directions. B. and Mac rowed
to a point two miles down the shore of the lake; Texas struck inland
for a little lake in the woods.
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.
Yonder gleam of white, low down on the far side, under that
pine-scattered mountain, is Hope Station, whence we take our departure
at noon.