Tales of Lonely Trails | Page 9

a flat,
up another bench, out of the timber into the patches of snow. Here
snow could be felt in the air. Water was everywhere. I saw a fox, a
badger, and another furry creature, too illusive to name. One more
climb brought us to the top of the Flattop Pass, about eleven thousand
feet. The view in the direction from which we had come was splendid,
and led the eye to the distant sweeping ranges, dark and dim along the
horizon. The Flattops were flat enough, but not very wide at this pass,
and we were soon going down again into a green gulf of spruce, with
ragged peaks lifting beyond. Here again I got the suggestion of
limitless space. It took us an hour to ride down to Little Trappers Lake,
a small clear green sheet of water. The larger lake was farther down. It
was big, irregular, and bordered by spruce forests, and shadowed by the
lofty gray peaks.
The Camp was on the far side. The air appeared rather warm, and
mosquitoes bothered us. However, they did not stay long. It was after
sunset and I was too tired to have many impressions.

Our cook appeared to be a melancholy man. He had a deep quavering
voice, a long drooping mustache and sad eyes. He was silent most of
the time. The men called him Bill, and yelled when they spoke, for he
was somewhat deaf. It did not take me long to discover that he was a
good cook.
Our tent was pitched down the slope from the cook tent. We were too
tired to sit round a camp-fire and talk. The stars were white and
splendid, and they hung over the flat ridges like great beacon lights.
The lake appeared to be inclosed on three sides by amphitheatric
mountains, black with spruce up to the gray walls of rock. The night
grew cold and very still. The bells on the horses tinkled distantly. There
was a soft murmur of falling water. A lonesome coyote barked, and that
thrilled me. Teague's dogs answered this prowler, and some of them
had voices to make a hunter thrill. One, the bloodhound Cain, had a
roar like a lion's. I had not gotten acquainted with the hounds, and I was
thinking about them when I fell asleep.
Next morning I was up at five-thirty. The air was cold and nipping and
frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise gleamed on the tip
of the mountain and slowly grew downward.
The cool handle of an axe felt good. I soon found, however, that I could
not wield it long for lack of breath. The elevation was close to ten
thousand feet and the air at that height was thin and rare. After each
series of lusty strokes I had to rest. R.C., who could handle an axe as he
used to swing a baseball bat, made fun of my efforts. Whereupon I
relinquished the tool to him, and chuckled at his discomfiture.
After breakfast R.C. and I got out our tackles and rigged up fly rods,
and sallied forth to the lake with the same eagerness we had felt when
we were boys going after chubs and sunfish. The lake glistened green
in the sunlight and it lay like a gem at the foot of the magnificent black
slopes.
The water was full of little floating particles that Teague called wild
rice. I thought the lake had begun to work, like eastern lakes during dog
days. It did not look propitious for fishing, but Teague reassured us.

The outlet of this lake was the head of White River. We tried the outlet
first, but trout were not rising there. Then we began wading and casting
along a shallow bar of the lake. Teague had instructed us to cast, then
drag the flies slowly across the surface of the water, in imitation of a
swimming fly or bug. I tried this, and several times, when the leader
was close to me and my rod far back, I had strikes. With my rod in that
position I could not hook the trout. Then I cast my own way, letting the
flies sink a little. To my surprise and dismay I had only a few strikes
and could not hook the fish.
R.C., however, had better luck, and that too in wading right over the
ground I had covered. To beat me at anything always gave him the
most unaccountable fiendish pleasure.
"These are educated trout," he said. "It takes a skillful fisherman to
make them rise. Now anybody can catch the big game of the sea, which
is your forte. But here you are N.G.... Watch me cast!"
I watched him make a most atrocious cast. But the water