It was perfectly silent. Doubtless, countless curious wild eyes watched
us from the mountain-slopes and the lake-borders. But we heard not even
the cracking of brushwood under cautious feet. The tracks of deer, where
they had come down to drink, a dead mountain-lion floating in a pool,
the slow flight of an eagle across the face of old Rainbow, and no sound
but the soft hiss of a line as it left the reel--that was Bowman Lake,
that day, as it lay among its mountains. So precipitous are the slopes,
so rank the vegetation where the forest encroaches, that we were put to
it to find a ridge large enough along the shore to serve as a foothold
for luncheon. At last we found a tiny spot, perhaps ten feet long by
three feet wide, and on that we landed. The sun went down; the rainbow
clouds gathered about the peaks above, and still the trout were rising.
When at last we turned for our ten-mile row back to camp, it was almost
dusk.
Now and then, when I am tired and the things of this world press close
and hard, I think of those long days on that lonely lake, and the
home-coming at nightfall.
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