Yet this is a great game-country. The warden reports a herd of
thirty-six moose in the neighborhood of Bowman Lake; mountain-lion,
lynx, marten, bear, and deer abound. A trapper built long ago a
substantial log shack on the north shore of the lake, and although it is
many years since it was abandoned, it is still almost weather-proof. All
of us have our dreams. Some day I should like to go back and live for a
little time in that forest cabin. In the long snow-bound days after he
set his traps, the trapper had busied himself fitting it up. A tin can
made his candle-bracket on the wall, axe-hewn planks formed a table and
a bench, and diagonally across a corner he had built his fireplace of
stones from the lakeside.
He had a simple method of constructing a chimney; he merely left without
a roof that corner of the cabin and placed slanting boards in it. He had
made a crane, too, which swung out over the fireplace. All of the Rocky
Mountains were in his back garden, and his front yard was Bowman Lake.
We had had fair weather so far. But now rain set in. Hail came first;
then a steady rain.
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