(pioneers 



the crusted snow; each told of a death and a 

 feast upon the wintry mountain-side among the 

 solemn pines. Flat-top with five others finally 

 gained the Wind River Colony, from which he 

 had led his emigrants two years before. 



One day the following June, while examining 

 the lilies in the lake, I came upon a low, freshly 

 ,cut stump; Flat-top had returned. A number 

 of colonists were with him and all had come to 

 stay. 



All sizable aspen that were within a few yards 

 of the water had been cut away, but at the south- 

 west corner of the lake, about sixty feet from the 

 shore, was an aspen thicket. Flat-top and his 

 fellow workers cut a canal from the lake through 

 a low, sedgy flat into this aspen thicket. The canal 

 was straight, about fourteen inches deep and 

 twenty-six inches wide. Its walls were smoothly 

 cut and most of the excavated material was piled 

 evenly on one side of the canal and about eight 

 inches from it. It had an angular, mechanical ap- 

 pearance, and suggested the work not of a beaver, 

 but of man, and that of a very careful man too. 



Down this canal the colonists floated the tim- 



187 



