Wild Inheritance [antikvár]

chapter I The loon's haunting wail echoed across Pole Lake—a tiny slit of wilderness-enclosed water—^bounced on the ripples of a fresh fall breeze, and finally choked in the dense bush along the shore. Ancient, rocky shores stood unperturbed as little waves gently licked them. An opalescent sky watched new fallen leaves of yeUow and brown tumble underwater, then spew forth refusing to drown. The lake was spotted and looked diseased. A late evening snack of leaves must be digested before freeze-up came in this early fall of 1925. Twilight fell quickly now on the lake and the proud pines and spruce cast reflections across the mineral brown water while their weaker deciduous sisters let more leaves fall from their skeleton frames. Henry Watt's house stood at the north end of the lake, securely planted in the rocky ground thirty feet above the shoreline. Of hand-hewn log construction, the house looked proud and old as it staidly surveyed the lake. The worn logs were deep black and brown. Interlaced caulking of white plaster showed grim-lipped complacency, sneering at the happy little lake from a lofty position. One thing changed the appearance sufficiently from a setder's log cabin so that it could be called a house: a front veranda. This porch on the side of the cabin was built of wide boards and incongruously pamted yellow. Inside the log house, dim light crept through a crooked, narrow window, to illuminate the dreary interior. Wide, worn boards on the floor supported sparse secondhand furnishings. Dismally dark—and strangely not brightened by the chinked plaster—the walls were casketlike and