The lake, slender and long, now narrowed to a width of forty or fifty yards and curved sharply toward the east.  They slowed down with habitual caution, until they could see what lay in front of them.  Robert and Tayoga rested their paddles, and Willet sent the canoe around the curve.  The fresh reach of water was peaceful too, unruffled by the craft of any enemy, and on either side the same lofty banks of solid green stretched ahead.  Above and beyond the cliffs rose the distant peaks and ridges of the high mountains.  The whole was majestic and magnificent beyond comparison.  Robert and Tayoga, their paddles still idle, breathed it in and felt that Manitou, who is the same as God, had lavished work upon this region, making it good to the eye of all men for all time.

“How far ahead is the cove, Tayoga?” asked Willet.

“About a mile,” replied the Onondaga.

“Then we’d better put in there, and look for game.  We’ve got mighty little venison.”

“It is so,” said Tayoga, using his favorite words of assent.  Neither he nor Robert resumed the paddle, leaving the work for the rest of the way to the hunter, who was fully equal to the task.  His powerful arms swept the broad blade through the water, and the canoe shot forward at a renewed pace.  Long practice and training had made him so skillful at the task that his breath was not quickened by the exertion.  It was a pleasure to Robert to watch the ease and power with which he did so much.

The lake widened as they advanced, and through a change in the color of the sky the water here seemed silver rather than blue.  A flock of wild ducks swam near the edge and he saw two darting loons, but there was no other presence.  Silence, beauty and majesty were everywhere, and he was content to go on, without speaking, infused with the spirit of the wilderness.

The cove showed after a while, at first a mere slit that only a wary eye could have seen, and then a narrow opening through which a small creek flowed into the lake.  Willet, with swift and skillful strokes of the paddle, turned the canoe into the stream and advanced some distance up it, until he stopped at a point where it broadened into an expanse like a pool, covered partly with water lilies, and fringed with tall reeds.  Behind the reeds were slanting banks clothed with dense, green foliage.  It was an ideal covert, and there were thousands like it in the wonderful wilderness of the North Woods.

“You find this a good place, don’t you, Tayoga?” said Willet, with a certain deference.

“It suits us well,” replied the young Onondaga in his measured tones.  “No man, Indian or white, has been here today.  The lilies are undisturbed.  Not a reed has been bent.  Ducks that have not yet seen us are swimming quietly up the creek, and farther on a stag is drinking at its edge.  I can hear him lapping the water.”

“That was wonderful, Tayoga,” said Willet with admiration.  “I wouldn’t have noticed it, but since you’ve spoken of it I can hear the stag too.  Now he’s gone away.  Maybe he’s heard us.”