The distance between Cozzens’ and Hot Sulphur Springs was accomplished
without accident, and in time for dinner. Camp made, the Springs, in
which my comrade, the Doctor, took much interest, were inspected. The
curative properties of the waters have been much talked of and written
about, but not overestimated; they are helpful and invigorating for the
invalid, and a source of gratification, if not a novelty, to the
pleasure seeker. The Indians hold them in great veneration; this of
itself is a recommendation, for, as a rule, the Ute has no liking for
water. The Doctor labored under the impression that I needed a bath; a
hot bath, and said so unequivocally; besides, not to take a bath, even
if the bath took your hide, would be a violation of the sacred rule of
the place, and subject one to the charge of eccentricity. I do not fancy
eccentric people nor enthusiastic folk; beside, every acquaintance I
might meet would be sure to exclaim with marked astonishment: “What!
didn’t take a bath!” The thing would become monotonous. I consented to
take the bath.
The Doctor went ahead like one accustomed to the treatment. It was
night; the place was provided with a single lamp that made the darkness
unearthly; the fumes of the sulphur were strong and suggestive; I looked
down into the steaming pool with the trepidation that must come over a
sinner in the heat of an orthodox revival. The Doctor waded out like a
minister at the ordinance of baptism, and called to me to “come down.” I
said I was coming. I went. The steps were very firm, clean and provided
with a strong rail, but I didn’t hurry. I put one foot in and took it
out right away; when I found it was not raw I put it back, and concluded
as the Doctor was not yet parboiled I might put in the other foot; but I
did not go in a foot at a time, only about an inch. Then I asked the
Doctor what church he belonged to, and started to go out when he said he
was a Methodist. I sat down on the steps, inhaled the sulphur and looked
at him floundering round in that pool like a school of porpoises out at
sea. He told me to try it again. I said I was sleepy and wanted to go to
bed. Then he said it would make my hair grow, and I told him I didn’t
want any hair, that I had had it pulled out on purpose before I was
married. Then he said it would make me fat; I told him I was dieting to
take off superfluous flesh. Then he said he would tell what he
insinuated was generally suspected, that I was afraid of water; I told
him I didn’t care. Finally he swore that if I did not get off that perch
and come down into the bath, he’d destroy the commissaries and refuse to
show me any of the trout-pools in the Park. I was inspired to say I’d
try it again; he had been there five minutes at least and was not
cooked, and if he could stand it that long with his religious training,
I thought I might venture on as many seconds. But I made haste slowly,
got in by degrees and laid down. Then the Doctor got under the “shower
bath,” where the water tumbles, six feet or more in a great stream, into
the pool; he wanted me to try that. But I told him I was very well
satisfied where I was, and that I did not approve of shower baths, any
way; then I went on to explain to him the deleterious effects of too
much bathing, and of shower baths in particular. I talked to him as well
as I could for ten minutes, sitting the while upon the bottom of the
pool with the water up to my chin; but he would not be convinced. I
think the situation and the noise of the water-fall may have detracted
somewhat from the force of my argument. The Doctor said it was time to
get out, but having become warmed up on the subject, I deemed this a
mere evasion, and told him not to hurry; that I could convince him of
the correctness of my theory inside a half hour. He said he had no doubt
of it if I remained where I was for that length of time. He had, to some
extent, won my confidence; by his combined advice and threats he had
enabled me to realize an ideal, and at the same time be in the fashion,
and this not in the days of miracles. When I got out of that bath I felt
as I have heard men say they felt after a hard day’s work. I took my
blankets, laid on the ground and slept the sleep of godliness. Some of
those fellows whose consciences are demoralized had better try this
medicine instead of opium; it is at least a safer narcotic. One can go
to bed with better assurance that in a day or so a servant will not be
peering over the transom and finding a subject for the coroner. It is
more satisfactory, too, in such emergencies, in that it removes the
doubts of friends, if one has any, as well as of the public, as to “the
cause,” and entitles one to Christian burial.
Awakened the next day by that invaluable servant to us all shining in my
face, I reminded the Doctor of his promise concerning the trout pools.
So we were up betimes, had breakfast, the horses saddled, and with
creels capable of fourteen pounds each, and a stock of tackle sufficient
to start a store, we were off across the Grand, and over the hills for
the anticipated pleasure down stream, to a place where the Doctor was
sure no one had been. The horses of tourists and amateur fishermen
usually buck and raise the devil when starting out on such a jaunt, and
I was disappointed that the Doctor’s animal did not bow his back, go up,
and come down stiff-legged. I like to see a horse buck when somebody
else is on him, and I like to hear the man pray, if he is able, when he
feels the ground and glances round to see who is laughing at him. An
even-tempered gentleman like the Doctor would have afforded an enviable
example of Christian fortitude under such circumstances—his horse did
not buck, but led the way over the hills as quietly as a cow going out
to pasture.
We kept away from the river, traveled over high ground, and through an
upland of black sage brush that would rival the mesa between Pueblo and
Cañon. We followed an Indian trail, and followed it so long that I began
to inquire when we were to reach my much coveted destination. The Doctor
called my attention to a belt of timber some distance ahead, and said we
were “going up there.” I asked him if he expected that trout roosted
like sage hens, and informed him that if such had been his experience,
it had not been mine, and that I was going to find water. He told me to
do as I pleased, so I struck off toward the Grand—I like to be
independent sometimes. My horse went scrambling through the thick sage
brush, catching his toes in the roots and threatening to throw me over
his head every few minutes, until finally he stopped at the bank of the
river. It was fifty feet, at least, down to the water. I looked up
stream half a mile, then down to the belt of timber, and that same bank
presented itself at an aggravating angle of about ninety degrees. I
don’t like Indians, nor any of their belongings, as a general rule, but
I went cheerfully back to that trail, and quietly followed in the
Doctor’s wake. When I caught up, the Doctor said in a mild sort of way
that it was generally safe to keep on the trail. We walked our horses to
the timber and into it, the Doctor in the lead. We got about half way
round the mountain with a thousand or fifteen hundred feet of earth,
rocks and trees below us, and as many above, when the Doctor discovered
a “cut-off.” He led the way for a few rods, when a tree about three feet
in diameter barred further progress in that direction. We could not turn
round, nor could we go on, so we got off, and persuaded the horses to
climb perpendicularly fifty feet up to the trail. I was satisfied in my
mind that the Doctor was more than ever convinced of the safety of
keeping on the trail, but he did not say so to me.
We kept on to Williams’ Fork, and picketed our horses about half a mile
from the month. The Doctor then proposed that we “hoof it” over more
hills. I began to be disgusted, but was away from home and at the mercy
of this new-fangled fisherman. I didn’t know an Indian trail from a cow
path, and was as likely to get into one as the other. A trail, like the
road of a civilized brother, leads to some place, but a cow path,——. I
puffed on behind, up a high ridge of rocks, and as soon as I could get
the breath, told the Doctor I was obliged to him. We stood upon a Grand
Cañon in miniature. I want to describe it, but I can’t. After dreaming
over it awhile, the Doctor told me an incident in his experience
concerning the ledge where we had precarious foothold, looking down into
the seething waters several hundred feet below. The Doctor, Wm. H.
Beard, the artist, Bayard Taylor and a prospector and mining man came
over the trail a few years before on horseback, the Doctor in the lead,
then the prospector, and, finally, the artist and the great traveler
bringing up the rear. When the prospector passed the narrow ledge,
barely sufficient in width to allow a horseman to squeeze along, where
one has to hang, as it were, like a fly on a wall, he became conscious
that his saddle girths needed tightening. With the recklessness peculiar
to his craft, he slipped off his mule, and was engaged in the necessary
adjustment of his belly-band when Beard reached the narrow ledge and had
to stop. The first intimation the Doctor had of anything wrong came in
the way of an emphatic adjuration, that might have been heard half a
mile, for the blessed prospector to get out of that. The Doctor said he
was glad the artist was not given to profanity, though he said a great
deal to the miner that the Doctor could not understand; it did not sound
like English nor Dutch, nor any language the Doctor had ever heard, but
hurled at the head of the miner from a two-foot trail hanging over five
or six hundred feet of perpendicular granite, it seemed to have an
accelerating effect. The miner led his mule to more convenient quarters
without finishing his task, and the artist followed, not in silence,
however: he did not seem to be able to get through his business with
that miner for an hour.
Looking down into the chasm, I suggested that it did not seem
particularly “pokerish.” The Doctor said it was well enough to say so
when one was afoot, “but just try it horseback,” in that ambiguous sort
of way that always rouses one’s determination to undertake it. I did a
few days after, but in returning I led my horse.
Getting through with his anecdote, the Doctor pointed to another pile of
rocks half a mile further up the stream, and called my especial
attention to a pool beneath, which, even at that distance, placed me
under conviction that I could see trout therein, two feet long at least.
I started to get some of them. Arrived there, we shipped our tackle, and
I selected a spot under a pine-tree on one side of this pregnant pool,
while the Doctor took the other. I made a cast with an anxiety
indescribable; I knew I would have the first strike, and I did; the fly
caught in the luxuriant foliage overhead. I tried to coax the blasted
thing loose, but the more I prayed and persuaded the more obstinately
the line interlaced itself. If there is anything more exasperating than
to get a line fastened in a pine-tree, I want to know what it is; a
“picked-up dinner” on wash-day is bliss in comparison. Not being able to
untangle the line, I tried to pull down the tree; then I took a seat on
the bank and patiently renewed my leader. Meanwhile the Doctor was
threshing the peaceful waters industriously. I asked him if he had
caught anything; he said he was going to very soon, and threshed away.
When I got my line fixed I murmured, “but deliver us from evil,” and got
out of the reach of that pine, when I labored faithfully for full
fifteen minutes, till finally we scared up a trout about six inches
long. He came browsing around with his head half out of water and an
inquiring expression plainly visible in his bright eyes, then he
disappeared wiggling his tail in derision. We worked away in hope of
bringing the scaly monster once more to the surface. A second sight of
him would have been comforting; but his curiosity was evidently
satisfied. I asked the Doctor if this was one of the trout pools he had
been bragging about, and he said it was; he had always caught trout out
of that hole, and the stories he told me of the numbers he had lifted
out of that place “in the short space of an hour,” were marvelous. While
listening and trying to believe him I felt a sudden jerk at my rod. Up
to that moment I had entertained no special antipathy to stop-reels. But
with one leader unattainable in the profuse growth overhead, and another
serving as a sort of submarine union-jack to an unknown denizen of the
pool, with no prospect of satisfaction, I felt—not like Patience. The
trout must have been a monster, of course, or he never would have
snapped that gut with so little ceremony. I shall not soon forget the
sensation; it was a single and sudden blow without pause for a second
pull, as though his troutship in passing that way had snapped up that
fly and gone on about his business or pleasure, without realizing in the
remotest degree that he had done anything more than take a midge
floating on the surface of his habitation. To avoid a repetition of the
calamity, I cheerfully tied the check to a crossbar of the reel, looped
on another leader, and resumed, with an angler’s vow registered in
heaven, which I have religiously kept.
With that commendable resignation born of experience, I worked that pool
for half an hour, gave up in disgust and started down stream—the Doctor
followed in humiliation. We whipped every foot of the way down through
the cañon to our horses, but not a fin rewarded our efforts. The
forenoon was gone; I felt sorry for the Doctor; my sympathies went out
to him as they always do for the under dog in the fight. I had no heart
to express anything but unbounded satisfaction for the morning’s
enjoyment. But I believe he thinks to this day I was lying.
[Illustration]