From under the shelter of a friendly pine I look out upon a long stretch
of water, two miles and more, to a sloping beach of a few yards in
width, and then a belt of young trees growing back to a rugged mountain
gorge. The bright green of the growth contrasts with the time-stained
hues of the great piles of rock, and these grow more wild as the eye
follows up the defile. Then a white patch, the length of a man’s arm and
the breadth of a hand, glistens in the rays of the morning sun, here
inaudible, but there a roaring waterfall a hundred feet high.
The gorge widens and drifts away to the right and left, but reaching
high, with irregular outlines traced against the blue sky; the tints of
brown and gray and green intermingle in bountiful confusion, but never
wearisome; then, seemingly, blocking up the gorge in huge and
awe-inspiring massiveness, a dome-shaped mountain, with miles of base
and height far reaching above the growth of vegetation; just below its
summit a bed of snow, shaped like a dove, defying the hot rays of an
August sun, sparkles like a jewel on the mountain’s brow. Silent and
grand, it o’ertops the beautiful lake, mirrors its rugged outlines upon
the calm surface, and faintly tints the clear waters with the colors of
its robes. To the right and left the nearer and lower-lying pine-covered
hills reach round and down to the water’s edge.
And the lake, a gem in the mountain fastness, how calm it is! There is
no melody in the pines this morning, their sighing is hushed, and the
lake is still, its smooth surface only dotted here and there with the
widening rings made by the leaping trout. How deep it is no man knows;
how cruel it has been is the subject of many a story within the
experience of the whites about its shores, and legends not a few among
the red men. Seductive it is in its silent beauty, and treacherous as
grand. Cold and relentless as fate, “it never surrenders its dead.” The
Ute cannot be induced to approach it, and mentions its name with a
shudder, while ye gentle angler commits his frail bark to its bosom with
commendable prudence. There is no telling when a storm may come; the
clouds are not always the harbingers of a gale; it may come when the sky
is clearest, and the awkward skiffs that prevail hereabout are not the
safest, even under skilful hands.
But, as the sun puts behind him the early morning hours, the dark tints
of the smooth waters change, and a mile or more away a ray of silver
flashes across the lake; its outer line moves my way, and as the tiny
waves reach my shore, the breeze that moved them brings the sound of the
waterfall. I listen to the melody it sings, always mellowed in its
highest notes by the distance, and then dying gradually away as if
sighing the requiem of the lost lying buried here, or as fade the last
moments of a weird dream.
And, while I am dreaming, a friend of mine, to whom this ripple is a
never-failing sign, pulls out into the lake. I mark the long, steady
stroke, and wonder how it is that one so long out of practice can
feather his oars so well, when he catches sight of me, idling away the
time, and stops. But I wave him on, and watch him as he makes for a
point on the western shore that we both know; where the light tint of
the water changes suddenly to a hue almost black; where the depth on one
side the boat is six feet and on the other may be six hundred; where the
trout are large, and where we have had many a good fight. In a few
minutes he has business on his hands. I can see his rod, against the
dark background of the adjacent pines, bend and spring back, and bend
again, and then the flash of silvery spray as the stricken trout breaks
the surface in his vain effort to free his mouth from the cruel barb.
But a few moments, and the mastery is awarded to human skill, and I see
my friend hold up his capture for my delectation. In his enthusiasm he
does not stop to consider that I have to take a great deal for granted,
that I can at best see only a minute something glisten in his grasp; but
he takes off his hat, waves it over his head, and I conclude he has a
pounder at least. It turned out to be a little short of double that.
As I lazily wave a response of appreciation my boot-heel comes in
contact with a small stone. Something in its shape leads me to pick it
up; I find it scarred, and know enough to understand that it is a
scratched stone from the till. And so my eyes wander from this product
of nature’s great lapidary over to the waterfall and the mountain gorge,
which had been his workshop, how many thousand years ago, who can tell?
The beautiful waterfall is all that remains of him, but his handiwork is
abundant.
Stretching along the east shore lies a great lateral moraine, even now
twenty, and, in places, thirty feet high, made of great rocks, thousands
of tons in weight, down to mere grains of sand. How many generations of
pines have found precarious foothold there and died, may be conjectured
only. But a new growth is springing up, as if it were the pleasure of
the present to keep green the grand monument of the dead glacier.
On the narrow beach, with its background of new growth, smolder the
dying embers of a camp-fire. My eyes follow the thin column of blue
smoke that rises and wreathes itself among the tree-tops, and floats
away to where desecration has stepped in. The suggestion of primitive
life is dispelled by the ridge pole of a mean house obtruding itself
above a depression in the moraine, and I know that this is but the best
of a number of slab shanties. They are hidden from my sight, but I
recognize them as one does a boil.
The first step into the wilderness of life is filled with bright
anticipations, and lack of restraint makes one’s happiness as limitless
as the great unknown into which one is traveling; the second step is
monotonous, and one sighs for the promises of the end. The camp-fire,
emblematical of the first step, is passing away; the slab shanty, the
sordid, hard existence that makes life a burden, is the second step, and
one longs for the third, that may, if nature must feel the weight of our
sacrilegious hands, give us the ashler, graceful roofs, broad porches,
and the comforts of a new life. Pioneers are lauded for “subduing the
wilderness,” but deliver me from witnessing the progress of subjugation.
I want to be the first, or, that being impossible, the next best thing
to do is to wait till the ruin is complete. One can then imagine what
the surroundings were; but in the middle period no room is left for
imagination,—one can neither wonder what it was or will be, and the
only thing left is to “unpack my heart with words, and fall a cursing
like a very drab.”
While my mental anathemas and I are holding high carnival, I am
conscious of the presence of something besides the figures of my
imagination. Looking around, I discover a dark-complexioned woman, with
hair black as night, when cats most do congregate; eyes like jet, square
face, all one color—parchment; a mouth that shuts like a steel-trap.
Her hair brushed smoothly back, and gathered behind in a great coil, is
beautiful; that is all the beauty I see, except, perhaps, a dainty
buttoned boot with a high instep. In one hand she holds the end of a
small chain, at the other end of which is—yes, a monkey! This
predecessor of the missing link looked at me in a sort of dreamily
sympathetic way, and I at him. Our commiseration was mutual, and I felt
inclined to shake hands with him. His owner was a French woman, of
course; I do not think a woman of any other nation, except as a matter
of business, would go wandering round among the Rocky Mountains with a
monkey. If she had had a hand-organ strapped to her back, I could have
forgiven her, even if grinding out “Days of Absence.” About the time I
had “doffed my old felt,” we were joined by the other member of the
family; he looked like an Egyptian three thousand or more years old. Not
understanding French, I stepped into my boat and joined my friend.
I have been making an effort to secure for you a picture of the lake,
and though the photographer has been about here frequently, my success
has been indifferent. Every view worth having is sure to have a
foreground of one or more of the lords of creation, “bearded like the
pard,” with an arsenal strapped around their bodies, and an expression
beaming out from under their broad-brimmed hats that would drive an
ordinary man clear into the ground in sheer humiliation. Think of these
addle-pated asses posing for exhibition amid scenes that should awaken
naught but wonder and admiration, blended with that reverence one must
feel in the presence of the Father’s works, and have charity if you can.
The very boulders against which they lean are satires that will endure
the tread of the centuries long after this world shall have forgotten
that such fellows or their seed had ever incumbered the earth.
[Illustration]
“CAMPING WITH LADIES” AND—THE BABY.
Before the little narrow gauge engines of the Denver, South Park and
Pacific with their trains of baby cars went thundering up through the
cañons, reaching out for Leadville, the trouting in the Platte was
prime. Following the sinuous track, first on one side of the river, then
on the other, you can look out to the right and see your engine going
west while your car is going east, then your engine starts east or north
and you go south or west. Now you crane your neck to catch the top of
some overhanging cliffs a thousand feet high, and are suddenly jerked
around a curve into a little glade of a dozen acres with a little brook
running through it; then you are as quickly yanked into another cañon.
If one were drunk no doubt, the road would be straight. But thirty-five
or forty miles from Denver the cañon grows familiar. Buffalo Creek comes
tumbling out from the south, and presently the brakeman puts his head in
at the door and shouts: “Pine Grove!” This is the Pine Grove known to
travelers who go by rail, but the Pine Grove of twenty odd years ago was
six miles away from the river, and the railroad Pine Grove was Brown and
Stuart’s ranche, the owners of which drove a thrifty traffic in hay.
In August, 1868, I made acquaintance first with the pools and riffles in
the vicinity of the old Brown and Stuart’s ranche. I clambered up and
down the cañon for five or six miles east and west. The rush and the
roar of the crystal waters made glorious music, and an hour’s fishing
would send me laden back to camp. But for all the grand surroundings,
the fresh air, the wild flowers and the trout, there was weariness of
heart for her and me who made our camp on the margin of the then
beautiful stream. There had a little while before crept over our
threshold a shadow we all dread, and which had gone out again leaving a
wound that would not heal.
But later on, when the cloud with the silver lining had turned a little
of its brighter side our way, there came out to us one of your down-east
girls, to whom the “Great American Desert” was a revelation, and these
grand old mountains an epic. It was the season for camping, and she was
stricken with the mania at once. She approached the subject
tenderfootedly, but being assured that nothing was easier, nothing
better for city folks, ecstacy was the consequence. Then there suddenly
arose an insurmountable barrier.
“What will you do with the Governor?”
“Take him along, of course.”
“What! baby sleep in a tent? Be eaten by mosquitoes, rained on and
bitten by snakes?”
The prospect was appalling; but then I assured her that fresh air never
hurt babies; that mosquitoes were unknown, in August, at least; that
rain was such a rarity that I was compelled to go to the creek for
moisture, and as for snakes, the rattlers, at least, they never got
beyond the foot hills; the little gart—a-hem—striped snakes were
pleasant to have around, and were cleaner than flies. Besides it was
confidently anticipated that baby was about to distinguish himself, and
there was no panacea so efficacious for teething babies as the mountain
air. That settled it.
The first thing to be looked after was the mess kit—known among the
cow-boys as the “chuck box.” Mine would fit neatly into the tail end of
a wagon; was about two feet and a half from top to bottom, and about
twelve inches deep; had racks for cups, saucers, plates, knives and
forks, and plenty of room for two weeks’ supplies of flour and other
necessaries. When we wanted to lunch it was an easy matter to drop the
tail gate of the wagon, let down the side of the mess kit, and we had a
good table; the whole thing was as handy as a pocket in a shirt, and its
capacity marvelous. An ordinary lumber wagon with spring seats, an A
tent, 7 × 7, for the women folks, plenty of rubber ponchos, a change of
clothing, wool, of course, all round. All together making an abundance
for comfort, and a light load with which the horses could trot along and
not half try.
About the hour that Hamlet’s father was wont to render himself up to
“sulphurous and tormenting flames,” we were astir, and before the sun
was up we were away. Fifteen miles to the foot hills and Turkey Creek
cañon. Towards noon the sun beats down hotly on the plains, and I always
make it a point to get to the cañon by ten o’clock at the outside. And
this morning we passed Harriman’s before ten, and from our shelf on the
mountain side we could look out east till plains and sky came together.
Down below us, on the left, six or eight hundred feet, the little creek
looked about as wide as one’s finger. The road is fairly wide enough for
the wagon, with here and there a “turn out,” to accommodate passing
teams. To the right a perpendicular wall running up a hundred feet; to
the left—well, our visitor said she was tired of riding and would like
to walk a little; the road was smooth as a floor, and the grade easy. I
suggested that horses rarely cut up capers in such places, but the
effect of a wrecked wagon and the remains of a mule lodged against a
granite boulder half way down the mountain was not to be overcome by any
assurance of mine; and walk she did; so did the baby’s mother and maid,
taking turns in carrying his majesty for a couple of miles. Not having
any hills to climb the inconvenience is not so great; but, take a
twenty-five pound youngster in your arms, at an elevation of, say nine
thousand feet, and undertake to walk up hill; a half mile seems twenty,
and at the end of three-quarters you want to lie down, wondering if your
lungs are larger than the universe. But like everything else in this
life, it becomes easy when you get used to it.
Our first objective point on this trip was Reed’s Mill, about thirty
miles from home. No trout, but wild raspberries, now in their prime. Did
you ever eat any? If not, the first one you put on your tongue will make
you “wish your throat a mile long and every inch a palate,” with
accessible untold acres of berries. There is about them a tenderness and
luscious delicacy, a fragrance and even beauty, that makes a cultivated
brother look and taste in comparison like a combination of mucilage and
sawdust. The “Shepherd” thought when Tom Moore was penning his Loves of
the Angels, that he “fed upon calf foot jeelies, stewed prunes, the dish
they ca’ curry, and oysters.” But I don’t believe it. Tom was in America
once, and I believe he strayed this way, and was inspired by mountain
raspberries, with cream so thick “a spider might crawl on’t.” I do not
believe Tom was so much of an animal as Hogg, by his wit, would make
him.
But the fruit season is brief, and three or four days in the berry patch
set me yearning for running waters, and the delicate salmon-colored
fins. So we broke camp and turned into the road for Pine Grove and the
Platte. By five o’clock we were fixed to stay, with plenty of pine knots
for the camp fire and quaking asp to cook with, our only neighbors a
couple of “English cousins,” owners of the ranche, from whom we could
get cream, and butter and milk, and who helped make our evenings
“jolly.”
Everything being in trim for the proper conducting of household matters,
I received orders to “catch a mess for supper.” Right in front of our
tent, two rods away, a gravelly bar reached from the bank to the water,
and the opposite side, fifty feet about, the river ran deep and rapidly.
I had never failed securing a trophy from that swirl, and I sent a gray
hackle on its mission as near the opposite willows, and as deftly as my
skill would permit. I “struck it rich” the first cast; the fraud had
barely touched the water before I saw the jaws of a beautiful trout
close upon it, and felt his strength at the same instant. Since last
summer’s experience I have wished more than once that I had been on that
occasion the owner of a split bamboo. As it was, the sport resolved
itself into a mere trial of strength between tackle and fish. In three
seconds he was ignominiously snaked out on the beach, a three-pound
trout, the largest I have ever caught, and enough for supper.
The whole family had “swarmed up” the bank, as Dickens would say, to
enjoy my discomfiture, but the contemplated taunts were never given
breath. I stood in my tracks and landed three more, and, will heart of
man believe it? they complained because the three last were not as large
as the first. But my merit was established; when I came home empty
handed, which was hard to do, any explanation of mine was “confirmation,
strong as proof of holy writ,” that the trout would not rise for
anything. So much for reputation! I wonder how many fellows there are in
the world who enjoy it who are no more deserving than I?
One morning I started down the stream; it was my birthday, and though
nothing had been said about that momentous epoch in my history, I felt
it incumbent upon me to achieve something out of the ordinary. I did. I
fell off a log, head first, into a hole four feet deep. Cold? well, yes!
I thought I had struck a moderate sized Arctic winter. But there was no
one “there to see,” and I uttered my benison on the man who invented the
sun, as I crawled out to the warmth of our daily servant and friend. My
creel was not empty and I saved everything, even my temper. When I got
back to camp, she who had taken “the long path with me” suggested that I
was wet, that an immediate change of garments was imperative. But,
having an exasperating disposition to stubbornness, I insisted that
every thread must dry where it was, and it did, without even a sneeze,
to punish me for not taking a woman’s advice. I had been there before.
It was determined that baby and I should tend camp for half an hour or
so that afternoon, while the three natural guardians wandered off to the
adjacent hillside for wild flowers wherewith to deck the tea-table. This
was no new business to us. The young man with a pillow at his back,
seated in the middle of a blanket rubbing his face with a teaspoon; I
lying prone three feet away with my toes beating an occasional tattoo on
the soft sward, my chin in my hands and brier-root between my teeth,
watching him. There was a bright light in his eyes, and his cheeks were
rosy, soft as velvet, yet firm and cool. What is there like the touch of
a baby’s cheek pressed against your own! You must turn and kiss it, just
as you did its mother’s the first time you had a right to. But is there
anything more ridiculous in life than to see a baby attempt to put a
spoon into his mouth before he has got the knack of it? See him hit
himself in the eye with it, pretty much as a drunken man would knock a
fly off his nose; smear it down his face, with his mouth wide open and
turned up like a young robin’s, but it misses the place on the way down;
he takes it with both chubby fists, looks at it with dignified surprise,
as though for the first time aware of its presence, lets go one hand,
whacks the spoon against his ear and drags it across his cheek with the
same result. But persistence is characteristic of this baby, a quiet
determination that has something appalling about it. If there were any
raspberry jam on that spoon his face would look worse than a railroad
map of the State of New York. Finally, and as it would seem, after all,
more by accident than design, the spoon reaches the right place; he
twists it round to the distortion of his rosebud mouth; then he looks at
me, sees me laughing; the fun seems to dawn upon him; he takes the spoon
out of his mouth, pounds the blanket with it, and smiles back at me, and
the smile resolves itself into a well-defined laugh.
The sun has just disappeared behind the range, but there is a mellow ray
of golden light that lingers about the baby’s head that makes me
think—think of the one so like him, and from the base of the hill, with
her hands full of wild flowers, the tallest of the three starts toward
me, and I remember only the sunshine of the long path.
But I forgot to tell you about my camp stove: it is a piece of sheet
iron, eighteen inches square, with a hole in the centre, eight inches in
diameter; set upon four stones, it makes a first-class stove.
[Illustration]