The stage line which ran from Williams to Bear Tooth (one of the most
authentic then to be found in all the West) possessed at least one
genuine Concord coach, so faded, so saddened, so cracked, and so
splintered that its passengers entered it under protest, and alighted
from it with thanksgiving, and yet it must have been built by honorable
men, for in 190- it still made the run of one hundred and twenty miles
twice each week without loss of wheel or even so much as moulting a scrap
of paint.
And yet, whatever it may have been in its youth, it was in its age no
longer a gay dash of color in the landscape. On the contrary, it fitted
into the dust-brown and sage-green plain as defensively as a beetle in a
dusty path. Nevertheless, it was an indispensable part of a very moving
picture as it crept, creaking and groaning (or it may be it was the
suffering passenger creaking and groaning), along the hillside.
After leaving the Grande River the road winds up a pretty high divide
before plunging down into Ute Park, as they call all that region lying
between the Continental Range on the east and the Bear Tooth plateau on
the west. It was a big spread of land, and very far from an Eastern man's
conception of a park. From Dome Peak it seems a plain; but, in fact, when
clouds shut off the high summits to the west, this "valley" becomes a
veritable mountain land, a tumbled, lonely country, over which an
occasional horseman crawls, a minute but persistent insect. It is, to be
exact, a succession of ridges and ravines, sculptured (in some far-off,
post-glacial time) by floods of water, covered now, rather sparsely, with
pinons, cedars, and aspens, a dry, forbidding, but majestic landscape.
In late August the hills become iridescent, opaline with the translucent
yellow of the aspen, the coral and crimson of the fire-weed, the
blood-red of huckleberry beds, and the royal purple of the asters, while
flowing round all, as solvent and neutral setting, lies the gray-green of
the ever-present and ever-enduring sage-brush. On the loftier heights
these colors are arranged in most intricate and cunning patterns, with
nothing hard, nothing flaring in the prospect. All is harmonious and
restful. It is, moreover, silent, silent as a dream world, and so flooded
with light that the senses ache with the stress of it.
Through this gorgeous land of mist, of stillness, and of death, a few
years ago a pale young man (seated beside the driver) rode one summer day
in a voiceless rapture which made Bill McCoy weary.
"If you'd had as much of this as I have you'd talk of something else," he
growled, after a half dozen attempts at conversation. Bill wasn't much to
look at, but he was a good driver and the stranger respected him for it.
Eventually this simple-minded horseman became curious about the slim
young fellow sitting beside him.
"What you doing out here, anyhow--fishing or just rebuilding a lung?"
"Rebuilding two lungs," answered the tourist.
"Well, this climate will just about put lungs into a coffee-can,"
retorted Bill, with official loyalty to his country.
To his discerning eye "the tourist" now became "a lunger." "Where do you
live when you're to home?"
"Connecticut."
"I knew it."
"How did you know it?" The youth seemed really interested to know.
"I drove another fellow up here last fall that dealt out the same kind of
brogue you do."