apparel. I came to Colorado now nearly three months ago, with a small
carpet-bag containing clothes, none of them new; and these, by
legitimate wear, the depredations of calves, and the necessity of
tearing some of them up for dish-cloths, are reduced to a single
change! I have a solitary pocket handkerchief and one pair of
stockings, such a mass of darns that hardly a trace of the original
wool remains. Owing to my inability to get money in Denver I am almost
without shoes, have nothing but a pair of slippers and some "arctics."
For outer garments--well, I have a trained black silk dress, with a
black silk polonaise! and nothing else but my old flannel riding suit,
which is quite threadbare, and requires such frequent mending that I am
sometimes obliged to "dress" for supper, and patch and darn it during
the evening. You will laugh, but it is singular that one can face the
bitter winds with the mercury at zero and below it, in exactly the same
clothing which I wore in the tropics! It is only the extreme dryness
of the air which renders it possible to live in such clothing. We have
arranged the work better. Mr. Buchan was doing too much, and it was
hard for him, as he is very delicate. You will wonder how three people
here in the wilderness can have much to do. There are the horses which
we keep in the corral to feed on sheaf oats and take to water twice a
day, the fowls and dogs to feed, the cow to milk, the bread to make,
and to keep a general knowledge of the whereabouts of the stock in the
event of a severe snow-storm coming on. Then there is all the wood to
cut, as there is no wood pile, and we burn a great deal, and besides
the cooking, washing, and mending, which each one does, the men must
hunt and fish for their living. Then two sick cows have had to be
attended to.
We were with one when it died yesterday. It suffered terribly, and
looked at us with the pathetically pleading eyes of a creature "made
subject to vanity." The disposal of its carcass was a difficulty. The
wagon horses were in Denver, and when we tried to get the others to
pull the dead beast away, they only kicked and plunged, so we managed
to get it outside the shed, and according to Mr. Kavan's prediction, a
pack of wolves came down, and before daylight nothing was left but the
bones. They were so close to the cabin that their noise was most
disturbing, and on looking out several times I could see them all in a
heap wrangling and tumbling over each other. They are much larger than
the prairie wolf, but equally cowardly, I believe. This morning was
black with clouds, and a snowstorm was threatened, and about 700 cattle
and a number of horses came in long files from the valleys and canyons
where they maraud, their instinct teaching them to seek the open and
the protection of man.
I was alone in the cabin this afternoon when Mr. Nugent, whom we
believed to be on the Snowy Range, walked in very pale and haggard
looking, and coughing severely. He offered to show me the trail up one
of the grandest of the canyons, and I could not refuse to go. The Fall
River has had its source completely altered by the operations of the
beavers. Their engineering skill is wonderful. In one place they have
made a lake by damming up the stream; in another their works have
created an island, and they have made several falls. Their
storehouses, of course, are carefully concealed. By this time they are
about full for the winter. We saw quantities of young cotton-wood and
aspen trees, with stems about as thick as my arm, lying where these
industrious creatures have felled them ready for their use. They
always work at night and in concert. Their long, sharp teeth are used
for gnawing down the trees, but their mason-work is done entirely with
their flat, trowel-like tails. In its natural state the fur is very
durable, and is as full of long black hairs as that of the sable, but
as sold, all these hairs have been plucked out of it.
The canyon was glorious, ah! glorious beyond any other, but it was a
dismal and depressing ride. The dead past buried its dead.
Not an allusion was made to the conversation previously. "Jim's"
manner was courteous, but freezing, and when I left home on my return
he said he hardly thought he should be back from the Snowy Range before
I left. Essentially an actor, was he, I wonder, posing on the previous
day in the attitude of desperate remorse, to impose on my credulity or
frighten me; or was it a genuine and unpremeditated outburst of
passionate regret for the life which he had thrown away? I cannot
tell, but I think it was the last. As I cautiously rode back, the
sunset glories were reddening the mountain tops, and the park lay in
violet gloom. It was wonderfully magnificent, but oh, so solemn, so
lonely! I rode a very large, well-bred mare, with three shoes loose
and one off, and she fell with me twice and was very clumsy in crossing
the Thompson, which was partly ice and partly a deep ford, but when we
reached comparatively level grassy ground I had a gallop of nearly two
miles which I enjoyed thoroughly, her great swinging stride being so
easy and exhilarating after Birdie's short action.
Friday.
This is a piteous day, quite black, freezing hard, and with a fierce
north-east wind. The absence of sunshine here, where it is nearly
perpetual, has a very depressing effect, and all the scenery appears in
its grimness of black and gray. We have lost three horses, including
Birdie, and have nothing to entice them with, and not an animal to go
and drive them in with. I put my great mare in the corral myself, and
Mr. Kavan put his in afterwards and secured the bars, but the wolves
were holding a carnival again last night, and we think that the horses
were scared and stampeded, as otherwise they would not have leaped the
fence. The men are losing their whole day in looking for them. On
their return they said that they had seen Mr. Nugent returning to his
cabin by the other side and the lower ford of the Thompson, and that he
had "an awfully ugly fit on him," so that they were glad that he did
not come near us. The evening is setting in sublime in its blackness.
Late in the afternoon I caught a horse which was snuffing at the sheaf
oats, and had a splendid gallop on the Longmount trail with the two
great hunting dogs. In returning, in the grimness of the coming storm,
I had that view of the park which I saw first in the glories of an
autumn sunset. Life was all dead; the dragon-flies no longer darted in
the sunshine, the cotton-woods had shed their last amber leaves, the
crimson trailers of the wild vines were bare, the stream itself had
ceased its tinkle and was numb in fetters of ice, a few withered flower
stalks only told of the brief bright glory of the summer. The park
never had looked so utterly walled in; it was fearful in its
loneliness, the ghastliest of white peaks lay sharply outlined against
the black snow clouds, the bright river was ice bound, the pines were
all black, the world was absolutely shut out. How can you expect me to
write letters from such a place, from a life "in which nothing
happens"? It really is strange that neither Evans nor Edwards come
back. The young men are grumbling, for they were asked to stay here
for five days, and they have been here five weeks, and they are anxious
to be away camping out for the hunting, on which they depend. There
are two calves dying, and we don't know what to do for them; and if a
very severe snow-storm comes on, we can't bring in and feed eight
hundred head of cattle.
Saturday.
The snow began to fall early this morning, and as it is unaccompanied
by wind we have the novel spectacle of a smooth white world; still it
does not look like anything serious. We have been gradually growing
later at night and later in the morning. To-day we did not breakfast
till ten. We have been becoming so disgusted with the pickled pork,
that we were glad to find it just at an end yesterday, even though we
were left without meat for which in this climate the system craves.
You can fancy my surprise, on going into the kitchen, to find a dish of
smoking steaks of venison on the table. We ate like famished people,
and enjoyed our meal thoroughly. Just before I came the young men had
shot an elk, which they intended to sell in Denver, and the grand
carcass, with great branching antlers, hung outside the shed. Often
while vainly trying to swallow some pickled pork I had looked across to
the tantalizing animal, but it was not to be thought of. However, this
morning, as the young men felt the pinch of hunger even more than I
did, and the prospects of packing it to Denver became worse, they
decided on cutting into one side, so we shall luxuriate in venison
while it lasts. We think that Edwards will surely be up to-night, but
unless he brings supplies our case is looking serious. The flour is
running low, there is only coffee for one week, and I have only a
scanty three ounces of tea left. The baking powder is nearly at an
end. We have agreed to economize by breakfasting very late, and having
two meals a day instead of three. The young men went out hunting as
usual, and I went out and found Birdie, and on her brought in four
other horses, but the snow balled so badly that I went out and walked
across the river on a very passable ice bridge, and got some new views
of the unique grandeur of this place.
Our evenings are social and pleasant. We finish supper about eight,
and make up a huge fire. The men smoke while I write to you. Then we
draw near the fire and I take my endless mending, and we talk or read
aloud. Both are very intelligent, and Mr. Buchan has very extended
information and a good deal of insight into character. Of course our
circumstances, the likelihood of release, the prospects of snow
blocking us in and of our supplies holding out, the sick calves,
"Jim's" mood, the possible intentions of a man whose footprints we have
found and traced for three miles, are all topics that often recur, and
few of which can be worn threadbare.
Letter XV
A whisky slave--The pleasures of monotony--The mountain lion--"Another
mouth to feed"--A tiresome boy--An outcast--Thanksgiving Day--The
newcomer--A literary humbug--Milking a dry cow--Trout-fishing--A
snow-storm--A desperado's den.
ESTES PARK, Sunday.
A trapper passing last night brought us the news that Mr. Nugent is
ill; so, after washing up the things after our late breakfast, I rode
to his cabin, but I met him in the gulch coming down to see us. He
said he had caught cold on the Range, and was suffering from an old
arrow wound in the lung. We had a long conversation without adverting
to the former one, and he told me some of the present circumstances of
his ruined life. It is piteous that a man like him, in the prime of
life, should be destitute of home and love, and live a life of darkness
in a den with no companions but guilty memories, and a dog which many
people think is the nobler animal of the two. I urged him to give up
the whisky which at present is his ruin, and his answer had the ring of
a sad truth in it: "I cannot, it binds me hand and foot--I cannot give
up the only pleasure I have." His ideas of right are the queerest
possible. He says that he believes in God, but what he knows or
believes of God's law I know not. To resent insult with your revolver,
to revenge yourself on those who have injured you, to be true to a
comrade and share your last crust with him, to be chivalrous to good
women, to be generous and hospitable, and at the last to die
game--these are the articles of his creed, and I suppose they are
received by men of his stamp. He hates Evans with a bitter hatred, and
Evans returns it, having undergone much provocation from Jim in his
moods of lawlessness and violence, and being not a little envious of
the fascination which his manners and conversation have for the
strangers who come up here.
On returning down the gulch the view was grander than I have ever seen
it, the gulch in dark shadow, the park below lying in intense sunlight,
with all the majestic canyons which sweep down upon it in depths of
infinite blue gloom, and above, the pearly peaks, dazzling in purity
and glorious in form, cleft the turquoise blue of the sky. How shall I
ever leave this "land which is very far off"? How CAN I ever leave it?
is the real question. We are going on the principle, "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die," and the stores are melting away. The two
meals are not an economical plan, for we are so much more hungry that
we eat more than when we had three. We had a good deal of sacred music
to-day, to make it as like Sunday as possible. The "faint melancholy"
of this winter loneliness is very fascinating.
How glorious the amber fires of the winter dawns are, and how
gloriously to-night the crimson clouds descended just to the mountain
tops and were reflected on the pure surface of the snow!
The door of this room looks due north, and as I write the Pole Star
blazes, and a cold crescent moon hangs over the ghastliness of Long's
Peak.
ESTES PARK, COLORADO, November.
We have lost count of time, and can only agree on the fact that the
date is somewhere near the end of November. Our life has settled down
into serenity, and our singular and enforced partnership is very
pleasant. We might be three men living together, but for the unvarying
courtesy and consideration which they show to me. Our work goes on
like clockwork; the only difficulty which ever arises is that the men
do not like me to do anything that they think hard or unsuitable, such
as saddling a horse or bringing in water. The days go very fast; it
was 3:30 today before I knew that it was 1. It is a calm life without
worries. The men are so easy to live with; they never fuss, or
grumble, or sigh, or make a trouble of anything. It would amuse you to
come into our wretched little kitchen before our disgracefully late
breakfast, and find Mr. Kavan busy at the stove frying venison, myself
washing the supper dishes, and Mr. Buchan drying them, or both the men
busy at the stove while I sweep the floor. Our food is a great object
of interest to us, and we are ravenously hungry now that we have only
two meals a day. About sundown each goes forth to his "chores"--Mr. K.
to chop wood, Mr. B. to haul water, I to wash the milk pans and water
the horses. On Saturday the men shot a deer, and on going for it
to-day they found nothing but the hind legs, and following a track
which they expected would lead them to a beast's hole, they came quite
carelessly upon a large mountain lion, which, however, took itself out
of their reach before they were sufficiently recovered from their
surprise to fire at it. These lions, which are really a species of
puma, are bloodthirsty as well as cowardly. Lately one got into a
sheepfold in the canyon of the St. Vrain, and killed thirty sheep,
sucking the blood from their throats.
November ?
This has been a day of minor events, as well as a busy one. I was so
busy that I never sat down from 10:30 till 1:30. I had washed my one
change of raiment, and though I never iron my clothes, I like to bleach
them till they are as white as snow, and they were whitening on the
line when some furious gusts came down from Long's Peak, against which
I could not stand, and when I did get out all my clothes were blown
into strips from an inch to four inches in width, literally destroyed!
One learns how very little is necessary either for comfort or
happiness. I made a four-pound spiced ginger cake, baked some bread,
mended my riding dress, cleaned up generally, wrote some letters with
the hope that some day they might be posted and took a magnificent
walk, reaching the cabin again in the melancholy glory which now
immediately precedes the darkness.
We were all busy getting our supper ready when the dogs began to bark
furiously, and we heard the noise of horses. "Evans at last!" we
exclaimed, but we were wrong. Mr. Kavan went out, and returned saying
that it was a young man who had come up with Evans's wagon and team,
and that the wagon had gone over into a gulch seven miles from here.
Mr. Kavan looked very grave. "It's another mouth to feed," he said.
They asked no questions, and brought the lad in, a slangy, assured
fellow of twenty, who, having fallen into delicate health at a
theological college, had been sent up here by Evans to work for his
board. The men were too courteous to ask him what he was doing up
here, but I boldly asked him where he lived, and to our dismay he
replied, "I've come to live here." We discussed the food question
gravely, as it presented a real difficulty. We put him into a
bed-closet opening from the kitchen, and decided to see what he was fit
for before giving him work. We were very much amazed, in truth, at his
coming here. He is evidently a shallow, arrogant youth.
We have decided that to-day is November 26th; to-morrow is Thanksgiving
Day, and we are planning a feast, though Mr. K. said to me again this
morning, with a doleful face, "You see there's another mouth to feed."
This "mouth" has come up to try the panacea of manual labor, but he is
town bred, and I see that he will do nothing. He is writing poetry,
and while I was busy to-day began to read it aloud to me, asking for my
criticism. He is just at the age when everything literary has a
fascination, and every literary person is a hero, specially Dr.
Holland. Last night was fearful from the lifting of the cabin and the
breaking of the mud from the roof. We sat with fine gravel driving in
our faces, and this morning I carried four shovelfuls of mud out of my
room. After breakfast, Mr. Kavan, Mr. Lyman, and I, with the two wagon
horses, rode the seven miles to the scene of yesterday's disaster in a
perfect gale of wind. I felt like a servant going out for a day's
"pleasuring," hurrying "through my dishes," and leaving my room in
disorder. The wagon lay half-way down the side of a ravine, kept from
destruction by having caught on some trees.
It was too cold to hang about while the men hauled it up and fixed it,
so I went slowly back, encountering Mr. Nugent in a most bitter
mood--almost in an "ugly fit"--hating everybody, and contrasting his
own generosity and reckless kindness with the selfishness and
carefully-weighed kindnesses of others. People do give him credit for
having "as kind a heart as ever beat." Lately a child in the other
cabin was taken ill, and though there were idle men and horses at hand,
it was only the "desperado" who rode sixty miles in "the shortest time
ever made" to bring the doctor. While we were talking he was sitting
on a stone outside his den mending a saddle, shins, bones, and skulls
lying about him, "Ring" watching him with jealous and idolatrous
affection, the wind lifting his thin curls from as grand a head as was
ever modeled--a ruin of a man. Yet the sun which shines "on the evil
and the good" was lighting up the gold of his hair. May our Father
which is in heaven yet show mercy to His outcast child!
Mr. Kavan soon overtook me, and we had an exciting race of two miles,
getting home just before the wind fell and the snow began.
Thanksgiving Day. The thing dreaded has come at last, a snow-storm,
with a north-east wind. It ceased about midnight, but not till it had
covered my bed. Then the mercury fell below zero, and everything
froze. I melted a tin of water for washing by the fire, but it was
hard frozen before I could use it. My hair, which was thoroughly wet
with the thawed snow of yesterday, is hard frozen in plaits. The milk
and treacle are like rock, the eggs have to be kept on the coolest part
of the stove to keep them fluid. Two calves in the shed were frozen to
death. Half our floor is deep in snow, and it is so cold that we
cannot open the door to shovel it out. The snow began again at eight
this morning, very fine and hard. It blows in through the chinks and
dusts this letter while I write. Mr. Kavan keeps my ink bottle close
to the fire, and hands it to me every time that I need to dip my pen.
We have a huge fire, but cannot raise the temperature above 20 degrees.
Ever since I returned the lake has been hard enough to bear a wagon,
but to-day it is difficult to keep the water hole open by the constant
use of the axe. The snow may either melt or block us in. Our only
anxiety is about the supplies. We have tea and coffee enough to last
over to-morrow, the sugar is just done, and the flour is getting low.
It is really serious that we have "another mouth to feed," and the
newcomer is a ravenous creature, eating more than the three of us. It
dismays me to see his hungry eyes gauging the supply at breakfast, and
to see the loaf disappear. He told me this morning that he could eat
the whole of what was on the table. He is mad after food, and I see
that Mr. K. is starving himself to make it hold out. Mr. Buchan is
very far from well, and dreads the prospect of "half rations." All
this sounds laughable, but we shall not laugh if we have to look hunger
in the face! Now in the evening the snow clouds, which have blotted
out all things, are lifting, and the winter scene is wonderful. The
mercury is 5 degrees below zero, and the aurora is glorious. In my
unchinked room the mercury is 1 degrees below zero. Mr. Buchan can
hardly get his breath; the dryness is intense. We spent the afternoon
cooking the Thanksgiving dinner. I made a wonderful pudding, for which
I had saved eggs and cream for days, and dried and stoned cherries
supplied the place of currants. I made a bowl of custard for sauce,
which the men said was "splendid"; also a rolled pudding, with
molasses; and we had venison steak and potatoes, but for tea we were
obliged to use the tea leaves of the morning again. I should think
that few people in America have enjoyed their Thanksgiving dinner more.
We had urged Mr. Nugent to join us, but he refused, almost savagely,
which we regretted. My four-pound cake made yesterday is all gone!
This wretched boy confesses that he was so hungry in the night that he
got up and ate nearly half of it. He is trying to cajole me into
making another.
November 29.
Before the boy came I had mistaken some faded cayenne pepper for
ginger, and had made a cake with it. Last evening I put half of it
into the cupboard and left the door open. During the night we heard a
commotion in the kitchen and much choking, coughing, and groaning, and
at breakfast the boy was unable to swallow food with his usual
ravenousness. After breakfast he came to me whimpering, and asking for
something soothing for his throat, admitting that he had seen the
"gingerbread," and "felt so starved" in the night that he got up to eat
it.
I tried to make him feel that it was "real mean" to eat so much and be
so useless, and he said he would do anything to help me, but the men
were so "down on him." I never saw men so patient with a lad before.
He is a most vexing addition to our party, yet one cannot help laughing
at him. He is not honorable, though. I dare not leave this letter
lying on the table, as he would read it. He writes for two Western
periodicals (at least he says so), and he shows us long pieces of his
published poetry.
In one there are twenty lines copied (as Mr. Kavan has shown me)
without alteration from Paradise Lost; in another there are two stanzas
from Resignation, with only the alteration of "stray" for "dead"; and
he has passed the whole of Bonar's Meeting-place off as his own.
Again, he lent me an essay by himself, called The Function of the
Novelist, which is nothing but a mosaic of unacknowledged quotations.
The men tell me that he has "bragged" to them that on his way here he
took shelter in Mr. Nugent's cabin, found out where he hides his key,
opened his box, and read his letters and MSS. He is a perfect plague
with his ignorance and SELF-sufficiency. The first day after he came
while I was washing up the breakfast things he told me that he intended
to do all the dirty work, so I left the knives and forks in the tub and
asked him to wipe and lay them aside. Two hours afterwards I found
them untouched. Again the men went out hunting, and he said he would
chop the wood for several days' use, and after a few strokes, which
were only successful in chipping off some shavings, he came in and
strummed on the harmonium, leaving me without any wood with which to
make the fire for supper. He talked about his skill with the lasso,
but could not even catch one of our quietest horses. Worse than all,
he does not know one cow from another. Two days ago he lost our milch
cow in driving her in to be milked, and Mr. Kavan lost hours of
valuable time in hunting for her without success. To-day he told us
triumphantly that he had found her, and he was sent out to milk her.
After two hours he returned with a rueful face and a few drops of
whitish fluid in the milk pail, saying that that was all he could get.
On Mr. K. going out, he found, instead of our "calico" cow, a brindled
one that had been dry since the spring! Our cow has gone off to the
wild cattle, and we are looking very grim at Lyman, who says that he
expected he should live on milk. I told him to fill up the four-gallon
kettle, and an hour afterwards found it red-hot on the stove. Nothing
can be kept from him unless it is hidden in my room. He has eaten two
pounds of dried cherries from the shelf, half of my second four-pound
spice loaf before it was cold, licked up my custard sauce in the night,
and privately devoured the pudding which was to be for supper. He
confesses to it all, and says, "I suppose you think me a cure." Mr. K.
says that the first thing he said to him this morning was, "Will Miss
B. make us a nice pudding to-day?" This is all harmless, but the
plagiarism and want of honor are disgusting, and quite out of keeping
with his profession of being a theological student.