Cherry Creek, hyar; and as soon as the fog lifts you’ll see what you’re
looking for, I reckon.”
The fog, which had cloaked the horizon since sunrise, already was
thinning; and staring, the Hee-Haws waited the result.
“I see them!” cried Jim, waving his battered hat.
“Where, Jim?”
“Yonder, straight in front.”
“So do I!” yelped Billy. “There’s Long’s Peak――that big peak up at the
north end. I’ve seen him from the Overland Trail. Look at the snow,
will you!”
“Isn’t it wonderful!” breathed the Reverend Mr. Baxter, in awed tone.
And it was. Almost halting, spell-bound, they gazed. As the fog broke
and melted away it exposed a mighty barrier, extending in a vast sweep
from the right to the left――two hundred miles of mountains, the front
range soft and purplish, the back range dazzling white with snow. The
rugged plains, brushy and somewhat timbered, and lighter green where
meandered Cherry Creek, reached to their very base.
“Where’s Pike’s Peak?” demanded Left-over.
“That lone peak at our end, stranger,” informed an emigrant.
Round and bulky and snow covered, standing out by himself, like an
exclamation-point completing the range, Pike’s Peak seemed the biggest
peak of all.
“That’s not far. ’Tisn’t more than ten miles!” declared Left-over.
“Come on! Let’s go and climb it. Get out your picks, fellows! Don’t you
see a kind of yellow patch? That’s gold, I bet you.”
“Keep cool, young man,” warned the emigrant. “You try to walk it before
night and you’ll find out how far that peak is. More than fifty miles,
I reckon.”
“It looks powerful cold up yon,” quavered a woman. “They do say the
snow never melts off.”
The trail was now much more interesting. Some of the emigrants had come
out, like the Hee-Haws, over the Smoky Hill Fork Trail, and the others
were from the Santa Fe Trail up the Arkansas River, to the south. A
trail along the base of the mountains connected this with Smoky Hill
Trail. Soon the trail by way of Republican River joined in. The triple
travel on Cherry Creek Trail was now so thick that Davy again wondered
where all the people were coming from.
The marvellous panorama of the Rockies remained ever in sight before.
Nobody tired of gazing at it, wondering which of the peaks, besides
Pike’s Peak, were inlaid with gold and if a fellow could live on top of
Pike’s Peak or back yonder among those other peaks while getting out
his fortune. Some of the emigrants (Left-over included) asserted loudly
that they could see the gold shining!
However, the first sight of the Pike’s Peak settlements――Denver and
Auraria――began to be watched for the most eagerly. The mountains
gradually drew nearer, Pike’s Peak gradually fell behind until on the
afternoon of the third day, down the winding, white-topped procession
swept a glad cry. Whips were flourished, sun-bonnets were waved, hats
were swung; men and women cheered, children shouted, dogs barked.
“The Cherry Creek diggin’s! There they are! There are the gold fields
and the pound a day!”
People seemed to forget the bad reports spread by the disgruntled
emigrants bound back to the States. Hopes were again high for success
and fortune at the end of the long, long trail.
Sure enough, several miles before, in a basin set out from the
mountains a short distance, were a collection of wagons and tents and
other canvases, and a number of cabins, also, jumbled together on both
sides of the creek, apparently, and bounded before by a wooded river.
At the edges was a fringe of little camps like those of emigrants
stopping by the way.
Evening was nigh; the sun was low over the snowy range; smoke was
curling from camp-fire and chimney.
“We won’t make it to-day, fellows,” spoke Captain Hi. “But we’ll pull
in the first thing in the morning.”
“Goodness! Look at the people pouring in by the northern trail, too!”
exclaimed Mr. Baxter.
For glinting in the last rays of the sun a long wagon train of
emigrants, resembling crawling white beads, was heading in from the
opposite direction.
“That’s the cut-off down from the Salt Lake Overland Trail up the
Platte,” quoth Billy, promptly. “The bull trains travel that trail.”
XIII
THE CHERRY CREEK DIGGIN’S
With so many people making for Cherry Creek over several trails it
seemed a pity to waste a night by camping. But when darkness settled
the trail was ablaze with the camp-fires of the emigrants who, like the
Hee-Haw outfit, had halted until dawn. Afar blinked the lights of the
“Pike’s Peak settlements”; and miles distant, north across the plain,
were the bright dots betokening the camps of those emigrants entering
by the Salt Lake Overland Trail.
The whole procession was early astir with the dawn; even Left-over was
up as soon as anybody, eager to be digging out his pound of gold a day.
The trail down Cherry Creek was six inches deep with dust, ground to
powder by the constant wheels and hoofs. In a great cloud it rose as
the wagons and animals and persons ploughed through it; to the north
lifted other dust lines, where the rival travel likewise pressed
forward to the goal. It was an inspiring scene, almost as good as a
race; but Left-over grumbled:
“I don’t call this Pike’s Peak,” he said. “And where’s Denver City? I
don’t see any city.”
“City or not,” remarked the Reverend Mr. Baxter, “it’s a wonderful
thing, Davy――all these people, from all over the United States, setting
out overland, breaking new trails, and founding a town away out here,
six hundred miles across the desert, at the foot of those snowy
mountains! It’s taken a lot of pluck and a lot of trust in Providence.”
“Where do you calculate on stopping, boys?” queried a black-eyed,
sharp-nosed man who was riding down along the column.
“I don’t know,” drawled Captain Hi. “What’s the difference?”
“All the difference in the world. Throw in with Auraria. She’s on the
mountain side of the Creek, and she’s bound to be the biggest city west
of Omaha. We’ve got the buildings, the people, and the ferry across the
Platte River. Remember that. Don’t let these Denver boomers fool you.
Stop at Auraria and we’ll treat you right.”
And he rode on down the line talking about “Auraria.”
But he was close followed by another man――a fatty, red-faced man.
“Keep right on down the east side of the creek to Denver City,” he
proclaimed. “The travelled side, the side next to the States. Buy a
town lot in Denver; it’ll be a nest-egg for you while you’re at the
diggin’s. Denver, Denver, Denver! Remember the east side of the creek.”
And he, also, proceeded on, chanting the praises of “Denver City.” The
Reverend Mr. Baxter laughed.
Before they reached the settlement district the trail forked. A large
sign, pointing to the left-hand fork, said: “AURARIA. Direct Route to
the Gold Fields.” Another sign, pointing before, said: “Straight Ahead
for DENVER CITY. Nearest and Best.”
“Which will it be, boys?” queried Captain Hi.
“Let’s try Denver. It’s on this side of the creek and it’s named for
the governor of Kansas,” spoke Mr. Baxter.
So they continued on down to Denver City. Denver and Auraria were
separated by only the almost dry channels of Cherry Creek, and both
extended along it nearly to the Platte River below, into which Cherry
Creek emptied. As soon as the Hee-Haw party had pitched their camp on
the outskirts of Denver, they hastened about their business. Davy and
Mr. Baxter paired off to wander about. Billy and Hi and Jim undertook
some errands. Left-over was wild to grab shovel and pick and pan and
start right in digging and washing.
Many persons, in plain sight all up and down the creek bed, were
working hard panning for gold. Some of the emigrants had begun almost
before they had unharnessed their teams. And yonder, northwest,
glimpses of the Platte River, flowing past both Denver and Auraria,
gave glimpses also of other miners delving away.
Billy walked straight to the nearest group in the creek bed.
“How are you making it, pardner?” he asked.
“Have you fellows come for your pound a day, too?” asked the man. Even
his wife was wielding a dish-pan while he shovelled.
“You bet,” assured Billy.
The woman paused, and the man laughed wearily and wiped his forehead.
“You’ll be lucky if you make fifty cents,” he said.
“Yes,” quavered the woman. “It’s awful poor picking along this creek. I
expect we’re all going to starve, provisions are getting so high.”
“Where are the diggin’s, then?”
“Yonder, up in the mountains, stranger. We hear tell they’ve made a big
strike there. We’re going on as soon as we can travel. But our oxen are
about petered out.”
“How far’s Pike’s Peak?” demanded Left-over. “Where’s the Pike’s Peak
country? Why don’t you go to Pike’s Peak?”
“That’s Pike’s Peak down south, seventy-five miles,” answered the man.
“They call this the Pike’s Peak country, but it’s only a name. I reckon
you’ve heard of them sliding down Pike’s Peak and scraping up the gold
as they slide. Don’t you believe it, mister. The peak’s above snow line
and the ground is frozen solid. See that line of wagons? They’re all
heading to the new Gregory diggin’s, west in the mountains about forty
miles. That’s the big strike.”
“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Billy.
Davy felt his heart sink; this, then, was not the end of the
gold-seekers’ trail, and the snowy mountains, topping the barrier of
the tumbled foot-hills, looked like a hard country.
“Come, Davy,” said the Reverend Mr. Baxter. “We’ll see the sights
first, anyway.”
So they left Left-over, hauling out his pick and spade and gold-pan to
join the squads working along the creek; and Hi and Jim and Billy, who
set forth on errands; and trudged away “to see the sights.”
“This gold craze is all right as a means of attracting the people
here,” remarked the Reverend Mr. Baxter, thoughtfully. “But the most
wonderful part to me is the settlement itself. There must be fifteen
hundred population already in scarce a year, and emigrants are pouring
in at the rate of a thousand a day, I hear. There are fifty thousand
on the way, Dave. I don’t give a snap for the mines; but look, what
has happened! This gold excitement is going to settle the plains. The
United States has jumped at a leap from the Missouri River six or seven
hundred miles to the mountains. With a city here, and cities at the
other end, there’ll soon be cities in between. A whole lot of waste
country is due to be made useful.”
“I don’t call this much of a city yet,” commented Davy, considerably
disappointed over the end of his trip.
“Well,” said Mr. Baxter, “it’s the starter for one if the people don’t
starve to death. The weak hearts will go back; the strong ones will
stick; it’s only a question of holding out for a while until the land
is cultivated.”
Truly, Denver was a strange collection of tents and shacks, with a
few good buildings. The houses were of hewn logs, sod roofs and dirt
floors, and the furniture was made mostly from slabs and planks. There
were few windows; and these were filled with sacking stretched across
or else had wooden shutters. As far as Davy could see, the whole town
did not have a pane of glass.
However, the streets (and particularly the two main streets named
Blake and Larimer) were thronged with people as thick as the crowds at
the other end of the route, Leavenworth. Indians, Mexicans and whites
fairly jostled elbows, and conversation in every variety of speech was
heard. The whites wore costumes ranging from the broadcloth frock coat
and flowing trousers of the St. Louis and New York merchant to the
flannel shirt, jeans trousers and heavy boots of the regular plainsman
and miner. The Mexicans wore their broad, high-peaked hats and their
serapes or gay Mexican blankets, draped from their shoulders. The
Indians stalked about bare-headed, and enveloped in their blankets
also. There were few women.
Several stores handling general merchandise had been opened, but
according to the signs goods were expensive. One sign said: “Antelope
Meat, 4 cents a lb.” Picks and spades were the cheapest; they could
be bought for fifteen cents apiece, and nobody seemed to be buying
at that! This was a bad sign; it showed how disgusted many of the
overlanders had become when they found that they could not dig gold out
by the pound where they stopped!
Right in the centre of Denver was a large village of Indians, camped in
their tipis. By the hundreds they were lounging about, men, women and
children, the men unclothed except for a girdle about the waist, and
the children wearing nothing at all.
“Arapahoes,” pronounced Mr. Baxter. “Come on, Davy. There’s the stage.
Let’s go over to the hotel.”
A large cloth sign before a long one-story log building said: “Denver
House.” It was next to the Arapahoe village. People were hurrying
across to this hotel, for a stage-coach, with crack of whip and cheer
from passengers and driver, had halted short in front of it.
The coach, drawn by its four mules, dusty and lathered, bore the
lettering: “Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Co.” So this, then, was
the daily Leavenworth stage. Already the street before the hotel was
crowded with onlookers who had gathered to receive the coach. When Davy
and Mr. Baxter arrived the travel-worn passengers were clambering out.
The first was Mr. Majors himself! Davy recognized the long beard and he
and Mr. Baxter pressed forward to welcome their friend.
“Why, hello, boys,” quoth Mr. Majors. “Where’d you drop from?”
“Just got in,” answered Mr. Baxter, shaking hands, as did Davy. “We
came by mule and wagon with Billy Cody and two or three others.”
“How?”
“Up the Smoky.”
“Joined the gold rush, did you?”
“Yes, sir. But I’ve about decided I’d rather plant potatoes.”
“How about you, Dave?” queried Mr. Majors.
“I’d like to eat one,” asserted Davy ruefully.
“You’ve got the right idea, I guess,” approved Mr. Majors. “But I
understand Horace Greeley has told the people here they ought to plant
potatoes, and they laughed at him. Potatoes are a better crop than
gold, in my opinion; but this country certainly doesn’t look very
promising for them. How people are going to live I don’t know. It will
be good for the freighting business, though. We’ll be hauling stuff in
here with every team we can muster. Did you know we’ve taken over the
stage line, too?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, we have. It’s run by Russell, Majors & Waddell now. Call in on
me before I leave, and I’ll give you a pass to Leavenworth in case you
want to go back.”
“All right. Thank you, Mr. Majors.”
“If I were you, my lad, I wouldn’t stay around here long,” continued
Mr. Majors to Davy. “This place is going to be a good place, and I
haven’t any doubt that lots of gold will come out of these mountains
as soon as the people are experienced in finding it. But looking for
gold haphazard is a poor job for a boy. I think you’ll do much better
on the plains. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you know;
and there’s a big work to be done in helping these people live. If the
freight outfits aren’t kept moving the diggings will starve. If you’ll
come in to Leavenworth we’ll put you to work with the bull trains.”
“You’d better do it, Davy,” advised Mr. Baxter. And Davy soberly nodded.
“I guess I will, then.”
“I’m up at our Nebraska City office most of the time now,” said Mr.
Majors. “But you’ll find Mr. Russell at Leavenworth and I’ll tell him
to fix you out.” And Mr. Majors shouldered his way into the hotel.
“Whar’s the post-office, stranger?” asked a voice; and turning they
faced an emigrant evidently newly arrived.
“I don’t know. We’re lost around here, ourselves,” explained Mr. Baxter.
“Pardon. I tella the way,” spoke somebody else. He was a tall,
swarthy-visaged man, with heavy black moustache and black bushy
eyebrows, a large meerschaum pipe in his mouth. However, he was neatly
dressed, even to natty shoes. He looked like a foreigner, and his
accent sounded foreign. He continued rapidly: “That beeg house w’ere
you see-a the line of men.”
“Thank ’ee,” acknowledged the emigrant, after a hearty stare. And he
strode off.
“And you, signors? Canna I direct you zomeplace?” inquired the foreign
man, with a bow.
“We’re just looking around, is all,” informed Mr. Baxter.
“Then later. Perhappa for the hair or the whiskers; perhappa for the
wash. Permitta me.” And with another bow he handed to Mr. Baxter and to
Davy his card.
It read: “H. Murat. Tonsorial Artist. Shaves, Trims and Cuts. Laundry
Done.”
“Do you know who he is?” piped another voice at Davy’s side, as the
dark foreigner disappeared in the crowd. “He’s a count, a real Italian
count.”
The speaker was a slender, fair-haired little fellow, not much older
than Dave himself.
“He’s Count Murat. His father was a big man in Italy. But out here the
count’s a barber and his wife takes in washing.”
“I declare!” ejaculated Mr. Baxter. “And where did you come from, son?”
“From the States. I’ve been up in the diggin’s, but I froze my feet and
I’m going home.”
“Are your folks here?”
“No, sir. I ran away. But I’ve got enough and when I reach home I’m
going to stay there.”
“Well, you’d better,” approved Mr. Baxter. “You’re too young to be out
here alone.”
“I guess I am,” admitted the little fellow. “Life out here is fierce
unless you’re used to it.”
“How are the diggin’s?” queried Davy, eagerly.
“Forty miles into the mountains――and then always a little farther,”
asserted the young fellow. “If you can stick it out and don’t freeze to
death or starve to death you may make a few hundred dollars――and you
may not. Did you ever mine?”
“No,” said Davy, and Mr. Baxter shook his head, smiling.
“Then you’re tenderfeet like I am. That’s the trouble in there. Half
the people don’t know how to find gold and the other half don’t know
it when they do find it. It’s fierce, I tell you. _I’m_ bound home,
busted. I had to walk in, fifty miles; but I’ve earned just enough to
take me through to the Missouri.”
“How?” asked Davy.
“Sweeping out for one of the gambling houses,” and with a gesture of
disgust the slender youngster turned away.
Mr. Baxter watched him a moment.
“Davy,” he uttered, “that’s no boy. That’s a girl. Great Scott! What a
place for a girl!”
And later they found out that Mr. Baxter had spoken the truth. They
were glad to learn that the pretended boy took the next stage back to
Leavenworth and reached there safely.
“Let’s try our luck at the post-office,” proposed Mr. Baxter. “I’d like
to get a letter, myself.”
They threaded their way in the direction of the office. The mail had
recently come in, for from the post-office window a line of men, single
file, extended over a block. However, before they two took their places
Billy Cody stopped them.
“I asked for your mail,” he announced. “There wasn’t any. I got a
letter from ma. All she said was: ‘Dear Will. Let us know how you are.
We are well. Mother.’ And I had to pay fifty cents for it down from
Laramie. The new stage line carries letters for twenty-five cents. Wish
ma had written more for the money. She might just as well.”
“What’s the news, Billy? What are you and the rest of the outfit going
to do?”
“Hi and Jim and I are going on up to the diggin’s right away. See that
line of travel?” And Billy pointed to the constant procession of wagons
and of people afoot, extending from the settlement as far as the eye
could reach, westward into the hills fifteen miles distant. They’re all
going. Left-over’s quit and joined another outfit. He couldn’t wait.
Jim and Hi are buying supplies. Did you notice the prices? Eggs are
two dollars and a half a dozen. Milk fifty cents a quart. Flour ten
dollars for a fifty-pound sack. Reckon beans and sowbelly will do for
us. They say even game is scarce around the diggin’s.
“If you fellows don’t mind I believe I’ll stay around here for a while
till people cool down a little,” said the Reverend Mr. Baxter.
“Cool down!” exclaimed Billy. “Huh! The stage driver says he passed ten
thousand emigrants all heading this way!”
“Then I guess I won’t be missed,” laughed Mr. Baxter.
“How about you, Dave?” asked Billy.
Davy hesitated. What the “boy” (who was a girl) had told them rather
weighed on his mind. And the same old story of “beans and sowbelly” did
not sound inviting any longer.
“We saw Mr. Majors. He offered Dave a job freighting and a pass to
Leavenworth,” put in Mr. Baxter.
“Take it if you want to, Dave,” said Billy, quickly. “Life in the
diggin’s will be mighty tough, but I’ve got started and I’m going in.
You do as you please.”
“Well,” faltered Dave, “I reckon maybe I’ll stay out a while.”
“All right,” quoth Billy. “We’ll see you before we leave. We want to
pull right out, though.”
Nothing could stop Hi and Jim and Billy; and sure enough that
afternoon they did pull out for the diggings forty and more miles west,
among the mountains. They settled with Mr. Baxter and Dave for the two
shares in the Hee-Haw outfit, and left with a cheer.
Davy felt a momentary twinge of regret that he was not going, too; but
when he remembered what Mr. Majors had said about “haphazard looking”
and a “bird in the hand” he decided that, after all, he had done what
was best. The work of bridging the plains was a great work and very
necessary if these settlements at the mountains were to live.
“Let’s go over to Auraria and see that, Dave,” invited Mr. Baxter.
“Then we can find a place to stop in over night. I’m tired of bedding
out on the ground.”
Cherry Creek was almost dry. Camps and cabins had been located right
in the middle of it, so they easily walked across. Auraria was larger
than Denver, but the buildings were not so good. They were of rough
cottonwood logs, whereas the Denver logs were smoothed and many were
of pine brought down from the timber in the hills. Auraria had the
newspaper, the _Rocky Mountain News_, whose press and type and so forth
had been hauled overland by the editor, Mr. W. N. Byers. Like Denver
City, Auraria was bustling with all kinds of people.
“How are you, strangers? Don’t you want to buy a city lot and make your
fortune?” invited an alert man of the two Hee-Haws.
“What’s the price?” asked Mr. Baxter.
“What’ll you give? Cash or trade? The best lots in the city. Can’t be
beat.”
“Will you take a sack of flour?” demanded Mr. Baxter.
“Done!” snapped the man. “Flour’s better than money, friend. Where’s
your flour?”
“Where are your lots?”
“Right yonder. I’ll show you.”
The man promptly led them on. The lots proved to be somewhere in the
midst of bare, sandy ground half a mile out from the business street.
They looked forlorn and lonely, and Davy did not think much of them.
Neither, evidently, did Mr. Baxter. One rude cabin stood there.
“Cabin too?” queried Mr. Baxter.
“Sure.”
“How many lots?”
“Five, my friend. Five of the finest lots in this bustling metropolis
for your sack of flour. And remember this is Auraria; ’tain’t measley
Denver. I reckon you could buy half of Denver for your flour and then
you’d be cheated.”
“All right. We’ll take you, won’t we, Davy?” responded Mr. Baxter,
off-hand. “And we’ll move right in.”
“Show me your flour and we’ll go to the land office and close the
deal.”
So they delivered to him the flour. At the land office the clerk asked
their names.
“This is the Jones’ flour, Dave,” reminded Mr. Baxter, eyeing Davy.
“We’ll have that deed made out to Jasper Jones; he’s on the way.
Meanwhile we’ll occupy the cabin.”
That was certainly a good scheme――besides, as occurred to Dave, being
very honest. Only it seemed rather a high price to pay for just five
lots away from everywhere. The next time that Davy saw those lots they
were quoted at a thousand dollars apiece!
XIV
DAVY SIGNS AS “EXTRA”
One more day in Denver and Auraria satisfied Dave. He had seen about
all there was to see, and had loafed long enough. He wanted to go to
work. However, many other people wanted to go to work, too. But work
was scarce and money scarcer, and provisions were tremendously high.
Travellers were constantly coming back from the mountains with tales
of woe and with empty pockets and sore feet. The great editor, Horace
Greeley, had advised people to plant crops; then he had continued on
west, for California. But the people were bent on getting rich all at
once by mining instead of waiting for crops. This made the situation
bad, especially for a boy.
“You’d better take the stage back to-morrow, Dave,” counselled Mr.
Baxter. “I’ll see you later.”
“Guess I will, then,” said Dave. “What will you do, though?” For he did
not like to desert his partner.