consider these true founders of Denver, we shall see that they add a new
picture to the varied, highly colored gallery of paintings that make the
true pictorial history of the growth of our country. We have seen the
stolid, dignified Dutchmen sail into New York Harbor with their swords,
banners, queer old flint-lock guns, and quaint long pipes. We have seen
the grave Puritans assemble in Massachusetts with their sober garments,
their stern faces, and their muskets and Bibles carried side by side. We
have seen the gorgeously dressed servants of the kings of France and
Spain at their work of founding New Orleans, having their wives sent to
them in ships, to make their acquaintance and be their wives after they
got there. And at St. Louis we came upon the same sort of men who built
up Canada--rough, brave boatmen in furs, singing and dancing, and
throwing away their money that they earned in pathless forests and in
savage Indian camps. When we came to study the birth of Helena, Montana,
we saw upon the canvas of history the veteran gold-miner, old at the
business, leaving one camp when it ceased to pay, and roaming all over
the mountains, with, sharp, ferretlike eyes that saw no beauties in
nature--nothing but the dull rocks and the sand in the beds of the
streams where gold might be found. Rough, long-haired, bearded, dressed
in whatever they could get, these "prospectors" clambered over the
mountains, leaving many cities behind them that did not exist until they
started them.
And now, at the birth of Denver, we see the life of the immigrants on
the plains. We see the caravans of "prairie-schooners," crossing the
continent like flights of brown moths, and settling a city as winged
things light on a field or on a bed of flowers that offers food. They
were miners, or were led by miners, but they were not yet veterans of
the far Western type. They were closely followed by absolute strangers
to the business--Eastern folk who wanted to pick up gold between their
feet. Therefore the newest part of the picture is the life in the
caravans of "prairie-schooners."
These were strong four-wheeled wagons, drawn by horses, and covered with
canvas tops drawn over a series of half-hoops. In these wagons were
beds, clothing, stoves, cooking and eating and drinking utensils, and
women, children, and whatever invalid men there were in the train. I
could not tell you fairly, in such a short article as this, a tenth part
of the general experiences of the people who built up the West by
travelling in these trains before the railroads came. Peril surrounded
them--peril in many shapes. They were attacked by Indians. They dodged
the savages, they fought them, they whipped them or were massacred. They
crossed rivers and swollen streams without bridges. They crossed the
plains through fearful heat or still more fearful cold. They found no
water, or water unfit to drink. They fell sick, they died; cholera
overtook some of them, chasing after them all the way from Asia. Their
horses were stolen or died or broke down. Their food ran out. There was
enough adventure in the journey to fill a lifetime--even to fill an
extraordinary lifetime.
[Illustration: DENVER IN ITS EARLY YOUTH.]
Those who reached Denver were a ragged, dust-grimed, tired-out lot, with
worn horses, battered wagons, and no immediate desire except to fling
themselves on the ground beside the Platte River, in the shade of the
cottonwoods, and rest. Stop a moment to think of the courage and
condition of those others who went all the way to Oregon! Their courage
passes belief. Well, Green Russell and his Georgia men built a hut of
logs, and roofed it with mud. When the rain fell it dropped on the roof
as water, but it came through the roof as mud. The hut stood by that of
the trader, where West Denver stands now. A third hut was built by one
Ross Hutchins, and the row or street or village was called Indian Row.
Gold was found in the nearby creek, and Russell took some back to
Georgia to coax more of his people out to the new camp.
Then there came a party of twenty persons from Lawrence, Kansas. All
of Colorado was then Kansas. These new-comers went three miles farther
up the river, and washed the sand for gold at a village of their own,
which they called Montana. That was in midsummer. In September of
the same year, 1858, some of the Georgia men--or perhaps some
outsiders--organized a town where East Denver is now, and called it St.
Charles. They drew up formal organization papers, and then, not knowing
what to do with them, _filed them with themselves_. A month later the
Georgians established at Indian Row, now West Denver, formally turned
that queer little pin-point on the map into a town, which they called
Auraria. A store was added to the village very quickly, and one of the
merchants who opened it is alive in Denver to-day. Remember that all
this was only a little more than thirty years ago, when some of my
readers would have called Mr. Gladstone an old man. Prince Bismarck was
fifty years old when this happened.
St. Charles village was a failure, and the founders of Montana soon
moved away and joined Auraria. Then came some men, such as are called
"hustlers" in the West, and they went to work in mighty earnest to make
a city of St. Charles. They agreed that each should build a house, and
in less than fifty days (by January, 1859) there were twenty houses
standing. They named the place Denver, using the name of an ex-Governor
of Kansas Territory, and they gave the town a full set of officials.
Then began a great rivalry between Denver and Auraria. Auraria seemed to
get the business places. The merchants went there, and there Mr. William
N. Byers established the first newspaper--the _Rocky Mountain News_. He
and the paper are both active to-day. But little Denver captured the
express company when it came, and that ended the rivalry, for all
communication with civilization was had through the express company. In
1860 the two towns became one, and were called Denver.
It was in 1859 that the prairie-schooners going to Denver most nearly
resembled great swarms of moths. There had been a money panic in the
United States, and hard times followed. This led to a rush for the new
gold-fields. The truth was that there was not gold enough to pay the
crowds for coming, but two remarkable events happened. In the first
place, a miner named Gregory, who had been drifting about in the West,
happened just then to come upon rich "diggings" not far away. The people
came from the East as in a stampede. Some heard that the finding of gold
was a hoax, and turned back to go home, meeting other thousands on their
way to the diggings. In the East no one knew what to believe; but just
then three newspaper men--Horace Greeley, the great editor, Henry
Villard, and A. D. Richardson--arrived in this region, investigated the
new diggings, and wrote an account of them for all the world to read.
They told how a great many miners were making a great deal of money, and
how a much greater number were not finding any gold at all. Then they
warned the public not to come in such great numbers. I will repeat in
substance what they wrote, as it makes a picture of the surroundings of
Denver when it was a tiny baby city.
They said they found 5000 persons in the ravine called Gregory's
Diggings. Hundreds poured in daily, and they passed tens of thousands
hurrying to the place. For all of these provisions must be carted from
the Missouri River, 700 miles, over mere trails, across unbridged
streams that were steep banked, miry, or swollen by rains. Part of the
way to the Diggings (and to Denver) was across a desert, with wood and
grass very scanty and miles apart. To try to cross this desert on foot
was madness, suicide, murder. To cross it with teams was only possible
to those who knew the way to find grass and water. In early autumn the
Diggings would be snowed under and frozen up. Then for six months there
would not be work, food, or shelter within 500 miles for the army of men
who were fooled into thinking that gold could be picked up like pebbles
at the sea-shore. This sensible report did vast good in moderating the
rush. There was great misery and hardship, nevertheless, but gold
continued to be found, and many towns sprang up around Denver, which
became the main city or metropolis of the region. For a time the people
called the region Jefferson Territory, though the Kansas people claimed
the district around Denver. The people established a territorial
government in this way as early as 1859, and in February, 1861, Congress
legally established the Territory, and called it Colorado. After that,
with many reverses and hardships, the place grew steadily as a city, and
as a capital not only of Colorado, but of the whole country between the
mountains and the Eastern frontier. It is a beautiful city. It is
actually on the plains, and yet at that point the plains are nearly a
mile in the air--above the sea-level. This makes the city a great health
resort, and brings to it so many Eastern people of wealth and refinement
that they have been able to give Denver a great deal of the character of
an Eastern city. It is modern, enterprising, and very beautiful. It is
full of lovely homes and magnificent hotels, public buildings, theatres,
stores, and office structures. It has almost 150,000 population.
[Illustration: DENVER TO-DAY.]
I could have gone far back of the birth of Denver to show how the
Spaniards explored Colorado before the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock.
It was in 1541 that Vasquez Coronado entered Colorado with his little
army, coming from Mexico. In the year of our Revolutionary war a Spanish
priest journeyed toward California, sprinkling southern Colorado with
the pretty Spanish names now borne by the rivers and mountains and
valleys. The immediate neighborhood of Denver came to us in 1804 by the
Louisiana Purchase, and two years later Lieutenant Zebulon Pike explored
the region. In 1819 Major Stephen S. Long started upon a second
exploring expedition that led him literally to the site of Denver, where
he camped in July, 1820. Twenty-three years later John C. Fremont, "the
Pathfinder," came that way, and found several Indian traders established
along the Platte. In 1847 the hardy, enthusiastic Mormons passed over
this ground on their way to establish themselves in Utah. It is said,
too, that Francis Parkman, the historian, built a camp close to or on
the site of Denver when he made his famous journey in 1846. And yet it
seems to me that none of these events connects itself so closely with
the birth of Denver as the expedition of the gold-hunters from Georgia.
IN THE BARN.
Whenever there's a rainy day
They send us to the barn to play
From after lunch till supper-time.
And there they let us run and climb
And tumble in the hay and straw--
Such funny tricks you never saw!
We overhaul the piles of junk,
We open every battered trunk,
And every corner we explore
As if we'd never searched before;
We play at burglars or at thieves,
And crawl along beneath the eaves,
Or else we are a garrison
Besieged, outnumbered ten to one,
And from the windows we repel
The foe that hides beyond the well.
And sometimes, if there's no one by
(If John has gone down to the sty
Or to the pasture for the cow,
Or--if John's absent, anyhow),
We take old Dobbin from the stall--
Which we ought never do at all--
And play at circus, while the horse
Plods around a ring, of course,
With one of us upon his back;
Another makes the long whip crack;
A third--the lucky one--is clown;
And all the girls have to sit down
On seats that have been put about,
And they must clap their hands and shout.
Oh, circus is the greatest fun!
When John goes out, it's always done.
ALBERT LEE.
THE RAVELLED MITTEN.
BY SOPHIE SWETT.
(_In Two Parts_.)
II.
Tilly Coombs watched the sled as it went crunching and jingling up the
hill, and then entered her house, with a long sigh that the party was
over.
"I'm getting to have good times; they treat me 'most as if I was other
folks," she said to herself, happily. She would have liked to tell her
mother about the good time, but her father had come home. She heard his
querulous voice, and knew that he had been drinking just enough to make
it unsafe to disturb him; so she crept softly up to her room--a cold and
bare nook under the eaves. She pulled off her ravelled mitten and gazed
at it ruefully. "That was an awful queer thing to do!" she said to
herself aloud. "And, my! wa'n't it cold in that barn? But nobody saw
me--not a soul! Nobody will ever know! The worst of it is, if I had been
ketched, then nobody would ever believe that Alf wasn't a thief! An
awful queer thing!" For a minute or two Tilly was lost in painful and
perplexing reflection. Then she suddenly shook her fist fiercely at her
small, crooked reflection in the cracked piece of looking-glass upon the
wall. "Tilly Coombs, don't you never darst to think, as long as you
live, that anything _she_ did was queer!" she said, in an impressive
whisper that echoed from all the empty corners of the dreary little
room. And then Tilly tucked a ravelled mitten under the ragged ticking
of her bed, and slept in peace.
While she slept, in the great farm-house at the top of Butternut Hill
they were still debating whether she should be arrested at once for the
theft of the spoons, or whether Patty should try to influence her to
confession and the restoration of the property.
It was Aunt Eunice who suggested the latter course. Uncle Reuben
believed in stern justice. He said that the Coombs family was a disgrace
to the town; the father was drunken and good for nothing, and the son--
His voice broke there; he had always felt that Alf Coombs was to blame
for Dave's running away.
"We never heard anything really bad about Alf Coombs until--until he ran
away," Anson insisted. Aunt Eunice said she thought Mrs. Coombs seemed
like a good woman; and Patty tried to defend Tilly, although it _was_
difficult to explain her knitting up that ravelled mitten! She said Ruby
Nutting wouldn't believe anything against Tilly, and you couldn't make
her. But Uncle Reuben shook his head over that, and said he was afraid
Ruby Nutting wasn't very sensible, and Ruby's father seemed to pity bad
folks just as much as good ones, and to take just as much comfort
doctoring them--without any pay.
But it was finally decided that Patty should tell Tilly of the proof of
her guilt that had been discovered. If Patty failed to influence her,
then Aunt Eunice would no longer object to her arrest.
Patty lay awake a long time that night, dreading her mission; she wished
she might ask Ruby Nutting to help her, but Uncle Reuben thought it best
that no one should be told. When she did sleep she dreamed a dreadful
dream, in which Tilly Coombs was being pursued down the long hill,
through the great snow-drifts, by an army of spoons with grotesque
faces, their mouths made of the initial letter that marked the stolen
spoons--O for Oliver, Grandma Barclay's maiden name; they were driving
Tilly into the mill-pond, which was open as if it were summer, in spite
of the January drifts, and Patty awoke with a start and a cry. But bad
as was the fantastic dream, Patty said to herself that the reality was
worse.
When Pelatiah opened the back door the next morning, a fine pair of
chickens plucked and dressed hung upon the knob. That circumstance
seemed mysterious. Why should a thief who would steal a dozen spoons
have a weak conscience in the matter of a pair of chickens? Where could
Tilly Coombs get a pair of chickens? Patty added these mysteries to the
one about the ravelled mitten upon which Tilly had knit and knit and yet
worn it unmended, and felt as bewildered as she did when Anson made her
listen to something out of the rebus corner of the _Butternut Weekly
Voice_. But Uncle Reuben still insisted that it was a clear case; the
thief had restored the chickens in order to stifle suspicion about the
spoons. As to how the thief became possessed of the chickens, he "didn't
think it would trouble Coombses to rob hen-roosts."
So as Patty set out to accuse Tilly of the theft the little spark of
hope which the deepened mystery had aroused in her was almost quenched.
Tilly came to the door, and Patty tried to look at her with judicial
severity, as she had seen Uncle Reuben look at offenders, but she broke
down suddenly at sight of Tilly's beaming, friendly face.
"Oh, Tilly," she cried, "you will give them back, won't you? It was such
a dreadful thing to do! But no one shall ever know; Uncle Reuben says
so, if you will only give them back."
The warmth and color faded out of Tilly's face until it looked wan and
pinched in the morning light.
"It's no matter about the chickens. You needn't even have given those
back. Of course it's always terrible to--to take things, but if you'll
only give back the spoons."
"_The spoons?_" echoed Tilly, and there seemed to be such genuine
bewilderment in her tone that Patty felt inclined to believe Uncle
Reuben's accusation that she was sly. "I don't know anything about any
spoons."
"Tilly, your mitten caught on the basket and was ravelled, and--and I
saw you knitting it up in the barn." Patty's tone was rather pitiful
than accusing, but Tilly's face flamed angrily.
"I didn't s'pose you was one to go peeking round and spying on folks,"
she cried. "I guess I've got a right to do a little knitting anywheres
that I'm a mind to, and--and you can't say 'twas a mitten."
"I saw it, Tilly, a red mitten. This is the yarn that was caught on the
basket." Polly drew from her pocket the red ravelling, wound upon a bit
of paper.
"_Yarn!_" echoed Tilly, contemptuously taking a bit between her thumb
and finger. "I call that worsted!"
"And are your mittens yarn?" cried Tilly, eagerly. "Because that would
prove--"
"I never said they were," said Tilly, quickly, the color deepening in
her cheeks, "I never said anything about them, and I sha'n't show them
to anybody. And I never saw your old spoons in all my born days--so
there!" Tilly would have shut the door, but Patty prevented her.
"Oh, Tilly, I'm afraid you don't realize. Uncle Reuben will send a
sheriff to arrest you. And the girls have thought so much of
you--especially Ruby Nutting."
"You needn't say a word about _her_." Tilly swallowed a lump chokingly.
"You needn't tell her, nor anything. She hasn't got anything to do with
it. She's give me all the chance I've had to get good times, and her
father has been awful good to us; and now I suppose they won't be any
more. But--but poor folks must expect to be called thieves, and took up.
The worst is, now they'll be sure Alf broke into that store, and he
didn't! no more'n your cousin did! No, that isn't the worst. The worst
is that Miss Farnham, the milliner, won't have me now! She was going to
take me half a day to do chores and help her; 'twas an awful good
chance! It chirked mother right up to think we were going to be so much
like folks, and now--" Tilly kept her voice steady, but it was by a
strong effort.
"Tilly, it might come right now if you would only tell all about it,"
said Patty, earnestly. "It seems as if there were some mystery."
"You go 'long home!" cried Tilly, fiercely, and slammed the door upon
Patty. Her sharp, hard, little features were working convulsively, and
Patty heard a long sob inside the door.
She went home feeling more strongly than ever that there was a mystery,
and pleaded earnestly for Tilly. Aunt Eunice joined her, and promised to
go and see Tilly's mother, and talk with her about the matter if Uncle
Reuben would delay his sterner measures.
They might not have been able to persuade him to do so--his bitter grief
for his son had served to harden him against Alf Coombs's relatives--if
nature had not seemed to take Tilly's part and enforced a delay; the
heavy snow-fall was followed by a pouring rain and what they called at
Butternut Corner an old-fashioned January thaw. Uncle Reuben was a
mill-owner, and his property was threatened by the freshet, so he had no
time to think of Tilly Coombs.
Aunt Eunice had a touch of her old enemy rheumatism, and could not go
down to confer with Mrs. Coombs, and so the matter remained unsettled.
On the very first day when the sun shone out Ruby Nutting came up the
hill to ask Patty to take a walk. It made no difference that they would
go over shoe in mud with every step. Ruby wouldn't take no for an
answer; that was the way with Ruby; besides, she said that this was
something very particular. When they reached the foot of the hill Patty
found herself being led into the road which bordered the old mill-pond,
and she shrank back.
"Yes, we're going to miser Jensen's house, but you needn't be afraid; he
has gone away for the winter. There won't be any more clothes-lines or
hen-roosts robbed now. And that makes me think. Oh, Patty, what _did_
your aunt think of those chickens that were tied to her door-knob? And
what did you think of losing your nice roasted ones? But I didn't mean
to tell you that I took them until you had seen poor Tramp. Your aunt
liked Tramp; she will forgive me when she knows I took them for him."
"_You_ took them--for Tramp?" repeated Patty, in bewilderment. "I heard
that Tramp was mad!"
Tramp was an old dog which had roamed the streets of Butternut Corner
and Bymport for years, making his home for a week or two at one place or
another, as the fancy seized him, generally welcome, for he was a
favorite.
"He had one of his fits, convulsions, in the street at Bymport; he has
often had them at our house, poor fellow! It seemed as if he came there
when one was coming on, knowing that we would take care of him. Some
foolish person raised a cry of mad dog, and people chased him with
pistols and clubs; he ran up here, and they lost track of him. That
night on your sled Alvan Sage told me that he had heard a dog whining,
as if in pain, in the miser's house; he said no one dared to go near,
because they thought it must be the mad dog. That was a week after they
had driven poor Tramp out of Bymport, and I thought of him suffering and
without food, and I seized the first basket I could lay hands on, and
pulled out a pair of roast chickens. I thought I never should get there
through the drifts! I borrowed a lantern at Jake Nesmith's, and it
really wasn't far, but the drifts were so deep! The poor dog's leg had
been hurt by a stone or a club so he could hardly move, and he was half
frozen and starved. Tilly, if you could have seen him eat your chickens,
I know you would have thought it better than to have them for the party!
I built a fire--luckily there was wood in the cellar--and I've been
there every day in all the rain to take care of him. Papa has been with
me, and to-morrow we're going to send Tramp to my Uncle Rufus at Bethel,
who is very fond of dogs, and will take great care of him. We couldn't
take him home, because Aunt Estelle is so nervous, and she wouldn't
believe he wasn't mad. I knew you would like to see old Tramp."
"But--but the ravelled mitten!" faltered Patty, who couldn't as yet "see
through things."
"How did you know about that?" asked Ruby, in astonishment. "I caught my
mitten on your basket in my haste to get the chickens, and the edge was
all ravelled off, and--the very queerest thing that ever happened!--some
one knit it on again--with yarn. The mittens are worsted; see the
difference." Ruby held up the mended mitten, with an edge of coarse
yarn, to Patty's gaze. "It was done at the party! I think it must have
been Grandma Pitkin who did it. Perhaps it had dropped from my pocket in
the dressing-room, and she saw it. Wasn't it kind of her? I must go and
thank her."
Patty tried to say "it wasn't Grandma Pitkin; it was Tilly Coombs," but
there was a lump in her throat that choked her. And it happened that
they just then reached a turn in the road and saw a girl's figure ahead
of them. She walked from side to side of the road, keeping her eyes on
the ground, and occasionally prodding into it with a stick which she
carried.
"It's Tilly Coombs, and she seems to be searching for something," said
Ruby.
Patty darted on ahead, and seized Tilly around the neck with both arms.
Even then Patty saw how pitifully worn and pale the girl had grown. What
had been only a little comedy to Ruby, pleasant because she had so
happily relieved the dog's sufferings, had been almost a tragedy to
Tilly Coombs.
[Illustration: "TILLY, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?" SAID PATTY.]
"Tilly, can you ever forgive me?" said Patty, struggling with a tendency
to cry. "I know all about it--how you knitted the mitten to keep Ruby
from being found out, and how you bore it all and didn't tell."
"You hain't been telling _her_?" said Tilly, anxiously. "I don't think
she knows she lost the spoons. I saw that she came down this road that
night, and I've been hunting for them. I ain't going to have a mite of
trouble come on her. She's been different to me from what anybody ever
was before, not looking down on me as if I was the dirt under her feet.
And her father, too, he's come and come to see mother when he knew there
wa'n't a cent to pay him with. I _have_ bore a sight"--Tilly's strained
voice threatened to break--"but I can bear more. I won't have trouble
come to her if I can help it. You _hain't_ been telling her all about
it?"