ENTERTAINED BY A NATIONALLY FAMED CYCLIST--KRUEGER BREAKS THE
COASTING RECORD--TURNED OUT OF SHELTER AT MIDNIGHT.
Among my letters was one bearing a check from the Inter Ocean, and I
lost no time in going to the bank to obtain the money upon it. The
cashier required strong identification, which I, being a stranger,
was of course unable to give. I then applied to President Lindsay in
person. Mr. Lindsay, I am proud to record, is a gentleman who reads
the newspapers. He had already heard of the Inter Ocean cyclists, and
when he saw me he said: "My friend, you appear honest, and you look
all you say you are, when it comes to riding across the country. It
is a compliment when I tell you that you almost look like a tramp. Go
get your money," and he nodded to the cashier. At the hotel I found
everybody well and eating, "Jim" P. Anderson doing some especially
good work with a knife and fork. Mrs. McIlrath had dried her clothes
and was none the worse for her icy bath. Cripple Creek by gaslight is
quite an attractive place for a "rounder," as I learned that evening,
when with guides the gentlemen of our party visited the dance halls,
colored people's "rags" and free-and-easy theaters that line "Push
Street." The next day was spent in a visit to the El Paso and other
mines. Friday, May 28, was scheduled for our departure, but rain
made it impossible. Saturday, however, we got away at 6:30 in the
morning for Leadville by way of Florrisant, Hartzel, Buena Vista
and Granite. We had a day of hard riding, and by 8 o'clock in the
evening Mrs. McIlrath was ill and too fagged to go further. After
supper at the house of a road overseer, we came to a ranch, where we
applied for shelter. For the first time since we had left Chicago we
were bluntly refused. Mrs. McIlrath cried aloud when a gray-bearded,
hook-nosed old man told her that he had no place for her to sleep. I
argued to him that she was ill, but he shut off my pleading by telling
me that two miles away was a hotel that had been built expressly for
the accommodation of invalids. There was nothing to do but trudge
on to this hotel, which we found to be the Hartzel Springs House,
owned by and named for the gray-bearded gentleman who had without
courtesy closed his doors in our face.
We started Sunday morning on a 60-mile run to Buena Vista, following
the railroad tracks. At Hill Top we unexpectedly met Editor-in-Chief
Martin of the Rocky Mountain News, and several other writers from the
Denver papers. They fell in line with us, but wished to take their
time in admiring the beautiful scenery; but upon Duxbury's suggestion
that we "could not eat the blooming scenery," they relented and we
pushed on to Buena Vista, where we arrived on the 26th. Here we
were entertained by Ed. Krueger, now a cyclist of national fame,
Mr. and Mrs. Dean and Mr. and Mrs. C. Jones. The following day we
went out to Hot Springs to see Krueger attempt to break the world's
five-mile coasting record. After dinner at the Hot Springs hotel
we began preparations for Krueger's race. The wind had subsided as
if especially for his benefit. He was not satisfied with his own
machine, believing it not strong enough for the test, so he used
my wheel with his own saddle, handle-bars and pedals. Dean, Jones
and Mr. Mason and myself acted as timers, and Duxbury officiated as
starter. At 4 o'clock Krueger mounted his wheel and shot down the
hill. Duxbury had taken the time of his start, and it was left for
us to note the moment of his arrival. By subtracting the difference,
and also splitting the variation of time in the watches of the four
timers at the end of the course, we were enabled to gain a fairly
accurate estimate of the traveling time. Krueger lost both pedals half
way down the incline, but he curled his feet up and crossed the line
in 10 minutes and 10 seconds, which I consider wonderful. We started
the next morning, May 28, for Leadville, with Krueger also in the
party. It was my turn for a disaster, and I came near bringing the
Inter Ocean tour to a finish. In crossing a bridge of pine logs my
front wheel slipped, and with one foot entangled in the spokes of the
rear wheel I stood, eyes protruding, staring at a black rock 300 feet
below. A move backward with one foot on terra firma might prove fatal,
and to attempt to disengage the other foot meant the release and loss
of the bicycle. Nothing remained but to fall backwards on the hard
road in a sitting posture, which I did, and Mrs. McIlrath rescued me,
scolding as a mother would a disobedient child. We made but a short
day of it in Leadville for various reasons, principally that Duxbury
was seized with the hemorrhage which threatened him on Mount Rosa. At
5 in the afternoon we left for Red Cliffe, 35 miles away. At the mouth
of the Tennessee Pass Tunnel, eleven miles from Leadville, we were
overtaken by another storm, more violent than any we had yet passed
through. We were made prisoners in the tunnel for an hour or more,
the dense blackness rendering it impossible for us to proceed with
any degree of safety. Cautiously feeling our way along the walls we
managed to emerge from the tunnel and in the night to pedal along to
the nearest section-house. This turned out to be a disused box car with
bunks built along the sides for the section hands. The section boss, a
kind-hearted Irishman, readily gave us permission to stretch ourselves
on the floor for a night's rest. We were soon asleep, but about 11
o'clock he waked us and informed us that he was sorry, but he could
not help being forced to ask us to leave. The reason, he explained,
was that his wife had suddenly returned and that she was the real
"boss" of the establishment. As she had not been consulted in the
beginning upon the matter of having us for lodgers she had declined
to let us remain as her husband's guests. I begged and implored but
without avail, and in a storm we set off for the telegraph office,
half a mile away. The operator was a young woman and the sight of one
of her sisters in distress was more than enough to win an invitation
to make ourselves as comfortable as the office would allow. I was
enraged almost to the point of personal violence at the thought of an
ill-tempered woman's whim causing us such needless annoyance, but as it
afterward transpired our experience with the woman section boss was but
trivial. It is an even break in this part of the country what manner of
treatment a touring wheelman will receive at the hands of the people.
A pleasant surprise was ours the morning we rode into Glenwood Springs,
Colo., and registered at the palatial Colorado Hotel. A party of
Chicagoans, composed of Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Hynes, Mrs. Hynes' mother
and sister, Mrs. and Miss Way, en route from California, were at the
hotel and soon made themselves known. They had been present at one
of the Inter Ocean receptions to us in Chicago and the pleasure of
meeting was therefore doubled. We spent the night at Glenwood Springs,
leaving the morning of May 31. An accident to Mrs. McIlrath on June
2 between Palisades and DuBeque delayed us the greater part of the
week. It was the machine that suffered the real damage, although
she herself was rendered unconscious for half an hour. In riding
over a sluice she took a tumble, but the accident was not discovered
for some moments afterward. I chanced to look over my shoulder and
saw her figure stretched in the middle of the road with the machine
a shapeless mass by her side. "Tommy Atkins" and I worked hard to
revive her, and the walk to DuBeque, six miles ahead, was one of the
greatest efforts she was called on to put forth during our entire
journey. There was no repair shop in DuBeque, and it was evident at
once that we should have to take a freight train for Grand Junction,
the nearest point at which we might expect repairs. Our stay at Grand
Junction was pleasant in the extreme, and we certainly did not begrudge
the three days spent in the city waiting the repairs to arrive from
Chicago. Friends who had heard of our tour met us at Grand Junction
and straightway began exerting themselves for our entertainment. Their
program embraced a visit to Teller Institute, an Indian school near
by, and on the evening of our second day a complimentary dinner
was given the Inter Ocean tourists by Judge Gray, a jolly, 300-pound
enthusiast upon all topics pertaining to the wheel. On June 8 the fork
for Mrs. McIlrath's wheel arrived from Chicago, and an hour later we
were ready for one of the most difficult stages of our entire trip,
that of crossing 290 miles of desert between Grand Junction and
Springville, Utah. Tom Roe, known to every cyclist from coast to
coast, once attempted it on his ride from San Francisco to New York
City and failed. John McGuire, editor of the Cycling West, who has
wheeled from Denver to Salt Lake City three times, never succeeded
in crossing the desert entirely. When we announced that it was our
intention to make it without a break from boundary to boundary, there
was a general laugh of ridicule on all sides. Every one predicted that
we would fail before we had done 100 miles from Grand Junction. We
left at noon and rolled out on the white sandy roads, making 12 miles
before the first stop. The great difficulties of our trip across the
desert proved to be not so much the hard ploughing through sand as the
general inhospitality characteristic of the section houses which dot
the vast waste. The section hands are mostly Italians and Chinamen,
with a fair sprinkling of Indians. Asked for food or water, they
either would not or pretended they could not understand. As the next
town from Fruita, our first stop, was 67 miles distant, it will be
guessed that we had many a trying meeting with section hands before
we came to a hotel. We had been led to expect no kindness from these
foreigners, but "Tommy Atkins" and I had sworn to win to our side
every man that chance placed in our way. Some of our efforts to make
ourselves agreeable in hopes of a hearty welcome were ludicrous.
At a ranch near Westwater our party was refused shelter, the mother of
three sons residing there telling us that the boys were away from home,
one of them having gone to the next settlement for provisions. The
pantry, she said, was all but empty, and were she to take in three
hungry persons like myself, Mrs. McIlrath and Duxbury, there would
be nothing left by the next morning. It was an uncertainty when the
supplies were to arrive and a former experience had made her firm in
her intentions to take no risks when food promised to be scarce. Our
combined entreaties weakened the old lady to the extent that she
consented to take in Mrs. McIlrath at least. She warned us that
Mrs. McIlrath would have nothing to eat but bread and milk, but then
even bread and milk seemed more than a dinner at Chicago's best hotel,
and leaving my wife with her benefactress, Duxbury and I went forth
determined to charm the Italians at the section house we had passed a
few miles back. As soon as we had convinced the Italians that we were
not in the service of the railroad as private detectives, or that we
were not a pair of the thousands of tramps making the journey from
coast to coast on foot, they not only gave us supper but volunteered
permission to spend the night before their fire. When we started the
next morning I offered money to the section boss, but he declined it,
saying I could repay him by delivering a letter which he handed me,
addressed to his brother at a section house a few hundred miles ahead.
As I have remarked before, the scarcity of water in this part of the
country necessitates the shipment of it to the section houses and
stations by the railroads. This same scarcity of water was indirectly
responsible for a serious accident to my bicycle. I mention it here
to show wheelmen what can be accomplished in the way of impromptu
repairing when the emergency demands it. The tramps who steal rides
on the freight trains never go without a bottle or a tin can of
water. As these vessels are drained of their precious contents at
different intervals along the roadbed, "Weary Willie" is in the habit
of throwing them away. The result is that the tracks for miles and
miles are spangled with bits of sharp glass and tin. I was not aware
of the risk I was taking with my tire until I ran over one of these
"mines." There was an explosion like a shotgun, and when I found myself
on the ground I realized that it was not the "mine" that had exploded,
but my pneumatic. The puncture was, properly speaking, a gash three
inches long in the tire of my rear wheel. Here was a pretty state of
affairs! Not a dealer in supplies or a repair shop within 100 miles,
and not one of the party with a complete repair kit. There seemed no
alternative but a long walk to the nearest section house or ranch,
there to await until "Tommy Atkins" could make the next town and
express me the needed material. But "necessity is the mother of
invention," and under the press of circumstances I hit upon a scheme
which afterward proved to work like a charm. First, I wet the edges
of the rent with cement, sewing them together superficially, or,
as the ladies would say, I "basted" them. Then I made a covering out
of pieces of a buckskin glove, moistened with medicines from one of
my vials. This covering I stretched on as tightly as possible over
the gap. Now came a coat of cement, then the tire tape covering all,
and my repair was as complete as I could make it until a cycle supply
house could be found or my advance luggage reached. I did not jump
on my wheel and ride directly, realizing that until the buckskin had
dried and shrunken nothing was to hold the parted ends of tire but a
few slight stitches. Mrs. McIlrath then came forward with a suggestion
which was acted upon and proving itself to be one of much wisdom. It
was that she take my mended tire and place it on her front wheel,
where the pressure would be slightest, putting her front tire upon
the rear wheel of my machine. For the benefit of doubting wheelmen,
I must add that with three inflations daily, the crude mend held itself
and answered purposes until Salt Lake City was reached a week later.