THROUGH THE SAGUACHE RANGE.
Much of the way from Granite to Leadville lies close to the Arkansas,
and with the level of it, the river being but a few feet below the
road. The Major and I conclude to occupy the rear platform and
encounter an elderly lady on a camp-stool in possession of the
car door. She is here evidently with a view to the scenery. As we
squeeze past, we are regaled with an odor of rose leaves, suggestive
of old-fashioned bureaus with obstinate drawers, catnip tea and
grandmotherly tenderness. The velocity of the railroad train is not
to be compared to the speed with which the perfume flashes one back
through the decades, to the hard times, and I detect a sigh from the
Major as he seats himself upon the car step.
"What are you sighing for, Major?"
With a hasty glance toward the car door: "For the happy times of nearly
half a century ago."
"And the rose leaves----"
"Aha!" with a cheerful smile, "you caught the fragrance too, did you,
my boy?"
[Illustration: LOOP.]
Except for the rumble of the car wheels, silence reigned for five
minutes; the Major's meditations were finally interrupted by the
appearance of Mr. Dide, camp-stool in hand. The new arrival had just
taken his seat on the side next the Major when the old lady exclaimed
in a shrill treble:
"Land sakes! I believe in my heart that crick is runnin' up hill."
Certainly from our level, and running in an opposite direction, the
current had that appearance when looked at casually.
Mr. Dide turned toward the lady, stared, and addressed her:
"Begpahdon! But weally that is not phenomenal."
"Eh?"
"It is not unusual foah watah to wun up hill."
"Where was you born and bred, young man?"
"New Yauk."
They were both serious, the old lady, with her head thrown a little
forward and inclining to one side, gazing at him over her glasses.
"What's your business?"
"I am a gentleman of lesyah, madam," and for the first time something
like a smile hovered about the mouth of Mr. Dide.
"Evidently you was brought up that way--you ain't married, surely?"
with a manner implying that though the world were full of feminine
fools, he had not discovered one foolish enough to enter into the
marriage relation with him. Mr. Dide seemed discomfited, but rallied in
a moment.
"Begpahdon! but you know the earth is not a spheah but a spheaoid,
flattened at the poles, and the equatah is a dozen miles hiah than the
surface at the poles, and that some of the pwincipal wivahs flow toward
the equatah----"
"See here, young man, I don't know as I just rightly understand what
you're talkin' about, and I don't think you do yourself. Seems to me
you must be one of them chaps that believes his grandfather was a
monkey, and lookin' at you I don't know as you're to blame. I've raised
nine children, six boys and three girls, all married and settled down
'cept Hannah--she's next to the baby, and I don't know as she ever
will; and if I'd had one like you, indeed I'm afraid I'd a-flew into
the face of natur and set on him when a baby. Where's your mother?
you'd better go to her and let her learn you not to talk to an old
woman like me as if I was a fool--there now!"
"Begpahdon, but----"
"Oh, git away with your begp-a-h-don, as you call it----"
"But, my deah madam----"
"But me no buts, and don't dear madam me. I'll tell my Joshua and he'll
shake that glass out of your eye for insultin' his mother, he will."
Either the condition of Mr. Dide reflected in the old lady's mind with
his eyeglass gone, or his general demoralization under the hands of
Joshua, mitigated her indignation; she laughed as she bridled.
"Weally, madam," and Mr. Dide arose, held on to the guard rail with
one hand while he removed his hat with the other, and with a manner
that went far toward making his peace, continued: "I should nevah
faugive myself if I went away leaving you with the impwession that I
intended an insult--believe me, I am incapable."
"Well--don't you try to make anybody believe again that water runs up
hill."
"I will not, madam, I assauh you."
"And don't talk as if you was swearin' every time you say _ma_dam. Why
don't you say ma'am like a Christian?"
"I will mahm, with plesyah."
"That's right. Set down now, I want to see out. I think somethin' might
be made out of you with a little trainin', though mebbe it's too late;
'as the twig is bent the tree's inclined,' you know. What do you carry
that little umbrill for, that thing you've got in your hand--don't you
know the name of it?"
"Ah, weally--to wahd off the sun and the wain."
"Land sakes--mebbe you think you're sugar and'll melt; and you part
your hair in the middle like a gal; I see it when you had your hat off."
"Weally--please excuse me, I would like to pass in."
"Set right down and don't let me drive you away. I've taken an interest
in you; where's your mother?"
"Weally, ma--mahm--she has been dead many yeahs--I can just wemember
her."
"I know'd it, and you've just been left to grow up of your own accord;
been to college of course. 'Squire Dodd he let his Jake go off to
college, and he staid just one year and come back with one of them
glasses and lost it next day; the ole 'squire kep' him home after that,
and set him to maulin' rails in the patch down by the hemlock p'int----"
For half an hour the dear old soul held the disconsolate gentleman in
durance. I dared not look at the Major but kept my eyes fixed on the
landscape, without seeing any of it.
Reaching Leadville, we searched in vain for the Deacon; his lady
friends were also absent, and the Major remarked:
"The Deacon evidently is one point ahead in the game. If he does not
turn up in the morning we shall be obliged to abandon him."
Leadville, that has added so many millions to the wealth of the
world, is more dignified than half a dozen years ago; there is less
of the revolver and saloon and a little more of the church and the
Sabbath-school; no longer a mining camp, but a city with only a tithe
of its resources developed.
It reposes very quietly this Sabbath morning under the bright sun.
Turning from the range at the north with its snow-capped peaks and
looking down the almost deserted avenue, I am reminded of another
Sunday morning--and it seems only a little while ago--when the same
street was wont to be alive with humanity. Coming out of an adjacent
saloon a couple of young men faced each other, blear-eyed and
dishevelled; they had plainly been making a night of it. Each stood
with his hand on his hip, while epithets, the most choice in the camp
vocabulary, flew thick and furious. It might be dangerous or not;
perhaps not. But the innocent third party running away or seeking
shelter at the side might be in peril. I took up a vibrating station,
so to speak, immediately in the rear of one of the would-be murderers,
and awaited the opening. It did not come, but ended in froth and the
appearance of an autocrat with a star on his breast and a club in his
hand. He gathered in the bad men and was about to possess himself of
the undersigned, when I felt compelled to explain the situation. He
complimented me by saying: "Your head's level," and I was suffered to
depart.
From the carbonate metropolis to the tunnel through the Saguache Range
the distance by rail is perhaps seventeen miles, the difference in
elevation about thirteen hundred feet. To make this distance one can
hardly realize that one is ascending, the grade is so light, winding
on and about the mountain sides. Lake Valley, with its crooked band
of water here and there widening into silvery pools, and the gold and
green of its meadow-like spots, seems to be silently drifting down and
away. At the foot lies the city we have just left, and beyond is the
Mosquito Range. In following the tortuous line the grand peaks seem
to change from one side of you to the other, all the motion being with
them.
Mount Massive gives you the aptness of its name. You feel its
magnificence as you approach, and that it may be the glorious court of
blue-eyed Athena at whose vestibule you stand wonderingly, and whence
she issues to kiss the petals of the wild flowers and endow the earth
with health and beauty. All about you are the pines, with here and
there a patch of aspens, their whitened trunks set in banks of larkspur
empurpling the sloping mountain sides. Over deep gorges spanned by
threadlike trestle-work, you feel awed at the audacity that planned
and executed the way into this solitude. High above the utmost peak of
the bulky mass, a spot no larger than your hand is poised in ether, or
moving, passes between you and the sun, and you think perhaps of what
Tennyson says:
"He clasps the crag with hooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands;
Ringed with the azure world he stands:
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls:
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."
Or as Campbell puts it:
"And stood at pleasure, 'neath heavens zenith, like
A lamp suspended from its azure dome,
Then downward, faster than a falling star,
He neared the earth, until his shape distinct
Was blackly shadowed on the sunny ground."
[Illustration: HAGERMAN PASS.]
Or older still, as we find it in the Iliad:
"So the strong eagle from his airy height,
Who marks the swans' or cranes' embodied flight
Stoops down impetuous while they light for food
And, stooping, darkens with his wings the flood."
The Major thought he would give Campbell the benefit of his vote,
though the old Greek tells us the bird was a robber in his day as he is
in ours.
The shriek of the whistle echoes and re-echoes through the impressive
silence; it startles you, and you feel as if warned in a weird way
by the unseen spirits of these wilds, that you are an intruder.
Suddenly you are swept from the bright sunlight, the lofty mountains
and modest wild flowers into utter darkness. Your dream of the wise
goddess may not be all a dream. You are being hurled, in her anger,
from the heavenly heights to the depths of Erebus. Looking out, you see
mysterious shadows moving with lights through clouds of smoke, and the
lights burn dim and red. There is comfort only in the reflection that
mortals have preceded us, and that we are merely in Hagerman Tunnel[1]
and not knocking at the gates of sheol.
[1] Hagerman Tunnel is two thousand two hundred feet in length and
penetrates the Saguache Range at an elevation of eleven thousand five
hundred and twenty eight feet above sea level.
In the ghostly light of the car lamp I discover the venerable incubus
of Mr. Dide, and inquire what she thinks.
"Land sakes! it's flyin' in the face of the Almighty. I suppose it's
all right, but I kind o' wish I was well out of it and with Joshua. I
don't know but I was a little hard on that young man with the umbrill."
The Major, overhearing the wail, immediately entered upon the office
of comforter, and had but fairly begun when, swish! and we were in the
broad daylight once again, on the western slope of the Saguache Range.
There is a beautiful picture to the right; a few miles away, down the
mountain side, you catch a view of a little lake, bordered by a strip
of level ground carpeted in gold; back of this grow the pines, reaching
on and up to the summits of their homes, made dark and green; and away
beyond, delicately toned by the ever-present gray mist, stands a lofty
mountain range. The engineer is kindly and pauses here, that you may
have a glimpse of the enchanting retreat, over the memory of which you
may dream when you are back in the turmoil, and that will make you sigh
for the coming summer.
The character of the country through which we are now winding our way
down toward the valley is more rugged than on the eastern side. The
thickly wooded slopes give place to more frequent piles of granite,
massive and gray. We come suddenly upon a little park and find the
haymakers busy there, with a team of oxen, a motive power already
growing quite novel; a little further over, where the gorge widens,
affording a few acres of comparatively level ground, we find the
white tents of the campers-out. There is a newness about the cotton
habitations that suggests experiment. There are women in sun-bonnets
and calico gowns and a ruddiness of complexion no city air can paint.
Children with brown, bare legs scratched by the briars, their cheeks
tanned to a russet that affords a contrast to the whiteness of their
milk teeth. And these jolly little fellows always greet you with a
broad smile and a hurrah that is without feebleness or fever. Young men
in long rubber boots, helmet hats decorated with nondescript flies and
sporting an endless variety of trout rods. All pause to look at the
train, an act to which they would rarely condescend at home. But this
one, maybe, brings accessions to their ranks from the outside world, or
a newspaper, and serves as a link between what we call civilization and
the glorious freedom of the wilderness. A little further on, standing
upon the bank of a still reach, we encounter a tall "lone fisherman,"
dressed in overalls, a waistcoat ragged at the back, an old white felt
hat with the battered brim thrown up from his face and drooping behind;
in his hand a long cane pole which it makes one's arms ache to look
at. But he will come in to-night with that canvas bag swung from his
shoulder well filled with trout, and prove to you that the fishing is
good. Artificial flies are not indispensable with him; grasshoppers
when he can get them, bugs, grubs, a bit of beef or a strip from
the belly of his first trophy of the day, will serve his purpose; he
is "after meat" and gets it. What could he do with a fly and that
walking-beam?
We reach a cañon whose sides at its mouth are clothed with pines and
aspens; the rocks have changed from the granite to red sandstone and
great mountains made up of boulders and red clay. The latter have
been built here by the waters away back in the untold centuries, and
of whose abundance the beautiful crystal stream now brawling over
its pebbled bed is but a thread. As the once mighty force has cut
its way through all impediments and dwindled century by century to a
narrower channel, it has left exposed the great red cliffs; falling
still farther, soil has accumulated on the more gentle slopes and has
given these Titanic piles broad bases of green interspersed with wild
flowers, and the delicate feathers of the clematis here and there twine
among the willows. The winds and the rains have bestowed their aid and
carved the red mass into castles, buttressed and pinnacled. And so,
having traversed one of the grandest gorges in the State and enjoyed a
fair view of some of the loftiest mountain peaks and ranges, we slow
up in the beautiful valley of the Roaring Fork. The Major declared it
was the most delightful ride he had ever taken, and was disposed to
enthusiasm.
[Illustration: LOCH IVANHOE.]