A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains - Pages 239-296



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LETTER XIV.
A dismal Ride--A Desperado's Tale--"Lost! Lost! Lost!"--Winter Glories--
Solitude--Hard Times--Intense Cold--A Pack of Wolves--The Beaver Dams--
Ghostly Scenes--Venison Steaks--Our Evenings.

   ESTES PARK. 
   I MUST attempt to put down the trifling events of each day just as they 
occur. The second time that I was left alone Mr. Nugent came in looking 
very black, and asked me to ride with him to see the beaver dams on the 
Black Canyon. No more whistling or singing, or talking to his beautiful 
mare, or sparkling repartee. His mood was as dark as the sky overhead, 
which was black with an impending snowstorm. He was quite silent, struck 
his horse often, started off on a furious gallop, and then throwing his 
mare on her haunches close to me, said, "You're the first man or woman 
who's treated me like a human being for many a year." So he said in this 
dark mood, but Mr. and Mrs. Dewy, who took a very deep interest in his 
welfare, always treated him as a rational, intelligent gentleman, and in 
his better moments he spoke of them with the warmest appreciation. "If you 
want to know," he continued, 

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"how nearly a man can become a devil, I'll tell you now." There was no 
choice, and we rode up the canyon, and I listened to one of the darkest 
tales of ruin I have ever heard or read. Its early features were very 
simple. His father was a British officer quartered at Montreal, of a good 
old Irish family. From his account he was an ungovernable boy, imperfectly 
educated, and tyrannising over a loving but weak mother. When seventeen 
years old he saw a young girl at church whose appearance he described as 
being of angelic beauty, and fell in love with her with all the intensity 
of an uncontrolled nature. He saw her three times, but scarcely spoke to 
her. On his mother opposing his wish and treating it as a boyish folly, he 
took to drink "to spite her," and almost as soon as he was eighteen, 
maddened by the girl's death, he ran away from home, entered the service 
of the Hudson's Bay Company, and remained in it for several years, only 
leaving it because he found even that lawless life too strict for him. 
Then, being as I suppose about twenty-seven, he entered the service of the 
United States Government, and became one of the famous Indian Scouts of 
the Plains, distinguishing himself by some of the most daring deeds on 
record, and some of the bloodiest crimes. Some of these tales I have heard 
before, but never so terribly told. Years must have passed in that 
service, till he became a character known through all 

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the West, and much dreaded for his readiness to take offence, and his 
equal readiness with his revolver. Vain, even in his dark mood, he told me 
that he was idolised by women, and that in his worst hours he was always 
chivalrous to good women. He described himself as riding through camps in 
his scout's dress with a red scarf round his waist, and sixteen golden 
curls, eighteen inches long, hanging over his shoulders. The handsome, 
even superbly handsome, side of his face was towards me as he spoke. As a 
scout and as an armed escort of emigrant parties he was evidently 
implicated in all the blood and broil of a lawless region and period, and 
went from bad to worse, varying his life by drunken sprees, which brought 
nothing but violence and loss. The narrative seemed to lack some link, for 
I next found him on a homestead in Missouri, from whence he came to 
Colorado a few years ago. There, again, something was dropped out, but I 
suspect, and not without reason, that he joined one or more of those gangs 
of "border ruffians" which for so long raided through Kansas, perpetrating 
such massacres and outrages as that of the Marais du Cygne. His fame for 
violence and ruffianism preceded him into Colorado, where his knowledge of 
and love of the mountains have earned him the sobriquet he now bears. He 
has a squatter's claim and forty head of cattle, and is a successful 
trapper besides, but envy and vindictiveness are raging within him. He 

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gets money, goes to Denver, and spends large sums in the maddest 
dissipation, making himself a terror, and going beyond even such 
desperadoes as "Texas Jack" and "Wild Bill;" and when the money is done 
returns to his mountain den, full of hatred and self-scorn, till the next 
time. Of course I cannot give details. The story took three hours to tell, 
and was crowded with terrific illustrations of a desperado's career, told 
with a rush of wild eloquence that was truly thrilling. When the snow, 
which for some time had been falling, compelled him to break off and guide 
me to a sheltered place from which I could make my own way back again, he 
stopped his horse and said, "Now you see a man who has made a devil of 
himself! Lost! Lost! Lost! I believe in God. I've given Him no choice but 
to put me with 'the devil and his angels.' I'm afraid to die. You've 
stirred the better nature in me too late. I can't change. If ever a man 
were a slave, I am. Don't speak to me of repentance and reformation. I 
can't reform. Your voice reminded me of --." Then in feverish tones, "How 
dare you ride with me? You won't speak to me again, will you?" He made me 
promise to keep one or two things secret whether he were living or dead, 
and I promised, for I had no choice; but they come between me and the 
sunshine sometimes, and I wake at night to think of them. I wish I had 
been spared the regret and excitement of 

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that afternoon. A less ungovernable nature would never have spoken as he 
did, nor told me what he did; but his proud, fierce soul all poured itself 
out then, with hatred and self-loathing, blood on his hands and murder in 
his heart, though even then he could not be altogether other than a 
gentleman, or altogether divest himself of fascination, even when so 
tempestuously revealing the darkest points of his character. My soul 
dissolved in pity for his dark, lost, self-ruined life, as he left me and 
turned away in the blinding storm to the Snowy Range, where he said he was 
going to camp out for a fortnight; a man of great abilities, real genius, 
singular gifts, and with all the chances in life which other men have had. 
How far more terrible than the "Actum est: periisti" of Cowper is his 
exclamation, "Lost! Lost! Lost!"

   The storm was very severe, and the landmarks being blotted out, I lost 
my way in the snow, and when I reached the cabin after dark I found it 
still empty, for the two hunters, on returning, finding that I had gone 
out, had gone in search of me. The snow cleared off late, and intense 
frost set in. My room is nearly the open air, being built of unchinked 
logs, and, as in the open air, one requires to sleep with the head buried 
in blankets, or the eyelids and breath freeze. The sunshine has been 
brilliant to-day. I took a most beautiful ride to Black Canyon to look for 
the horses. Every day some new beauty, or effect 

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of snow and light, is to be seen. Nothing that I have seen in Colorado 
compares with Estes Park; and now that the weather is magnificent, and the 
mountain tops above the pine woods are pure white, there is nothing of 
beauty or grandeur for which the heart can wish that is not here; and it 
is health-giving, with pure air, pure water, and absolute dryness. But 
there is something very solemn, at times almost overwhelming, in the 
winter solitude. I have never experienced anything like it even when I 
lived on the slopes of Hualalai. When the men are out hunting I know not 
where, or at night, when storms sweep down from Long's Peak, and the air 
is full of stinging, tempest-driven snow and there is barely a probability 
of any one coming, or of any communication with the world at all, then the 
stupendous mountain ranges which lie between us and the plains grow in 
height till they become impassable barriers, and the bridgeless rivers 
grow in depth, and I wonder if all my life is to be spent here in washing 
and sweeping and baking. To-day has been one of manual labour. We did not 
breakfast till 9.30, then the men went out, and I never sat down till two. 
I cleaned the living-room and the kitchen, swept a path through the 
rubbish in the passage-room, washed up, made and baked a batch of rolls 
and four pounds of sweet biscuits, cleaned some tins and pans, washed some 
clothes, and gave things generally a "redding 

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up." There is a little thick buttermilk, fully six weeks old, at the 
bottom of a churn, which I use for raising the rolls; but Mr. Kavan, who 
makes "lovely" bread, puts some flour and water to turn sour near the 
stove, and this succeeds admirably. I also made a most unsatisfactory 
investigation into the state of my 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 

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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 snowstorm 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 waggon 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 

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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 glori- 

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ous, 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 him 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, arid 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 

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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. Kayan 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 

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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 
lawns of the Park were deserted of living things, 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 snowstorm 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 

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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 tantalising 
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 economise 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 

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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.

I.L.B. 

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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 din.

   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 

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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. 

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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 fist; it was 3.30 to-day 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 

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find Mr. Kavan busy at the stove flying 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 

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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 waggon and team, and that 
the waggon 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." So we had to settle 
what to do with him. We discussed the food question gravely, as it 
presented a real difficulty. We put 

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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 labour, 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 waggon-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 waggon lay half-
way down the side of a ravine, kept from destruction by having caught on 
some trees. It was too cold to 

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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, skins, 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 modelled--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 snowstorm, 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 

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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 waggon, but to-day it 
is difficult to keep the waterhole 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 new-comer 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 

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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 
steaks 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 

Page 262

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 honourable, 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 

Page 263

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 

Page 264

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 spiced 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 honour are disgusting, and quite out of keeping 
with his profession of being a theological student.

   This life is in some respects like being on board ship--there are no 
mails, and one knows nothing beyond one's little world, a very little one 
in this case. We find each other true, and have learnt to esteem and trust 
each other. I should, for instance, go out of this room leaving this book 
open on the table, knowing that the men would not read my letter. They are 
discreet, reticent, observant, and on many subjects well-informed, but 
they are of a type which has no antitype at home. All women work in this 
region, so there is no fuss about my working, or say- 

Page 265

ing, "Oh, you mustn't do that," or "Oh, let me do that."


   November 30. 
   We sat up till eleven last night, so confident were we that Edwards 
would leave Denver the day after Thanksgiving and get up here. This 
morning we came to the resolution that we must break up. Tea, coffee, and 
sugar are done, the venison is turning sour, and the men have only one 
month left for the hunting on which their winter living depends. I cannot 
leave the Territory till I get money, but I can go to Longmount for the 
mail and hear whether the panic is abating. Yesterday I was alone all day, 
and after riding to the base of Long's Peak, made two roly-poly puddings 
for supper, having nothing else. The men, however, came back perfectly 
loaded with trout, and we had a feast. Epicures at home would have envied 
us. Mr. Kavan kept the frying-pan with boiling butter on the stove, butter 
enough thoroughly to cover the trout, rolled them in coarse corn-meal, 
plunged them into the butter, turned them once, and took them out, 
thoroughly done, fizzing, and lemon-coloured. For once young Lyman was 
satisfied, for the dish was replenished as often as it was emptied. They 
caught 40 lbs., and have packed them in ice until they can be sent to 
Denver for sale. The winter fishing is very rich. In the hardest frost, 
men who fish not for sport, but 

Page 266

gain, take their axes and camping blankets, and go up to the hard-frozen 
waters which lie in fifty places round the Park, and choosing a likely 
spot, a little sheltered from the wind, hack a hole in the ice, and 
fastening a foot-link to a cotton-wood-tree, bait the hook with maggots or 
bits of easily-gotten fresh meat. Often the trout are caught as fast as 
the hook can be baited, and looking through the ice-hole in the track of a 
sunbeam, you see a mass of tails, silver fins, bright eyes, and crimson 
spots, a perfect shoal of fish, and truly beautiful the crimson-spotted 
creatures look, lying still and dead on the blue ice under the sunshine. 
Sometimes two men bring home 60 lbs. of trout as the result of one day's 
winter fishing. It is a cold and silent sport, however. How a cook at home 
would despise our scanty appliances, with which we turn out luxuries. We 
have only a cooking-stove, which requires incessant feeding with wood, a 
kettle, a flying-pan, a six-gallon brass pan, and a bottle for a rolling-
pin. The cold has been very severe, but I do not suffer from it even in my 
insufficient clothing. I take a piece of granite made very hot to bed, 
draw the blankets over my head and sleep eight hours, though the snow 
often covers me. One day of snow, mist, and darkness was rather 
depressing, and yesterday a hurricane began about five in the morning, and 
the whole Park was one swift of drifting snow, like stinging wood smoke. 

Page 267

   My bed and room were white, and the frost was so intense that water 
brought in a kettle hot from the fire froze as I poured it into the basin. 
Then the snow ceased, and a fierce wind blew most of it out of the Park, 
lifting it from the mountains in such clouds as to make Long's Peak look 
like a smoking volcano. To-day the sky has resumed its delicious blue, and 
the Park its unrivalled beauty. I have cleaned all the windows, which, 
ever since I have been here, I supposed were of discoloured glass, so 
opaque and dirty they were; and when the men came home from fishing they 
found a cheerful new world. We had a great deal of sacred music and 
singing on Sunday. Mr. Buchan asked me if I knew a tune called "America," 
and began the grand roll of our National Anthem to the words: 

"My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty," etc.


   December 1. 
   I was to have started for Canyon to-day, but was awoke by snow as 
stinging as pinpoints beating on my hand. We all got up early, but it did 
not improve until nearly noon. In the afternoon Lyman and I rode to Mr. 
Nugent's cabin. I wanted him to read and correct my letter to you, giving 
the account of our ascent of Long's Peak, but he said he could not, and 
insisted on our going in, 

Page 268

for which young Lyman was more anxious than I was, as Mr. Kavan had seen 
"Jim" in the morning, and departed from his usual reticence so far as to 
say, "There's something wrong with that man; he'll either shoot himself or 
somebody else." However, the "ugly fit" had passed off, and he was so very 
pleasant and courteous that we remained the whole afternoon. Lyman's one 
thought was that he could make capital out of the interview, and write an 
account of the celebrated desperado for a Western paper. The interior of 
the den was frightful, yet among his black and hideous surroundings the 
grace of his manner and the genius of his conversation were only more 
apparent. I read my letter aloud--or rather "The Ascent of Long's Peak," 
which I have written for Out West--and was sincerely interested with the 
taste and acumen of his criticisms on the style. He is a true child of 
nature; his eye brightened and his whole face became radiant, and at last 
tears rolled down his cheek when I read the account of the glory of the 
sunrise. Then he read us a very able paper on Spiritualism which he was 
writing. The den was dense with smoke, and very dark, littered with hay, 
old blankets, skins, bones, tins, logs, powder-flasks, magazines, old 
books, old moccasins, horseshoes, and relics of all kinds. He had no 
better seat to offer me than a log, but offered it with a graceful 
unconsciousness that it was any- 

Page 269

thing less luxurious than an easy-chair. Two valuable rifles and a Sharp's 
revolver hung on the wall, and the sash and badge of a scout. I could not 
help looking at "Jim" as he stood talking to me. He goes mad with drink at 
times, swears fearfully, has an ungovernable temper. He has formerly led a 
desperate life, and is at times even now undoubtedly a ruffian. There is 
hardly a fireside in Colorado where fearful stories of him as an Indian 
fighter are not told; mothers frighten their naughty children by telling 
them that "Mountain Jim" will get them, and doubtless his faults are 
glaring, but he is undoubtedly fascinating, and enjoys a popularity or 
notoriety which no other person has. He offered to be my guide to the 
plains when I go away. Lyman asked me if I should not be afraid of being 
murdered, but one could not be safer than with him I have often been told.

   The cold was truly awful. I had caught a chill in the morning from 
putting on my clothes before they were dry and the warmth of the smoky den 
was most agreeable; but we had a fearful ride back in the dusk, a gale 
nearly blowing us off our horses, drifting snow nearly blinding us, and 
the mercury below zero. I felt as if I were going to be laid up with a 
severe cold, but the men suggested a trapper's remedy--a tumbler of hot 
water, with a pinch of cayenne pepper in it--which proved a very rapid 

Page 270

cure. They kindly say that if the snow detains me here they also will 
remain. They tell me that they were horrified when I arrived, as they 
thought that they could not make me comfortable, and that I had never been 
used to do anything for myself, and then we complimented each other all 
round. To-morrow, weather permitting, I set off for a ride of 100 miles, 
and my next letter will be my last from the Rocky Mountains.

I.L.B. 

Page 271

LETTER XVI.
A Harmonious Home--Intense Cold--A Purple Sun--A Grim Jest--A Perilous 
Ride--Frozen Eyelids--Long Mount--The Pathless Prairie--Hardships of 
Emigrant Life--A Trapper's Advice--The Little Thompson--Evans and Jim.

   DR. HUGHES'S, LOWER CANYON, COLORADO, Dec. 4th. 
   ONCE again here, in refined and cultured society, with harmonious 
voices about me, and dear sweet, loving children whose winning ways make 
this cabin a true English home. "England, with all thy faults, I love thee 
still!" I can truly say, 

"Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see.
 My heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee."

If it swerved a little in the Sandwich Islands, it is true to the Pole 
now! Surely one advantage of travelling is that, while it removes much 
prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold 
one's appreciation of the good at home, and, above all, of the quietness 
and purity of English domestic life. These reflections are forced upon me 
by the sweet child-voices about me, and by the exquisite consideration and 
tenderness which are the 

Page 272

atmosphere (some would call it the hothouse atmosphere) of this house. But 
with the bare, hard life, and the bare, bleak mountains around, who could 
find fault with even a hothouse atmosphere, if it can nourish such a 
flower of Paradise as sacred human love?

   The mercury is eleven degrees below zero, and I have to keep my ink on 
the stove to prevent it from freezing. The cold is intense--a clear, 
brilliant, stimulating cold, so dry that even in my threadbare flannel 
riding-dress I do not suffer from it. I must now take up my narrative of 
the nothings which have all the interest of somethings to me. We all got 
up before daybreak on Tuesday, and breakfasted at seven. I have not seen 
the dawn for some time, with its amber fires deepening into red, and the 
snow peaks flushing one by one, and it seemed a new miracle. It was a west 
wind, and we all thought it promised well. I took only two pounds of 
luggage, some raisins, the mail bag, and an additional blanket under my 
saddle. I had not been up from the Park at sunrise before, and it was 
quite glorious, the purple depths of M'Ginn's Gulch, from which at a 
height of 9000 feet you look down on the sunlit Park 1500 feet below, 
lying in a red haze, with its pearly needle-shaped peaks, framed by 
mountain-sides dark with pines--my glorious, solitary, unique mountain 
home! The purple sun rose in front. Had 

Page 273

I known what made it purple I should certainly, have gone no farther. Then 
clouds, the morning mist as I supposed, lifted themselves up rose-lighted, 
showing the sun's disc as purple as one of the jars in a chemist's window, 
and having permitted this glimpse of their king, came down again as a 
dense mist, the wind chopped round, and the mist began to freeze hard. 
Soon Birdie and myself were a mass of acicular crystals; it was a true 
easterly fog. I galloped on, hoping to get through it, unable to see a 
yard before me; but it thickened, and I was obliged to subside into a jog-
trot. As I rode on, about four miles from the cabin, a human figure, 
looking gigantic like the spectre of the Brocken, with long hair white as 
snow, appeared close to me, and at the same moment there was the flash of 
a pistol close to my ear, and I recognised "Mountain Jim" frozen from head 
to foot, looking a century old with his snowy hair. It was "ugly" 
altogether certainly, a "desperado's" grim jest, and it was best, to 
accept it as such, though I had just cause for displeasure. He stormed and 
scolded, dragged me, off the pony--for my hands and feet were numb with 
cold--took the bridle, and went off at a rapid stride, so that I had to 
run to keep them in sight in the darkness, for we were off the road in a 
thicket of scrub, looking like white branch-coral, I knew not where. Then 
we came suddenly on his cabin, and 

Page 274

dear old "Ring," white like all else; and the "ruffian" insisted on my 
going in, and he made a good fire, and heated some coffee, raging all the 
time. He said everything against my going forward, except that it was 
dangerous; all he said came true, and here I am safe! Your letters, 
however, outweighed everything but danger, and I decided on going on, when 
he said, "I've seen many foolish people, but never one so foolish as you--
you haven't a grain of sense. Why, I, an old mountaineer, wouldn't go down 
to the plans to-day." I told him he could not, though he would like it 
very much, for that he had turned his horses loose; on which he laughed 
heartily, and more heartily still at the stories I told him of young 
Lyman, so that I have still a doubt how much of the dark moods I have 
lately seen was assumed.

   He took me back to the track; and the interview which began with a 
pistol-shot, ended quite pleasantly. It was an eerie ride, one not to be 
forgotten, though there was no danger. I could not recognise any 
localities. Every tree was silvered, and the fir-tree tufts of needles 
looked like white chrysanthemums. The snow lay a foot deep in the gulches, 
with its hard, smooth surface marked by the feet of innumerable birds and 
beasts. Ice bridges had formed across all the streams, and I crossed them 
without knowing when. Gulches looked fathomless abysses, 

Page 275

with clouds boiling up out of them, and shaggy mountain summits, half seen 
for a moment through the eddies; as quickly vanished. Everything looked 
vast and indefinite. Then a huge creation, like one of Doré's phantom 
illustrations, with much breathing of wings, came sailing towards me in a 
temporary opening in the mist. As with a strange rustle it passed close 
over my head, I saw, for the first time, the great mountain eagle, 
carrying a good-sized beast in his talons. It was a noble vision. Then 
there were ten miles of metamorphosed gulches--silent, awful--many ice 
bridges, then a frozen drizzle, and then the wind changed from east to 
north-east. Birdie was covered with exquisite crystals, and her long mane 
and the long beard which covers her throat were pure white. I saw that I 
must give up crossing the mountains to this place by an unknown trail; and 
I struck the old trail to the St. Vrain which I had never travelled 
before, but which I knew to be more legible than the new one. The fog grew 
darker and thicker, the day colder and windier, the drifts deeper; but 
Birdie, whose four cunning feet had carried me 600 miles, and who in all 
difficulties proves her value, never flinched or made a false step, or 
gave me reason to be sorry that I had come on. I got down to the St. Vrain 
Canyon in good time, and stopped at a house thirteen miles from Longmount 
to get oats. I was white from head to foot 

Page 276

and my clothes were frozen stiff. The women gave me the usual invitation, 
"Put your feet in the oven;" and I got my clothes thawed and dried, and a 
delicious meal consisting of a basin of cream and bread. They said it 
would be worse on the plains, for it was an easterly storm; but as I was 
so used to riding, I could get on, so we started at 2.30. Not far off I 
met Edwards going up at last to Estes Park, and soon after the snowstorm 
began in earnest--or rather I entered the storm, which had been going on 
there for several hours. By that time I had reached the prairie, only 
eight miles from Longmount, and pushed on. It was simply fearful. It was 
twilight from the thick snow, and I faced a furious east wind loaded with 
fine, hard-frozen crystals, which literally made my face bleed. I could 
only see a very short distance anywhere; tile drifts were often two feet 
deep, and only now and then, through the blinding whirl, I caught a 
glimpse of snow through which withered sunflowers did not protrude, and 
then I knew that I was on the track. But reaching a wild place, I lost it, 
and still cantered on, trusting to the pony's sagacity. It failed for 
once, for she took me on a lake and we fell through the ice into the 
water, 100 yards from land, and had a hard fight back again. It grew worse 
and worse. I had wrapped up my face, but the sharp, hard snow beat on my 
eyes--the only exposed part--bringing tears into them, which 

Page 277

froze and closed up my eyelids at once. You cannot imagine what that was. 
I had to take off one glove to pick one eye open, for as to the other, the 
storm beat so savagely against it that I left it frozen, and drew over it 
the double piece of flannel which protected my face. I could hardly keep 
the other open by picking the ice from it constantly with my numb fingers, 
in doing which I got the back of my hand slightly frostbitten. It was 
truly awful at the time. I often thought, "Suppose I am going south 
instead of east? Suppose Birdie should fail? Suppose it should grow quite 
dark?" I was mountaineer enough to shake these fears off and keep up my 
spirits, but I knew how many had perished on the prairie in similar 
storms. I calculated that if I did not reach Longmount in half an hour it 
would be quite dark, and that I should be so frozen or paralysed with cold 
that I should fall off. Not a quarter of an hour after I had wondered how 
long I could hold on I saw, to my surprise, close to me, half smothered in 
snow, the scattered houses and blessed lights of Longmount, and welcome, 
indeed, its wide, dreary, lifeless, soundless road looked! When I reached 
the hotel I was so benumbed that I could not get off; and the worthy host 
lifted me off and carried me in. Not expecting any travellers, they had no 
fire except in the barroom, so they took me to the stove in their own 
room, gave me a hot drink and plenty of blankets 

Page 278

and in half an hour I was all right and ready for a ferocious meal. "If 
there's a traveller on the prairie to-night, God help him!" the host had 
said to his wife just before I came in.

   I found Evans there, storm-stayed, and that--to his great credit at the 
time--my money matters were all right. After the sound and refreshing 
sleep which one gets in this splendid climate, I was ready for an early 
start, but, warned by yesterday's experience, waited till twelve to be 
sure of the weather. The air was intensely clear, and the mercury 
seventeen degrees below zero! The snow sparkled and snapped under one's 
feet. It was gloriously beautiful! In this climate, if you only go out for 
a short time you do not feel cold even without a hat, or any additional 
wrappings. I bought a cardigan for myself; however, and some thick socks, 
got some stout snowshoes for Birdie's hind feet, had a pleasant talk with 
some English friends, did some commissions for the men in the Park, and 
hung about waiting for a freight train to break the track, but eventually, 
inspirited by the good news from you, left Longmount alone, and for the 
last time. I little thought that miserable, broiling day on which I 
arrived at it with Dr. and Mrs. Hughes, of the glories of which it was the 
gate, and of the "good time" I should have. Now I am at home in it; every 
one in it and along the St. Vrain Canyon addresses me in a friendly way by 

Page 279

name; and the newspapers, with their intolerable personality, have made me 
and my riding exploits so notorious, that travellers speak courteously to 
me when they meet me on the prairie, doubtless wishing to see what sort of 
monster I am! I have met nothing but civility, both of manner and speech, 
except that distraught pistol-shot. It looked icily beautiful, the snow so 
pure and the sky such a bright, sharp blue! The snow was so deep and level 
that after a few miles I left the track, and, steering for Storm Peak, 
rode sixteen miles over the pathless prairie without seeing man, bird, or 
beast--a solitude awful even in the bright sunshine. The cold, always 
great, became piteous. I increased the frostbite of yesterday by exposing 
my hand in mending the stirrup; and when the sun sank in indescribable 
beauty behind the mountains, and colour rioted in the sky, I got off and 
walked the last four miles, and stole in here in the coloured twilight 
without any one seeing me.

   The life of which I wrote before is scarcely less severe, though 
lightened by a hope of change, and this weather brings out some special 
severities. The stove has to be in the living-room, the children cannot go 
out, and, good and delightful as they are, it is hard for them to be shut 
up all day with four adults. It is more of a trouble than you would think 
for a lady in precarious health that before each meal, 

Page 280

eggs, butter, milk, preserves, and pickles have to be unfrozen. Unless 
they are kept on the stove, there is no part of the room in which they do 
not freeze. It is uninteresting down here in the foothills. I long for the 
rushing winds, the piled-up peaks, the great pines, the wild night noises, 
the poetry and the prose of the free, jolly life of my unrivalled eyrie. I 
can hardly realise that the river which lies ice-bound outside this house 
is the same which flashes through Estes Park, and which I saw snow-born on 
Long's Peak.


   ESTES PARK, December 7. 
   Yesterday morning the mercury had disappeared, so it was 20 degrees 
below zero at least. I lay awake from cold all night, but such is the 
wonderful effect of the climate, that when I got up at half-past five to 
waken the household for my early start, I felt quite refreshed. We 
breakfasted on buffalo beef, and I left at eight to ride forty-five miles 
before night, Dr. Hughes and a gentleman who was staying there conveying 
me the first fifteen miles. I did like that ride, racing with the other 
riders, careering through the intoxicating air in that indescribable 
sunshine, the powdery snow spurned from the horses' feet like dust! I was 
soon warm. We stopped at a trapper's ranch to feed, and the old trapper 
amused me by seeming to think Estes Park almost inaccessible in winter. 
The distance was 

Page 281

greater than I had been told, and he said that I could not get there 
before eleven at night, and not at all if there was much drift. I wanted 
the gentlemen to go on with me as the as the Devil's Gate, but they could 
not because their horses were tired; and when the trapper heard that he 
exclaimed, indignantly, "What! that woman going into the mountains alone? 
She'll lose the track or be froze to death!" But when I told him I had 
ridden the trail in the storm of Tuesday, and had ridden over six hundred 
miles alone in the mountains, he treated me with great respect as a fellow-
mountaineer, and gave me some matches, saying, "You'll have to camp out 
anyhow; you'd better make a fire than be froze to death." The idea of my 
spending the night in the forest alone, by a fire, struck me as most 
grotesque.

   We did not start again till one, and the two gentlemen rode the first 
two miles with me. On that track, the Little Thompson, there a full 
stream, has to be crossed eighteen times, and they had been hauling wood 
across it, breaking it, and it had broken and refrozen several times, 
making thick and thin places indeed, there were crossings which even I 
thought bad, where the ice let us through, and it was hard for the horses 
to struggle upon it again; and one of the gentlemen who, though a most 
accomplished man, was not a horseman, was once or twice 

Page 282

in the ludicrous position of hesitating on the bank with an anxious face, 
not daring to spur his horse upon the ice. After they left me I had eight 
more crossings, and then a ride of six miles, before I reached the old 
trail; but though there were several drifts up to the saddle, and no one 
had broken a track, Birdie showed such pluck, that instead of spending the 
night by a camp fire, or not getting in till midnight, I reached Mr. 
Nugent's cabin, four miles from Estes Park, only an hour after dark, very 
cold, and with the pony so tired that she could hardly put one foot before 
another. Indeed, I walked the last three miles. I saw light through the 
chinks, but, hearing an earnest conversation within, was just about to 
withdraw, when "Ring" barked, and on his master coming to the door I found 
that the solitary man was talking to his dog. He was looking out for me, 
and had some coffee ready, and a large fire, which were very pleasant; and 
I was very glad to get the latest news from the Park. He said that Evans 
told him that it would be most difficult for any one of them to take me 
down to the plains, but that he would go, which is a great relief. 
According to the Scotch proverb, "Better a finger off than aye wagging," 
and as I cannot live here (for you would not like the life or climate), 
the sooner I leave the better.

   The solitary ride to Evans's was very eerie. It 

Page 283

was very dark, and the noises were unintelligible. Young Lyman rushed out 
to take my horse, and the light and warmth within were delightful, but 
there was a stiffness about the new régime. Evans, though steeped in 
difficulties, was as hearty and generous as ever; but Edwards, who had 
assumed the management, is prudent, if not parsimonious, thinks we wasted 
the supplies recklessly, and the limitations as to milk, etc., are 
painfully apparent. A young ex-Guardsman has come up with Evans, of whom 
the sanguine creature forms great expectations, to be disappointed 
doubtless. In the afternoon of yesterday a gentleman came who I thought 
was another stranger, strikingly handsome, well-dressed, and barely forty, 
with sixteen shining gold curls falling down his collar; he walked in, and 
it was only after a careful second look that I recognised in our visitor 
the redoubtable "desperado." Evans courteously pressed him to stay and 
dine with us, and not only did he show the most singular conversational 
dexterity in talking with the stranger, who was a very well-informed man, 
and had seen a great deal of the world, but, though he lives and eats like 
a savage, his manners and way of eating were as refined as possible. I 
notice that Evans is never quite himself or perfectly comfortable when he 
is there; and on the part of the other there is a sort of stiffly-assumed 
cordiality, significant, I fear, of lurking hatred on 

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both sides. I was in the kitchen after dinner making rolled puddings, 
young Lyman was eating up the relics as usual, "Jim" was singing one of 
Moore's melodies, the others being in the living-room, when Mr. Kavan and 
Mr. Buchan came from "up the creek" to wish me good-bye. They said it was 
not half so much like home now, and recalled the "good time" we had had 
for three weeks. Lyman having lost the cow, we have no milk. No one makes 
bread; they dry the venison into chips, and getting the meals at all seems 
a work of toil and difficulty, instead of the pleasure it used to be to 
us. Evans, since tea, has told me all his troubles and worries. He is a 
kind, generous, whole-hearted, unsuspicious man, a worse enemy to himself, 
I believe, than to any other; but I feel sadly that the future of a man 
who has not stronger principles than he has must be a the best very 
insecure.

I.L.B. 

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LETTER XVII.
Woman's Mission--The Last Morning--Crossing the St. Vrain--Miller--The St. 
Vrain again--Crossing the Prairie--Jim's Dream--"Keeping Strangers"--The 
Inn Kitchen--A reputed Child-Eater--Notoriety--A quiet Dance--Jim's 
Resolve--The Frost-Fall--An unfortunate Introduction.

   CHEYENNE, WYOMING, December 12. 
   THE last evening came. I did not wish to realise it, as I looked at the 
snow-peaks glistening in the moon-fight. No woman will be seen in the Park 
till next May. Young Lyman talked in a "hifalutin" style, but with some 
truth in it, of the influence of a woman's presence, how "low, mean, 
vulgar talk" had died out on my return, how they had "all pulled 
themselves up," and how Mr. Kavan and Mr. Buchan had said they would like 
always to be as quiet and gentlemanly as when a lady was with them. "By 
May," he said, "we shall be little better than brutes, in our manners at 
least." I have seen a great deal of the roughest class of men both on sea 
and land during the last two years, and the more important I think the 
"mission" of every quiet, refined, self respecting woman--the more 
mistaken I think those who would 

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forfeit it by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this 
wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the 
influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the 
first continually exerts its restraining power. The last morning came. I 
cleaned up my room and sat at the window watching the red and gold of one 
of the most glorious of winter sunrises, and the slow lighting-up of one 
peak after another. I have written that this scenery is not lovable, but I 
love it.

   I left on Birdie at 11 o'clock, Evans riding with me as far as Mr. 
Nugent's. He was telling me so many things, that at the top of the hill I 
forgot to turn round and take a last look at my colossal, resplendent, 
lonely, sunlit den, but it was needless, for I carry it away with me. I 
should not have been able to leave if Mr. Nugent had not offered his 
services. His chivalry to women is so well known, that Evans said I could 
be safer and better cared for with no one. He added, "His heart is good 
and kind, as kind a heart as ever beat. He's a great enemy of his own, but 
he's been living pretty quietly for the last four years." At the door of 
his den I took leave of Birdie, who had been my faithful companion for 
more than 700 miles of travelling, and of Evans, who had been uniformly 
kind to me and just in all his dealings, even to paying to me at that 
moment the very last dollar he owed me. May God bless him and his. 

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He was obliged to return before I could get off, and as he commended me to 
Mr. Nugent's care, the two men shook hands kindly.(*)

   Rich spoils of beavers' skins were lying on the cabin floor, and the 
trapper took the finest, a mouse-coloured kitten beaver's skin, and 
presented it to me. I hired his beautiful Arab mare, whose springy step 
and long easy stride was a relief after Birdie's short sturdy gait. We had 
a very pleasant ride, and I seldom had to walk. We took neither of the 
trails, but cut right through the forest to a place where, through an 
opening in the foothills, the plains stretched to the horizon covered with 
snow, the surface of which, having melted and frozen, reflected as water 
would the pure blue of the sky, presenting a complete optical illusion. It 
required my knowledge of fact to assure me that I was not looking at the 
ocean. "Jim" shortened the way by repeating a great deal of poetry, and by 
earnest, reasonable conversation, so that I was quite surprised when it 
grew dark. He told me that he never lay down to sleep 

(* Some months later "Mountain Jim" fell by Evans's hand, shot from 
Evans's doorstep while riding past his cabin. The story of the previous 
weeks is dark, sad, and evil. Of the five differing versions which have 
been written to me of the act itself and its immediate causes, it is best 
to give none. The tragedy is too painful to dwell upon. "Jim" lived long 
enough to give his own statement, and to appeal to the judgment of God, 
but died in low delirium before the case reached a human tribunal.)

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without prayer--prayer chiefly that God would give him at happy death, He 
had previously promised that he would not hurry or scold, but "fyking" had 
not been included in the arrangement, and when in the early darkness we 
reached the steep hill, at whose foot the rapid deep St. Vrain flows, he 
"fyked" unreasonably about me, the mare, and the crossing generally, and 
seemed to think I could not get through, for the ice had been cut with an 
axe, and we could not see weather "glaze" had formed since or no. I was to 
have slept at the house of a woman farther down the canyon, who never 
ceases talking, but Miller, the young man whose attractive house and 
admirable habits I have mentioned before, came out and said his house was 
"now fixed for ladies," so we stayed there, and I was "made as 
comfortable" as could be. His house is a model. He cleans everything as 
soon as it is used, so nothing is ever dirty, and his stove and cooking 
gear in their bright parts look like polished silver. It was amusing to 
hear the two men talk like two women about various ways of making bread 
and biscuits, one even writhing out a recipe for the other. It was almost 
grievous that a solitary man should have the power of making a house so 
comfortable! They heated a stone for my feet, warmed a blanket for me to 
sleep in, and put logs enough on the fire to burn all night, for the 
mercury was eleven below zero. The stars were in- 

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tensely bright, and a well-defined auroral arch, throwing off fantastic 
coruscations, lighted the whole northern sky. Yet I was only in the 
foothills, and Long's glorious Peak was not to be seen. Miller had all his 
things "washed up" and his "pots and pans" cleaned in ten minutes after 
supper, and then had the whole evening in which to smoke and enjoy 
himself--a poor woman would probably have been "fussing round" till 10 
o'clock about the same work. Besides Ring there was another gigantic dog 
craving for notice, and two large cats, which, the whole evening, were on 
their master's knee. Cold as the night was, the house was chinked, and the 
rooms felt quite warm. I even missed the free currents of air which I had 
been used to! This was my last evening in what may be called a mountainous 
region.

   The next morning, as soon as the sun was well risen, we left for our 
journey of 30 miles, which had to be done nearly at a foot's pace, owing 
to one horse being encumbered with my luggage. I did not wish to realise 
that it was my last ride, and my last association with any of the men of 
the mountains whom I had learned to trust, and in some respects to admire. 
No more hunters' tales told while the pine knots crack and blaze; no more 
thrilling narratives of adventures with Indians and bears; and never again 
shall I hear that strange talk of Nature and her doings which is the 
speech of those who live with her 

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and her alone. Already the disrealness of a level land comes over me. The 
canyon of the St. Vrain was in all its glory of colour, but we had a 
remarkably ugly crossing of that brilliant river, which was frozen all 
over, except an unpleasant gap of about two feet in the middle. Mr. Nugent 
had to drive the frightened horses through, while I, having crossed on 
some logs lower down, had to catch them on the other side as they plunged 
to shore trembling with fear. Then we emerged on the vast expanse of the 
glittering plains, and a sudden sweep of wind made the cold so intolerable 
that I had to go into a house to get warm. This was the last house we saw 
till we reached our destination that night. I never saw the mountain range 
look so beautiful--uplifted in every shade of transparent blue, till the 
sublimity of Long's Peak, and the lofty crest of Storm Peak, bore only 
unsullied snow against the sky. Peaks gleamed in living light; canyons lay 
in depth of purple shade; 100 miles away Pike's Peak rose a lump of blue, 
and over all, through that glorious afternoon, a veil of blue 
spiritualised without dimming the outlines of that most glorious range, 
making it look like the dreamed-of mountains of "the land which is very 
far off," till at sunset it stood out sharp in glories of violet and opal, 
and the whole horizon up to a great height was suffused with the deep rose 
and pure orange of the afterglow. It seemed all dream-like 

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as we passed through the sunlit solitude, on the right the prairie waves 
lessening towards the far horizon, while on the left they broke in great 
snowy surges against the Rocky Mountains. All that day we neither saw man, 
beast, nor bird. "Jim" was silent mostly. Like all true children of the 
mountains, he pined even when temporarily absent from them.

   At sunset we reached a cluster of houses called Namaqua, where, to my 
dismay, I heard that there was to be a dance at the one little inn to 
which we were going at St. Louis. I pictured to myself no privacy, no 
peace, no sleep, drinking, low sounds, and worse than all, "Jim" getting 
into a quarrel and using his pistols. He was uncomfortable about it for 
another reason. He said he had dreamt the night before that there was to 
be a dance, and that he had to shoot a man for making "an unpleasant 
remark!" For the last three miles which we accomplished after sunset the 
cold was most severe, but nothing could exceed the beauty of the 
afterglow, and the strange look of the rolling plains of snow beneath it. 
When we got to the queer little place where they "keep strangers" at St. 
Louis, they were very civil, and said that after supper we could have the 
kitchen to ourselves. I found a large, prononcée, competent, bustling 
widow, hugely stout, able to manage all men and everything else, and a 
very florid sister like herself, top-heavy with hair. There 

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were besides two naughty children in the kitchen, who cried incessantly, 
and kept opening and shutting the door. There was no place to sit down but 
a wooden chair by the side of the kitchen stove, at which supper was being 
cooked for ten men. The bustle and clatter were indescribable, and the 
landlady asked innumerable questions, and seemed to fill the whole room. 
The only expedient for me for the night was to sleep on a shakedown in a 
very small room occupied by the two women and the children, and even this 
was not available till midnight, when the dance terminated; and there was 
no place in which to wash except a bowl in the kitchen. I sat by the stove 
till supper, wearying of the noise and bustle after the quiet of Estes 
Park. The landlady asked with great eagerness, who the gentleman was who 
was with me, and said that the men outside were saying that they were sure 
that it was "Rocky Mountain Jim," but she was sure it was not. When I told 
her that the men were right, she exclaimed, "Do tell! I want to know! that 
quiet, kind gentleman!" and she said she used to frighten her children 
when they were naughty by telling them that "he would get them, for he 
came down from the mountains every week, and took back a child with him to 
eat!" She was as proud of having him in her houses if he had been the 
President, and I gained a reflected importance! All the men in the 
settlement 

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assembled in the front room, hoping he would go and smoke there, and when 
he remained in the kitchen they came round the window and into the doorway 
to look at him. The children got on his knee, and, to my great relief, he 
kept them good and quiet, and let them play with his curls, to the great 
delight of the two women, who never took their eyes off him. At last the 
bad-smelling supper was served, and ten silent men came in and gobbled it 
up, staring steadily at "Jim" as they gobbled. Afterwards, there seemed no 
hope of quiet, so we went to the post-office, and while waiting for stamps 
were shown into the prettiest and most ladylike-looking room I have seen 
in the West, created by a pretty and refined-looking woman. She made an 
opportunity for asking me if it were true that the gentleman with me was 
"Mountain Jim," and added that so very gentlemanly a person could not be 
guilty of the misdeeds attributed to him. When we returned, the kitchen 
was much quieter. It was cleared by eight, as the landlady promised; we 
had it to ourselves till twelve, and could scarcely hear the music. It was 
a most respectable dance, a fortnightly gathering got up by the 
neighbouring settlers, most of them young married people, and there was no 
drinking at all. I wrote to you for some time, while Mr. Nugent copied for 
himself the poems "In the Glen" and the latter half of "The River without 
a Bridge," which he re- 

Page 294

cited with deep feeling. It was altogether very quiet and peaceful. He 
repeated to me several poems of great merit which he had composed, and 
told me much more about his life. I knew that no one else could or would 
speak to him as I could, and for the last time I urged upon him the 
necessity of a reformation in his life, beginning with the giving up of 
whisky, going so far as to tell him that I despised a man of his intellect 
for being a slave to such a vice. "Too late! too late!" he always 
answered, "for such a change." Ay, too late. He shed tears quietly. "It 
might have been once," he said. Ay, might have been. He has excellent 
sense for every one but himself, and, as I have seen him with a single 
exception, a gentleness, propriety, and considerateness of manner 
surprising in any man, but especially so in a man associating only with 
the rough men of the West. As I looked at him, I felt a pity such as I 
never before felt for a human being. My thought at the moment was, Will 
not our Father in heaven, "who spared not His own Son but delivered Him up 
for us all," be far more pitiful? For the time a desire for self-respect, 
better aspirations, and even hope itself, entered his dark life; and he 
said, suddenly, that he had made up his mind to give up whisky and his 
reputation as a desperado. But it is "too late." A little before twelve 
the dance was over, and I got to the crowded little bedroom, which 

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only allowed of one person standing in it at a time, to sleep soundly and 
dream of "ninety-and-nine just persons who need no repentance." The 
landlady was quite taken up with her "distinguished guest." "That kind, 
quiet gentleman, Mountain Jim! Well, I never! he must be a very good man!"

   Yesterday morning the mercury was 20 degrees zero. I think I never saw 
such a brilliant atmosphere. That curious phenomena called frost-fall was 
occurring, in which, whatever moisture may exist in the air, somehow 
aggregates into feathers and fern-leaves, the loveliest of creations, only 
seen in rarefied air and intense cold. One breath and they vanish. The air 
was filled with diamond sparks quite intangible. They seemed just glitter 
and no more. It was still and cloudless, and the shapes of violet 
mountains were softened by a veil of the tenderest blue. When the Greeley 
stage-waggon came up, Mr. Fodder, whom I met at Lower Canyon, was on it. 
He had expressed a great wish to go to Estes Park, and to hunt with 
"Mountain Jim," if it would be safe to do the latter. He was now dressed 
in the extreme of English dandyism, and when I introduced them,(*) he put 
out a small hand cased in a

(* This was a truly unfortunate introduction. It was the first link in the 
chain of circumstances which brought about Mr. Nugent's untimely end, and 
it was at this person's instigation (when overcome by fear) that Evans 
fired the shot which proved fatal.)

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perfectly-fitting lemon-coloured kid glove. As the trapper stood there in 
his grotesque rags and odds and ends of apparel, his gentlemanliness of 
deportment brought into relief the innate vulgarity of a rich parvenu. Mr. 
Fodder rattled so amusingly as we drove away that I never realised that my 
Rocky Mountain life was at an end, not even when I saw "Mountain Jim," 
with his golden hair yellow in the sunshine, slowly leading the beautiful 
mare over the snowy plains back to Estes Park, equipped with the saddle on 
which I had ridden 800 miles!

   A drive of several hours over the plains brought us to Greeley, and a 
few hours later, in the far blue distance, the Rocky Mountains, and all 
that they enclose, went down below the prairie sea.

I.L.B.