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 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 below zero. I think
I never saw such a brilliant atmosphere. That curious phenomenon
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 wagon 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 perfectly-fitting lemon-colored kid glove.[22] 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 realized 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!
[22] This was a truly unfortunate introduction.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 143 of 144
Words from 74200 to 74701
of 74789
