Yet, After All, They Were Not Bad Souls; And
Though He Failed So Grotesquely, He Did His Incompetent Best.
The log fire in the ruinous cabin was cheery, and I kept it up
all night, and watched the stars through the holes in the roof,
and thought of Long's Peak in its glorious solitude, and resolved
that, come what might, I would reach Estes Park.
I. L. B.
Letter VI
A bronco mare - An accident - Wonderland - A sad story - The children
of the Territories - Hard greed - Halcyon hours -
Smartness - Old-fashioned prejudices - The Chicago colony - Good
luck - Three notes of admiration - A good horse - The St.
Vrain - The Rocky Mountains at last - "Mountain Jim" - A death
hug - Estes Park.
LOWER CANYON, September 25.
This is another world. My entrance upon it was signalized in
this fashion. Chalmers offered me a bronco mare for a reasonable
sum, and though she was a shifty, half-broken young thing, I came
over here on her to try her, when, just as I was going away, she
took into her head to "scare" and "buck," and when I touched her
with my foot she leaped over a heap of timber, and the girth gave
way, and the onlookers tell me that while she jumped I fell over
her tail from a good height upon the hard gravel, receiving a
parting kick on my knee. They could hardly believe that no bones
were broken. The flesh of my left arm looks crushed into a
jelly, but cold-water dressings will soon bring it right; and a
cut on my back bled profusely; and the bleeding, with many
bruises and the general shake, have made me feel weak, but
circumstances do not admit of "making a fuss," and I really think
that the rents in my riding dress will prove the most important
part of the accident.
The surroundings here are pleasing. The log cabin, on the top of
which a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built,
is in a valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a
little higher up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity.
One side of the valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of
porphyry as red as the reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing
into vermilion. Through rifts in the nearer ranges there are
glimpses of pine-clothed peaks, which, towards twilight, pass
through every shade of purple and violet. The sky and the earth
combine to form a Wonderland every evening - such rich, velvety
coloring in crimson and violet; such an orange, green, and
vermilion sky; such scarlet and emerald clouds; such an
extraordinary dryness and purity of atmosphere, and then the
glorious afterglow which seems to blend earth and heaven! For
color, the Rocky Mountains beat all I have seen. The air has been
cold, but the sun bright and hot during the last few days.
The story of my host is a story of misfortune. It indicates who
should NOT come to Colorado.[11] He and his wife are under
thirty-five.
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