We Got Across The River Partly On Ice And
Partly By Fording, And I Found That This Was The Place
Where, in
spite of its somewhat dubious reputation, I had been told that I
could put up.
A man came
Out in the sapient and good-natured stage of
intoxication, and, the door being opened, I was confronted by a
rough bar and a smoking, blazing kerosene lamp without a chimney.
This is the worst place I have put up at as to food, lodging, and
general character; an old and very dirty log cabin, not chinked,
with one dingy room used for cooking and feeding, in which a
miner was lying very ill of fever; then a large roofless shed
with a canvas side, which is to be an addition, and then the bar.
They accounted for the disorder by the building operations. They
asked me if I were the English lady written of in the Denver
News, and for once I was glad that my fame had preceded me, as it
seemed to secure me against being quietly "put out of the way."
A horrible meal was served - dirty, greasy, disgusting. A
celebrated hunter, Bob Craik, came in to supper with a young man
in tow, whom, in spite of his rough hunter's or miner's dress, I
at once recognized as an English gentleman. It was their
camp-fire which I had seen on the hill side. This gentleman was
lording it in true caricature fashion, with a Lord Dundreary
drawl and a general execration of everything; while I sat in the
chimney corner, speculating on the reason why many of the upper
class of my countrymen - "High Toners," as they are called out
here - make themselves so ludicrously absurd. They neither know
how to hold their tongues or to carry their personal pretensions.
An American is nationally assumptive, an Englishman personally
so. He took no notice of me till something passed which showed
him I was English, when his manner at once changed into courtesy,
and his drawl was shortened by a half. He took pains to let me
know that he was an officer in the Guards, of good family, on
four months' leave, which he was spending in slaying buffalo and
elk, and also that he had a profound contempt for everything
American. I cannot think why Englishmen put on these broad,
mouthing tones, and give so many personal details. They retired
to their camp, and the landlord having passed into the sodden,
sleepy stage of drunkenness, his wife asked if I should be afraid
to sleep in the large canvas-sided, unceiled, doorless shed, as
they could not move the sick miner. So, I slept there on a
shake-down, with the stars winking overhead through the roof, and
the mercury showing 30 degrees of frost.
I never told you that I once gave an unwary promise that I would
not travel alone in Colorado unarmed, and that in consequence I
left Estes Park with a Sharp's revolver loaded with ball
cartridge in my pocket, which has been the plague of my life.
Its bright ominous barrel peeped out in quiet Denver shops,
children pulled it out to play with, or when my riding dress hung
up with it in the pocket, pulled the whole from the peg to the
floor; and I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which I
could feel it right to make any use of it, or in which it could
do me any possible good. Last night, however, I took it out,
cleaned and oiled it, and laid it under my pillow, resolving to
keep awake all night. I slept as soon as I lay down, and never
woke till the bright morning sun shone through the roof, making
me ridicule my own fears and abjure pistols for ever.
I. L. B.
Letter XII
Deer Valley - Lynch law - Vigilance committees - The silver
spruce - Taste and abstinence - The whisky fiend - Smartness -
Turkey creek Canyon - The Indian problem - Public
rascality - Friendly meetings - The way to the Golden City - A
rising settlement - Clear Creek Canyon - Staging - Swearing - A
mountain town.
DEER VALLEY, November.
To-night I am in a beautiful place like a Dutch farm - large,
warm, bright, clean, with abundance of clean food, and a clean,
cold little bedroom to myself. But it is very hard to write, for
two free-tongued, noisy Irish women, who keep a miners'
boarding-house in South Park, and are going to winter quarters in
a freight wagon, are telling the most fearful stories of
violence, vigilance committees, Lynch law, and "stringing," that
I ever heard. It turns one's blood cold only to think that where
I travel in perfect security, only a short time ago men were
being shot like skunks. At the mining towns up above this nobody
is thought anything of who has not killed a man - i.e. in a
certain set. These women had a boarder, only fifteen, who
thought he could not be anything till he had shot somebody, and
they gave an absurd account of the lad dodging about with a
revolver, and not getting up courage enough to insult any one,
till at last he hid himself in the stable and shot the first
Chinaman who entered. Things up there are just in that initial
state which desperadoes love. A man accidentally shoves another
in a saloon, or says a rough word at meals, and the challenge,
"first finger on the trigger," warrants either in shooting the
other at any subsequent time without the formality of a duel.
Nearly all the shooting affrays arise from the most trivial
causes in saloons and bar-rooms. The deeper quarrels, arising
from jealousy or revenge, are few, and are usually about some
woman not worth fighting for. At Alma and Fairplay vigilance
committees have been lately formed, and when men act outrageously
and make themselves generally obnoxious they receive a letter
with a drawing of a tree, a man hanging from it, and a coffin
below, on which is written "Forewarned." They "git" in a few
hours.
When I said I spent last night at Hall's Gulch there was quite a
chorus of exclamations.
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