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
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 tantalizing 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 economize 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 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.
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 den.
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 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. 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.
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