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, 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 Foot Hills. 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 realize 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.
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 convoying 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 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 far 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 600 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 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 a
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 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 regime. 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
recognized 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.
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