"Please Ma'ams" - A desperado - A cattle hunt - The muster - A mad
cow - A snowstorm - Snowed up - Birdie - The Plains - A prairie
schooner - Denver - A find - Plum Creek - "Being
agreeable" - Snowbound - The grey mare.
ESTES PARK, COLORADO.
This afternoon, as I was reading in my cabin, little Sam Edwards
ran in, saying, "Mountain Jim wants to speak to you." This
brought to my mind images of infinite worry, gauche servants,
"please Ma'am," contretemps, and the habit growing out of our
elaborate and uselessly conventional life of magnifying the
importance of similar trifles. Then "things" came up, with
the tyranny they exercise. I REALLY need nothing more than this
log cabin offers. But elsewhere one must have a house and
servants, and burdens and worries - not that one may be hospitable
and comfortable, but for the "thick clay" in the shape of
"things" which one has accumulated. My log house takes me about
five minutes to "do," and you could eat off the floor, and
it needs no lock, as it contains nothing worth stealing.
But "Mountain Jim" was waiting while I made these reflections to
ask us to take a ride; and he, Mr. and Mrs. Dewy, and I, had a
delightful stroll through colored foliage, and then, when they
were fatigued, I changed my horse for his beautiful mare, and we
galloped and raced in the beautiful twilight, in the intoxicating
frosty air. Mrs. Dewy wishes you could have seen us as we
galloped down the pass, the fearful-looking ruffian on my heavy
wagon horse, and I on his bare wooden saddle, from which beaver,
mink, and marten tails, and pieces of skin, were hanging
raggedly, with one spur, and feet not in the stirrups, the mare
looking so aristocratic and I so beggarly! Mr. Nugent is what is
called "splendid company." With a sort of breezy mountain
recklessness in everything, he passes remarkably acute judgments
on men and events; on women also. He has pathos, poetry, and
humor, an intense love of nature, strong vanity in certain
directions, an obvious desire to act and speak in character, and
sustain his reputation as a desperado, a considerable
acquaintance with literature, a wonderful verbal memory, opinions
on every person and subject, a chivalrous respect for women in
his manner, which makes it all the more amusing when he suddenly
turns round upon one with some graceful raillery, a great power
of fascination, and a singular love of children. The children of
this house run to him, and when he sits down they climb on his
broad shoulders and play with his curls. They say in the house
that "no one who has been here thinks any one worth speaking to
after Jim," but I think that this is probably an opinion which
time would alter. Somehow, he is kept always before the public
of Colorado, for one can hardly take up a newspaper without
finding a paragraph about him, a contribution by him, or a
fragment of his biography.
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