In some places the ground is bare of snow, while in
others all irregularities are leveled, and the drifts are forty
feet deep.
Nature is grand under this new aspect. The cold is
awful; the high wind with the mercury at zero would skin any part
exposed to it.
October 19.
Evans offers me six dollars a week if I will stay into the winter
and do the cooking after Mrs. Edwards leaves! I think I should
like playing at being a "hired girl" if it were not for the
bread-making! But it would suit me better to ride after cattle.
The men don't like "baching," as it is called in the wilds - i.e.
"doing for themselves." They washed and ironed their clothes
yesterday, and there was an incongruity about the last
performance. I really think (though for the fifteenth time) that
I shall leave to-morrow. The cold has moderated, the sky is
bluer than ever, the snow is evaporating, and a hunter who has
joined us to-day says that there are no drifts on the trail which
one cannot get through.
LONGMOUNT, COLORADO, October 20.
"The Island Valley of Avillon" is left, but how shall I finally
tear myself from its freedom and enchantments? I see Long's
snowy peak rising into the night sky, and know and long after the
magnificence of the blue hollow at its base. We were to have
left at 8 but the horses were lost, so it was 9:30 before we
started, the WE being the musical young French Canadian and
myself. I have a bay Indian pony, "Birdie," a little beauty,
with legs of iron, fast, enduring, gentle, and wise; and with
luggage for some weeks, including a black silk dress, behind my
saddle, I am tolerably independent. It was a most glorious ride.
We passed through the gates of rock, through gorges where the
unsunned snow lay deep under the lemon-colored aspens; caught
glimpses of far-off, snow-clad giants rising into a sky of deep
sad blue; lunched above the Foot Hills at a cabin where two
brothers and a "hired man" were "keeping bach," where everything
was so trim, clean, and ornamental that one did not miss a woman;
crossed a deep backwater on a narrow beaver dam, because the log
bridge was broken down, and emerged from the brilliantly-colored
canyon of the St. Vrain just at dusk upon the featureless
prairies, when we had some trouble in finding Longmount in the
dark. A hospitable welcome awaited me at this inn, and an
English friend came in and spent the evening with me.
GREAT PLATTE CANYON, October 23.
My letters on this tour will, I fear, be very dull, for after
riding all day, looking after my pony, getting supper, hearing
about various routes, and the pastoral, agricultural, mining, and
hunting gossip of the neighborhood, I am so sleepy and
wholesomely tired that I can hardly write.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 76 of 144
Words from 39345 to 39845
of 74789
