Part 7

But later on, when the cloud with the silver lining had turned a little of its brighter side our way, there came out to us one of your down-east girls, to whom the “Great American Desert” was a revelation, and these grand old mountains an epic. It was the season for camping, and she was stricken with the mania at once. She approached the subject tenderfootedly, but being assured that nothing was easier, nothing better for city folks, ecstacy was the consequence. Then there suddenly arose an insurmountable barrier.

“What will you do with the Governor?”

“Take him along, of course.”

“What! baby sleep in a tent? Be eaten by mosquitoes, rained on and bitten by snakes?”

The prospect was appalling; but then I assured her that fresh air never hurt babies; that mosquitoes were unknown, in August, at least; that rain was such a rarity that I was compelled to go to the creek for moisture, and as for snakes, the rattlers, at least, they never got beyond the foot hills; the little gart—a-hem—striped snakes were pleasant to have around, and were cleaner than flies. Besides it was confidently anticipated that baby was about to distinguish himself, and there was no panacea so efficacious for teething babies as the mountain air. That settled it.

The first thing to be looked after was the mess kit—known among the cow-boys as the “chuck box.” Mine would fit neatly into the tail end of a wagon; was about two feet and a half from top to bottom, and about twelve inches deep; had racks for cups, saucers, plates, knives and forks, and plenty of room for two weeks’ supplies of flour and other necessaries. When we wanted to lunch it was an easy matter to drop the tail gate of the wagon, let down the side of the mess kit, and we had a good table; the whole thing was as handy as a pocket in a shirt, and its capacity marvelous. An ordinary lumber wagon with spring seats, an A tent, 7 × 7, for the women folks, plenty of rubber ponchos, a change of clothing, wool, of course, all round. All together making an abundance for comfort, and a light load with which the horses could trot along and not half try.

About the hour that Hamlet’s father was wont to render himself up to “sulphurous and tormenting flames,” we were astir, and before the sun was up we were away. Fifteen miles to the foot hills and Turkey Creek cañon. Towards noon the sun beats down hotly on the plains, and I always make it a point to get to the cañon by ten o’clock at the outside. And this morning we passed Harriman’s before ten, and from our shelf on the mountain side we could look out east till plains and sky came together.

Down below us, on the left, six or eight hundred feet, the little creek looked about as wide as one’s finger. The road is fairly wide enough for the wagon, with here and there a “turn out,” to accommodate passing teams. To the right a perpendicular wall running up a hundred feet; to the left—well, our visitor said she was tired of riding and would like to walk a little; the road was smooth as a floor, and the grade easy. I suggested that horses rarely cut up capers in such places, but the effect of a wrecked wagon and the remains of a mule lodged against a granite boulder half way down the mountain was not to be overcome by any assurance of mine; and walk she did; so did the baby’s mother and maid, taking turns in carrying his majesty for a couple of miles. Not having any hills to climb the inconvenience is not so great; but, take a twenty-five pound youngster in your arms, at an elevation of, say nine thousand feet, and undertake to walk up hill; a half mile seems twenty, and at the end of three-quarters you want to lie down, wondering if your lungs are larger than the universe. But like everything else in this life, it becomes easy when you get used to it.

Our first objective point on this trip was Reed’s Mill, about thirty miles from home. No trout, but wild raspberries, now in their prime. Did you ever eat any? If not, the first one you put on your tongue will make you “wish your throat a mile long and every inch a palate,” with accessible untold acres of berries. There is about them a tenderness and luscious delicacy, a fragrance and even beauty, that makes a cultivated brother look and taste in comparison like a combination of mucilage and sawdust. The “Shepherd” thought when Tom Moore was penning his Loves of the Angels, that he “fed upon calf foot jeelies, stewed prunes, the dish they ca’ curry, and oysters.” But I don’t believe it. Tom was in America once, and I believe he strayed this way, and was inspired by mountain raspberries, with cream so thick “a spider might crawl on’t.” I do not believe Tom was so much of an animal as Hogg, by his wit, would make him.

But the fruit season is brief, and three or four days in the berry patch set me yearning for running waters, and the delicate salmon-colored fins. So we broke camp and turned into the road for Pine Grove and the Platte. By five o’clock we were fixed to stay, with plenty of pine knots for the camp fire and quaking asp to cook with, our only neighbors a couple of “English cousins,” owners of the ranche, from whom we could get cream, and butter and milk, and who helped make our evenings “jolly.”

Everything being in trim for the proper conducting of household matters, I received orders to “catch a mess for supper.” Right in front of our tent, two rods away, a gravelly bar reached from the bank to the water, and the opposite side, fifty feet about, the river ran deep and rapidly. I had never failed securing a trophy from that swirl, and I sent a gray hackle on its mission as near the opposite willows, and as deftly as my skill would permit. I “struck it rich” the first cast; the fraud had barely touched the water before I saw the jaws of a beautiful trout close upon it, and felt his strength at the same instant. Since last summer’s experience I have wished more than once that I had been on that occasion the owner of a split bamboo. As it was, the sport resolved itself into a mere trial of strength between tackle and fish. In three seconds he was ignominiously snaked out on the beach, a three-pound trout, the largest I have ever caught, and enough for supper.

The whole family had “swarmed up” the bank, as Dickens would say, to enjoy my discomfiture, but the contemplated taunts were never given breath. I stood in my tracks and landed three more, and, will heart of man believe it? they complained because the three last were not as large as the first. But my merit was established; when I came home empty handed, which was hard to do, any explanation of mine was “confirmation, strong as proof of holy writ,” that the trout would not rise for anything. So much for reputation! I wonder how many fellows there are in the world who enjoy it who are no more deserving than I?

One morning I started down the stream; it was my birthday, and though nothing had been said about that momentous epoch in my history, I felt it incumbent upon me to achieve something out of the ordinary. I did. I fell off a log, head first, into a hole four feet deep. Cold? well, yes! I thought I had struck a moderate sized Arctic winter. But there was no one “there to see,” and I uttered my benison on the man who invented the sun, as I crawled out to the warmth of our daily servant and friend. My creel was not empty and I saved everything, even my temper. When I got back to camp, she who had taken “the long path with me” suggested that I was wet, that an immediate change of garments was imperative. But, having an exasperating disposition to stubbornness, I insisted that every thread must dry where it was, and it did, without even a sneeze, to punish me for not taking a woman’s advice. I had been there before.

It was determined that baby and I should tend camp for half an hour or so that afternoon, while the three natural guardians wandered off to the adjacent hillside for wild flowers wherewith to deck the tea-table. This was no new business to us. The young man with a pillow at his back, seated in the middle of a blanket rubbing his face with a teaspoon; I lying prone three feet away with my toes beating an occasional tattoo on the soft sward, my chin in my hands and brier-root between my teeth, watching him. There was a bright light in his eyes, and his cheeks were rosy, soft as velvet, yet firm and cool. What is there like the touch of a baby’s cheek pressed against your own! You must turn and kiss it, just as you did its mother’s the first time you had a right to. But is there anything more ridiculous in life than to see a baby attempt to put a spoon into his mouth before he has got the knack of it? See him hit himself in the eye with it, pretty much as a drunken man would knock a fly off his nose; smear it down his face, with his mouth wide open and turned up like a young robin’s, but it misses the place on the way down; he takes it with both chubby fists, looks at it with dignified surprise, as though for the first time aware of its presence, lets go one hand, whacks the spoon against his ear and drags it across his cheek with the same result. But persistence is characteristic of this baby, a quiet determination that has something appalling about it. If there were any raspberry jam on that spoon his face would look worse than a railroad map of the State of New York. Finally, and as it would seem, after all, more by accident than design, the spoon reaches the right place; he twists it round to the distortion of his rosebud mouth; then he looks at me, sees me laughing; the fun seems to dawn upon him; he takes the spoon out of his mouth, pounds the blanket with it, and smiles back at me, and the smile resolves itself into a well-defined laugh.

The sun has just disappeared behind the range, but there is a mellow ray of golden light that lingers about the baby’s head that makes me think—think of the one so like him, and from the base of the hill, with her hands full of wild flowers, the tallest of the three starts toward me, and I remember only the sunshine of the long path.

But I forgot to tell you about my camp stove: it is a piece of sheet iron, eighteen inches square, with a hole in the centre, eight inches in diameter; set upon four stones, it makes a first-class stove.

BOYS AND BURROS.

From my outlook under the shade of the old pine I see a familiar and massive pile of granite over fourteen thousand feet high, and a bit of the range, with patches of last winter’s snow glistening in the sunlight. The brown and gray of the lofty peaks are contrasted with the mist-covered blue of the lower mountains. Then comes the furthest glimpse of the beautiful river rolling out from the beautiful cañon of lava cliffs. Then the meadow for a foreground, its rich green tinted here and there with the gold that denotes the coming sickle time. Then the quiet, straggling village of log houses, with its tavern perched upon a hillside, and down by the river bank the smith’s shop, where seems the only sign of life. The ring of the “ten-pound-ten,” as it comes up to me clear and resonant upon the pure air, does not mar the harmony of the river’s melody, nor taint the romance of the scene. But a boy, taking his afternoon nap astride a shingle horse on the shady side of a cabin, does; he is suggestive of some of the realities of life, and is recuperating for my benefit. That shingle horse is to him a bed of roses, and the hard log of the old cabin a pillow of down. He can sleep standing on his head, I believe; I know he can crosswise or tangled up. I am not near enough to see, but I know that his cheeks are red, his face tanned to russet, his hands dirty, his clothes ragged, and—his pulse regular. I know exactly what he will do when he awakes; he’ll whistle, whistle for me, but not for my benefit. If he’d only whistle Put Me in My Little Bed, Yankee Doodle, or other soul-moving melody, his music would not be so much a burden. But he cannot distinguish between Gray Eagle and the Doxology; he could whistle a stave from a barrel sooner than a bar from an opera. He whistles to make a noise; and, not content with ordinary methods, he sticks his fingers in his mouth, and awakens the echoes down the cañons until you would think the Utes had escaped from the Reservation and were round hunting scalps.

How did I come by him? Why, through his mother, of course; did you ever know of a boy being round to make life a joy forever, without his mother being at the bottom of it? I had an interest in the boy; his mother is a near relative of mine, and hearing that I was to have a short vacation in the mountains, she thought it a splendid idea, if you know what that is, to have him spend his vacation with me instead of running round the streets. I told her I was going a great way off, into a rough country where the mosquito and buffalo gnat were rampant, to sleep upon the bare ground, to live upon flitch and potatoes with flap-jacks fried in grease, and she said that was just what he needed, fresh air and plain food. I told her that where I was going the boys were wicked and the men drank and swore like pirates, and there were no Sabbath schools; she said he would never be good for anything were he not thrown in the way of temptation, and as to the Sabbath school, I could take along a Testament and read to him; that would be novel to myself and amuse the boy. I told of high mountains and dangerous trails to be traversed, of deep caverns and antres vast, of swift rivers, and Utes whose heads were filled with vermin, “the chief end and market of whose time” was to capture and torture boys. She said he would have something to tell about when he came back, and as to the vermin, I could have his head mowed with a clipping machine. I swore I wouldn’t take him; but she said she knew I would, and was right, because I always like to, and do, have my own way, except—.

Yes, he is waking up and looking round in search of his Barlow, perhaps. I saw him stabbing the shingle horse with it when he went to sleep. No, he is not looking for his Barlow, but another fellow of later date. There goes his hand to his mouth; I knew it.

“Hello, old fellow! here I am under the old pine.”

“All right,” came back to me, in confidence of my ability to take care of myself, while he had me in sight.

“Can I come up there?” and he granted his own request, as usual.

“What’s that thing over there?”

“What thing, and where do you mean?”

“Why, that thing over yonder; it looks like a man.”

“I don’t see anything that looks like a man.”

“Why, don’t you see that thing up against that mountain that runs down to the river? It looks like a man with his fist doubled up goin’ to hit somebody.”

“I see a brown patch against the mountain side surrounded by green that has something the shape of a man—is that what you mean?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“A patch of brown surrounded by grass or bushes.”

“Well, what does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did it come there?”

“Because the grass or bushes grew around it, I suppose.”

“Well, but I mean does it mean anything? It looks like a big man.”

“Life is short, little boy. But if it means anything, it is the photograph of the presiding genius of the Hot Sulphur Springs.”

“What’s a presiding genius?”

“Little boy, did you say that you would like to ride horseback? Yes—well go over and tell the man at the barn that you want the pony.”

I am a great lover of ponies, they give one a rest. In fact, if it were not for this particular pony, the only non-bucking broncho in the vicinity, I should be constrained to leave. I have been anxious to go down the river to the house of a friend and have a week’s fishing, but I dare not go away from that pony. I am afraid the owner of that pony is mercenary; he refuses to hire him for a week; I think he knows that I want to go fishing, and has possessed himself of the idea that I cannot fish without the pony. He told me only yesterday that he commonly fished off that pony’s back; in fact that it was “the best way to fish anyhow.” It may be a good method; I never tried it; the novelty of the thing is something of an inducement. But the man asks too much, I am satisfied; the pony is not worth more than thirty dollars, but the owner demands fifty. He says I can sell him again, and I have no doubt of that. But what can I get for him? Well, he don’t know, but he’s sure I “won’t lose nothin’;” he might take a notion to buy him back, at a discount, of course. I offer to pay him the “discount” for the pony’s use, and also tender references as to my integrity. But he “don’t know nothin’ about references—there’s the pony, sound in wind and limb, and so gentle a child can ride him, and the best pony to fish off’n I knows on; you can take him, or leave him.”

I have concluded to take him; an indifferent saddle and bridle, ten dollars—total, sixty dollars. The boy takes the outfit under his immediate supervision and we go down to the house of my friend.

Here we found another boy a couple of years younger. I did not know of this boy save by report, but now I do. This last boy is sedate; sometimes I think he is about sixty, but his father is not that old, and it bothers me occasionally to determine which is the father and which the son. They call him Judge, and it’s worth half a dollar to hear him call me counselor—the title with which he dubbed me on our introduction.

“Counselor, I’m glad to see you; the fishing is good; the mosquitoes are a little troublesome for this time of year; but we can give you a net, and I’ll show you where to fish.”

His hair is curly, and he has what the mother of the boy in charge of me would call a “sweet face.” I was about to take him in my arms, but I took off my hat instead, and introduced him to my boy; they looked at each other, grinned and shook hands; then I knew he was a boy, and again wanted to take him in my arms, but dared not. That evening I sat on a stool mending a broken leader, and the Judge sat opposite in a high chair.

“Counselor,” said he, “you are not tying that knot square; that knot will slip; bring it here and let me tie it for you.”

I obeyed reverently; he accomplished the trick deftly and handed back my leader in silence.

“Judge, can you tie a fly?”

“Not very well; but I will some day, and then I’ll make the trout round here think they are eating candy.”

“By the way, Judge, do you like candy?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

I was glad of that, because I’m fond of candy myself, though I never before took any on a camping trip.

We have been at my friend’s house nearly a week. I have not as yet had an opportunity to test the qualities of the pony “to fish off’n,” but the boys corroborate the stableman’s assertion, and I think that unless I can get a good price from the man of whom I purchased him, I shall take him home with me and try him another season. The idea, however, is not of my own suggestion; my boy proposed it. Besides, some day when the boy is at school—blessed be the school, the school teacher, and not the birch—his mother might get a chance to ride. The pony could rest at night, of course. It would only involve a dollar a day and a side-saddle. Think of a pony eating himself up once a month! That kind of financiering is what keeps me a pauper; I shall have to forego the pleasure of fishing “off’n that pony.”

At my friend’s house our tent is pitched on the bank of the river. I came away from home to be out. I have slept in the house for so many years that it has ceased to be a novelty. The boy and I sleep together; or rather he sleeps on the same spruce boughs or hay that I occupy. Perhaps there is nothing in the world so beautiful as a sleeping child, with the rosy flush of health mantling brow and cheek, with, may be, a tear trembling on the closed lashes, the remembrance of a sorrow that was, but now forgotten. This has been an inspiration to a multitude of poets, but the inspiration did not come upon them in camp, nor were the poets trying to snatch repose in the same bed; they were lookers on merely, giving the rein to their imagination. A poem under such circumstances would be a satire, certainly.

Last night the boy went to bed early, while the pony sorrowfully partook of his evening meal in my friend’s meadow. I flattered myself that a good night’s rest was in store for me, and turned in as the moon came up over the range. The night was very still, and I was dozing off under the soothing melody of the swift flowing river on its road to the sea, when I thought I heard the distant lowing of a cow; that was no strange matter in this neighborhood. I forgot it in a moment and was gone, perhaps five minutes, trout fishing, or eating wild raspberries with cream, yellow cream, not blue, when I heard the cow again, then something like three hundred cows and as many calves, and six hundred cow-boys, all yelling like a band of Apaches just before day break. If you never heard an Apache yell, remember, the first time you do, each particular hair will stand on end—if you have any left. Each cow bellowed for her calf and each calf for its dam—how I’d like to put an “n” to that last word, with cow to top off with—and each particular cow-boy yelled as though he were six, and interested in his mission. They were trying to ford the stream, not a hundred yards from my head. Of course I was broad awake, expecting every instant that the boy would start up with the impression that a million Utes had come down for him. I opened the tent fly, and the moonlight streamed brightly in upon his sunburned face; he heaved a long sigh of utter satisfaction, turned over and snored an accompaniment to the pandemonium in the road. I gave it up, and prepared to turn in again just as the rear end of the cavalcade was passing out of sight.

But not to sleep, just yet. My friend has a dozen or more burros, and the burro is another of the blessings of this world for which I possess unlimited love. Their patient and melancholy looking eyes will excite the sympathy of any human save the miner; their ears are a mystery; their song!—Oh for a bard to string his lyre and sing in poetic numbers his praises of the burro’s song! I have sometimes thought the burro the Pegasus of some of our Colorado poets, but that they shunned their source of inspiration; gave him the cold shoulder, as it were. Rivalry begets jealousy, and that may account for it; each individual poet would swear by himself only, upon the same principle that every fellow likes to take to himself the credit of all the good things said and done, forgetting there is nothing new under the sun.