Part 6

At Empire I found my conveyance awaiting me—a light wagon and a pair of playful mules; little fellows with coats of satin and gentle eyes. Some fellow would say they had “sinews of steel,” but these mules were not built that way; they were the natural sort. I dearly love a mule, and were I a poet, would write a sonnet to a mule’s eye. I admire a mule’s eye; always feel interested in that portion of his anatomy, and, as one likes to be in the vicinity of that which is pleasing, so I, when I have any business with a mule, find his head the attractive feature. These mules behaved remarkably well; they took us to the top of Berthoud Pass in about three hours, and climbed over each other only twice during the trip. That, however, was only in playfulness; they pretended to be frightened, in one instance at a laborer’s coat lying by the roadside, and in the other at an empty fruit can. I thought on both occasions that the mountain side was steeper, the gulch ever so many million feet deeper, and the road narrower than any other place I had ever been in. But as the mules were only in fun, I did not feel scared. After the first exhibition of hilarity the driver told me that the last stranger who rode behind those mules had his neck broken by jumping out of the wagon. I know the driver to be an innocent young man, unversed in the wicked ways of this world, and it was comforting to be in congenial company.

On the summit Captain Gaskill handed me his thermometer. I don’t know why he did it; I had not said anything about the temperature. But I saw the mercury rise in the tube the moment I touched it; I told him to take the blasted thing away or I would melt right there; with my heavy overcoat on I would have been a mere spot in ten minutes. He hung the agitator on the side of the house, and it registered 45°. I felt cool, and he took me to the fire. No one that I know of except Hamlet’s father has returned to give us any authentic information from beyond the sea; and how it was ascertained that “in the twinkling of an eye” we mortals should realize the end of our journey from this shore, I am not prepared to say. But I can vouch for the fact that it was just eight hours from Denver to happiness. If dissatisfied humanity demands a country better adapted to its wants than Colorado, it will have to die to find it.

Upon a former occasion several years ago, I took upon myself to say publicly through the columns of a Denver daily, that I thought Coates Kinney’s “Rain on the Roof” a satire. But the night before I had lain in a pool of water on the banks of the Blue with nothing between me and the angry heavens except my prayers for daylight; they, of course, were thin but earnest. This night, however, I had, as the preacher used to say, “a realizing sense” of the effect of surrounding circumstances, repented me of my harsh verdict, and hope to be forgiven. I had supper, a not uncommon event on the top of the range at this particular point. Thanks to the mules (they had allowed me to walk a mile or more) and the light air, and wholesome food well cooked, and the obliging host and his wife (think of their hibernating, the snow level with the ridge-pole, and never a soul to visit them except the mail carrier on snow-shoes), I had an appetite, and made good use of it, while the clouds gathered outside for a jubilee. After supper came the indispensable pipe and chat, and then to bed, right under the rafters, with the rain pattering on the shingles.

“It seemed as if the music Of the birds in all the bowers, Had been gathered into rain-drops And was coming down in showers.”

There is only one line of Kinney’s poem that ever troubled me (the foregoing is not his):

“Then in fancy comes my mother.”

When I was a boy I didn’t fancy my mother coming around my bed after I had crawled into it. It meant something besides prayers for me; we had hard timber in the country where I was born and bred,—how pliant the young twigs were! Coates must have been a good boy, especially with such a name; I can solve the mystery in no other way. But all that about “another,”

“With her eyes delicious blue,”

will do “passing well,” except the color; mine were not blue, and she played the same game on me.

With the “patter of the soft rain overhead,” I soon forgot all about the thermometer and the other misfortunes, being wrapped in—forty pounds of blankets.

Having gone to bed, it is a very good place to stop; and as to the trip down to the Springs, if those mules give me any trouble I will let you know about it.

MULES.

“The morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.” That was my matutinal orison as I tumbled out of bed at Gaskill’s. The air was fragrant with the perfume of the pine, and the hardy wild flowers were brilliant in liquid diadems. Some other fellow would say that he ”drank in the life-giving tonic“; but I don’t drink, so I breathed it, with my head out of the garret window, and felt as though this world has some things to enjoy, and that fresh air is one of them. The blue seemed nearer, and as I looked over into the Park, and over the fir-crowned hills to the majestic piles of granite, everywhere set off with a background of azure, I felt as though there was a mistake somewhere in my make-up. I ought to have been born with a gift to make the whole world feel as I did then—happy but humiliated among these magnificent monuments of Divine greatness. I’m not a self-made man, that’s the trouble; if I’d had the ordering of it, I’d have got up a success. There is nothing like success, even in a fraud, until it stands face to face with such evidences of the sublime handiwork as I looked out upon that bright morning; then the “uses of this life” seem “flat, stale and unprofitable,” as we use them.

But I must not forget the mules. Gaskill has a couple of cinnamon bears, in a room at the end of the barn. I can’t say that the Devil got into the mules, because the Devil is now ruled out; without a hell to put him in, he is no longer of any earthly use. I am sorry to lose him, because under certain circumstances I am a believer in intimidation; it is wholesome. I have known a single quiet and orderly hanging in a summary way, to make a neighborhood that would have terrorized Satan himself, as nice and well behaved as a community of Quakers. I heard one of our Denver preachers once say—and we all loved him—that there was “a certain class of mortals whom it was necessary to take by the neck and choke before they could be made ready for conviction.” The Devil has always been useful for that purpose, and I think he could be made available yet.

But I started to say something concerning those mules. The Devil, as I have said, did not get into the mules, but they got scent of those bears, and I venture the assertion that the bears discounted the Devil in his palmiest efforts, as heretofore reported. To speak without exaggeration, those mules were frightened; the bears were in their heads, heels, hair and eyes; inside and out, above and below, and all around, were bears. To those mules, it rained bears, and the atmosphere was pregnant with bears about to be delivered. If those mules had been human I would have thought it the worst case of delirium tremens that ever racked a diseased imagination. As the driver expressed it: “they was plumb crazy.” There was no crookedness about it; they were frightened horizontally as well as straight up and down, as I suppose the driver meant to be understood. It is impossible for me to tell what they did or attempted. They seemed capable of any extravagance except dying. I like to ride after mules in that condition; there is something exhilarating in dashing down a mountain road with one’s hair straightening out behind as though it would disappear by the roots; careening around short curves and making lightning-like estimates of the thousands of feet to the bottom of the gulch; picking out the softest rocks upon which to fall; flying over boulders and becoming entangled in tree tops fifty feet in the air, there to remain a torn and wretched monument of indiscretion. It wouldn’t be much of a monument, but enough to tell the tale. I thought how grand it would be, and told the driver that I preferred to have him pick me up whole some distance down the road; I felt confidence in my ability to control my own legs; the air was just right for a brisk morning walk; besides, much of the pleasure of the ride would be denied me by reason of my not having any hair to speak of that might stream in the wind. I made these suggestions and started. I believe the driver thought I was afraid to ride after those mules; but that was a mistake. I intended to ride after them provided there was anything to ride in when he should catch up to me, if he ever did. About two miles down the range I sat on a log and waited for the wreck. Presently I heard the rumbling of the wagon; soon it came in sight, the driver sitting at his post singing, as well as the roughness of the road would permit: “I want to be an angel.” I certainly thought he did, and asked him if the mules had not tried, at least, to run away, when they were being harnessed.

“Oh, no; they was too bad scared. You see, when they get that way they want to stay right with me; a mule is an obstinate cuss, you know, and only runs away for fun.”

Just then the ears of the off mule stuck out straight as the prongs of a magnified clothes pin, and she began to dance. This time it was a ground squirrel, not much larger than a lead-pencil. But the brake had to come down before the mule did. Shortly after, the nigh mule went through a like performance for a similar cause, and then they both waltzed to the music of the Frazier. I was sorry when we got as far as Cozzens’, because there it was plain sailing, with plenty of room to turn round and run away in, and yet those delightful mules trotted right along twenty-two miles to the Springs, regardless of gophers, old clothes, tin cans and two badgers. If Gaskill’s bears had got in the way, I firmly believe those mules would have trotted over them, or kicked them out of the road. Kick! They could kick in pure cussedness. “I should say so.”

A mule is a natural kicker, as a rule, but this pair had so improved upon nature’s gift, by constant practice, that they had reduced the accomplishment to an exact science. “They can fetch anything they go for, from a gnat on a stall post to a self-confident hostler.” “The nigh mule can take a fly off her right ear with her nigh hind foot.” I can’t describe how she does it, not having seen the feat performed, but the driver explained it to me so that I understood it. From my confidence in the veracity of the driver, but especially from my knowledge of the mule, I am ready to be sworn. But it is about time these mules were lost.

We have the usual complement of campers and tourists in the Park this season. The former are mostly of our own mossbacks; but it will not do to call the tenderfoot by any less dignified title than a tourist. I saw one of the latter start out the other morning for a day’s sport. He had a rifle and a shot-gun, a game-bag, a fishing rod and creel; he remarked to me, as he climbed up on the off side of his horse, that he was pretty well fixed for a day’s campaign. I told him I thought he was, but suggested that he ought to take along a bass drum to beat up the game, and, do you know, the fellow got mad and made me apologize. If he had only kept me in front of his infernal arsenal, I never would have modified my suggestion, but he threatened me over his shoulder, and that looked dangerous. He came back at night, to my surprise, but brought neither fish, flesh nor fowl; it is perhaps needless to say he was the only disappointed party in the Park.

A strict enforcement of the game and fish law would be an advantage to this vicinity. The Park is easy of access, and when the railroads, or either of them now under construction, shall be completed, the Park and its surroundings, a very paradise for sportsmen, can be made the most attractive resort in the state. Why, it is worth a day’s journey to sit where I do now, under the shadow of a pine whose every sigh in the cool breeze is freighted with fragrance, and feast on the massively beautiful scenery. A foreground of a mile or two of meadow rich in green and gold; the beetling lava cliffs on the left, and the brown hills, studded with great piles of granite, sloping gently down to the margins of the Grand. The noble stream flecked with silver, rolling majestically along and keeping time to its own melody, while away beyond lies the range for a background, with Long’s Peak, o’ertopped with fleecy clouds to serve him as a diadem, to be changed to a turban of rainbow tints for evening dress. And the sunsets that gather about the head of the rugged giant! You who view them from the other side should sit under the shadow of Mount Bross and see the cloud tints that crown His Majesty. Your view from the eastern side shows but the work of a tyro; from this the accomplished task of the master. If I had the gift I spoke of, you should see it as I do; as it is, there is nothing left but to come over and take it in for yourself. You can have a change of programme every day, and when you tire of the pictures, if you can, it is easy climbing a few hundred feet to find a dozen others just as grand and no twins. I suppose many a fellow has glanced over his shoulder up the Grand and seen a mountain with a notch in it, no more, not even a patch of color. But ten to one of these have seen something more and yet made a hearty meal of flitch and potatoes.

MUSIC AND METEOROLOGY.

Without fair success with rod and line, a camping trip, to some at least, would be a failure. The weather giving fair promise, I started over the divide below the Springs to revisit several familiar pools and riffles down the Grand, in anticipation of a good morning’s sport. The forenoon was expended with half a dozen trout and as many miles’ tramp as the result. Life is not worth living without a disappointment now and then. I met with a decided failure where I had rarely had anything but success, and it sharpened my appetite—for dinner.

A day or two after I was joined by my familiar and guide, the Doctor, who is an animated encyclopedia not only of the Park, but of the state, and we forthwith put up a job, as it were, upon the denizens of Williams’ Fork. Nine o’clock found us on the banks of that beautiful stream, our horses picketed and we ready to meet any emergency that might arise—that’s a new name for ’em. The Doctor started up stream and I took to the bed of the creek about half a mile from its mouth. Twenty minutes and not the sight of a fin. I also began to think that Williams’ Fork was depleted. Brown hackles and gray, and a half dozen other newfangled varieties not named to me, had no more effect than the wiles of a three-card-monte dealer have upon one who “has been there.” I thought of lying down upon the bank and seriously playing with the garter snakes, but changed my mind and put on a gray hackle with a peacock-body. Result, a trout. I had found the color to tickle their fancy for the day.

Trout and—and—women are very much alike; few men know much about either, unless you take their own words for it. Both are handsome, of course, delicate in taste, fickle as to ornament, not otherwise, and always too confiding in that which is least to be relied on. I felt sorry for that trout as I slipped her into my creel; they are such short-sighted fish—I’ll not say why—but they exact the angler’s care, and carry out the simile admirably. Had I offered that trout a worm for breakfast, the chances are ten to one she would have inquired whether I took her for a sucker. But it occurs to me all at once that I am on delicate ground—the current runs five miles an hour, the water is above my knees and the rocks are slippery; to fall is easy as—lying; the fate of our common ancestor is a warning.

By the time I had reached the Grand I had about seven pounds of fair-sized trout, besides having returned with all possible gentleness to the water a number of small-fry. I did not consider it much of a catch, as upon more than one occasion over the same ground I had filled my fourteen-pound creel in the same time. The Grand looked tempting as I waded out into the deep, clear current at the confluence of the streams, and dropped the peacock as far out in the deep pool as I could. I took that fly out in a hurry as I saw the gaping mouth of a leviathan, to my imagination, about to take it off. I speedily had the fly changed to one upon which I could rely, and commissioned it to that pool on business of moment. It had no sooner touched the surface than the glistening sides of my much-coveted triumph shone in the brilliant sunlight, clear of the water, as he darted for the fly and—missed. I thought the fish a little nervous, and I sent the falsehood over into the pool again; as soon as it touched the tiny wavelets that roofed the haunt of his excellency he was again visible, shooting from out the depths straight to his destiny. He reached it, and for a second lay poised as if in inquiry, and then, realizing that he had “struck it,” disappeared as suddenly as he had come. I realized, too, that I had struck it. There was music in the air—the music of the reel—and that trout danced to the measure with fifty feet of line before he allowed an inch of slack. He was nervous; there was plenty of water, a hundred feet at least, to the opposite bank, and miles up or down stream; there was no reason whatever for uneasiness—on the part of the fish I mean. But he seemed as much disturbed as ever when the slack was all in, and I, quietly and in as dignified but determined a manner as smooth stones and rubber boots would permit, backed up to the dry beach. Exhibiting the utmost reluctance to being thus led by the nose, he suddenly took it into his head to come voluntarily, started my way, but as suddenly changed his mind; the reel accommodated his whim and played a waltz; the old fellow, however, soon got giddy and asked for a rest; there could be no bar to so reasonable a request, paradoxical as it may seem; I immediately relieved him of the weight of the loose silk and gave him the privilege of a closer inspection of the gentleman at my end of the line. Had any other man been in my place, I should have concluded that the fellow on the fly was not favorably impressed, as he started with celerity on another trip across the Grand. Being myself a man of benignant appearance, I concluded, of course, that he had become enamored of the sound of the reel and was delighted that I had taken a hand in the revelry. Humanity, however, has not the monopoly on making mistakes, and as the reel was evidently taking a turn—this time at a dead march—I towed the gentleman round and gently drew him out on the clean gravel. He measured just nineteen inches; when I first saw him I thought he was “a yard long,” but even with his nineteen inches his capacity for conferring happiness was immeasurable. As I relieved his mouth of the hook, the Doctor, who had come down to me unawares, startled me with the remark, “You seem to take a heap of delight in catching a sucker.” There was a maliciousness in his tone that led me at once to inquire what success he had met with; his open creel disclosed three only, that would not weigh half as much as my capture; they were the result of his morning’s work. My own dignity will sometimes get the better of my reverence, and I read him a homily on envy.

The next day the Doctor proposed a visit to Grand Lake. I suggested that it threatened rain, and he replied that he who went fishing must expect to get wet. The retort, I told him, was dry with age; but the mules were hitched,—they have not been lost,—and we started up the Grand Valley in the sunshine, but had not been long on the road before it began to rain. Rain is a good thing in the mountains; it freshens up the earth, brightens the wild flowers, fills the air with a new fragrance, makes the grass grow, and I like it. I told the Doctor how much I enjoyed it coming down in vast sheets, but he did not say anything, only smiled. I’ve seen that smile before; in a fighting man it is dangerous. I didn’t say anything more about the rain, but tried to impress him with my knowledge of locations for dairy farms, and the excellence of the neighborhood for the growth of turnips and potatoes for winter food, without irrigation. Toward noon we came to a stream, and he told me it was North Fork; it rained at North Fork. I asked him where the other prongs were. He said there was but one other, “up yonder.” I told him the style of fork was long out of date. He stopped the mules. I noticed that smile again, and immediately changed the subject by asking him how far it was to the lake. He said it was about a mile in a direct line, but we did not go that route. About an hour afterwards I asked again how far it was, and he said it was half a mile in a direct line. I was about to inquire why he didn’t take the “direct line,” but changed my mind, and reflected upon the uncertainty of distances in this light air, and the gratifying exactness of the information one derives from being told something is “up yonder.” It rained. Sometime during the afternoon we came to what appeared to me a long line of embankment of gravel and boulders that might have been thrown up by the Titans for a railroad bed in the long ago. We had passed a number of railroad grade stakes, and I inquired if the embankment was the road-bed of the Denver, Utah and Pacific. He said it was a moraine. I thought he was joking, but he always laughs when he gets off a good thing, and he looked as sober as a hired mute at a pauper funeral. I meekly suggested that we had already had more rain than—. He stopped me and the mules right there; said the lake was just over that bank, and had no bottom; that I deserved to be drowned, and wanted to know my weight. I told him that under ordinary circumstances not very heavy, too light to sink, at least, but when wet I swelled. He concluded to go on. It rained, and after awhile we reached the town of Grand Lake. It is hid from the lake, and I was thankful; for I could climb over the moraine—what a handy word for such weather—and look out upon a beautiful sheet of water nearly three miles long by half that in width, guarded at the east and south by mighty hills, while to the southwest I could have recognized Powell Mountain, the grand, with lower hills for distant foreground, and forget the two saloons, the saw mill, tavern and a few slab shanties that were hidden from view—by the moraine—while the clouds hid everything else; and it rained.

We crossed the north inlet and pitched our tent, at the recommendation of a friend, in the midst of a grove of young pines, where the ground was soft with the dead needles from the protecting branches. The couch was delightfully tempting, on the very margin of the lake, with the gentle murmur of the miniature breakers to lull us to sleep. But it rained; I think, however, I have mentioned that fact; there was another drawback, or rather a number of them—ticks. The next morning another friend exhibited to our wondering gaze about two quarts of fish, something less than a hundred to the quart, and said he caught ’em with grasshoppers. I asked him if the grasshoppers were small. He said they were ordinary grasshoppers. Then I asked him if he had to rip any of them open, and he wanted to know for what, and I said to take the fish out of them, of course. He was a polite friend, and he laughed, but I know him for a mimic. He said the fishing was splendid, and I did not tell him of my nineteen-inch prize, lest he might for the first-time doubt my veracity.

After breakfast, it looked as though we might have some “falling weather,” and, while I am partial to a little rain after a very long dry spell, I suggested to the Doctor that, considering we had to do some fording, we had better get to the Springs while we might. He went right off and hitched up those mules; never said a word; didn’t even ask me to help him. He wanted me to carry away a pleasant remembrance of the lake, so he drove round to the south side. Then it began to rain. It is raining yet, and, to all appearances, is settled weather.