Tales of the Colorado Pioneers. Alice Polk Hill

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      CHAPTER LIV.

      Scenery along the Arkansas—Royal Gorge—Canon City—A Visit to Gov. Rudd…………………………………………….262

      CHAPTER LV.

      Canon Twice Settled—Religious Trouble—A Marriage by the Justice ……………………………………………………269

      CHAPTER LVI.

      The Hunt………………………………………………………274

      CHAPTER LVII.

      Pueblo—Bessemer—The State Insane Asylum—The old Tree—Fort Pueblo…………………………………………..278

      CHAPTER LVIII.

      A Good Trade—Juan Chiquito’s Lookout……………..281

      CHAPTER LIX.

      Dick Turpin—A Resurrection—The Face at the Window …………………………………………………………………. 286

      CHAPTER LX.

      Thomas T. Tobin—The Espinosas—The Capture……..290

      CHAPTER LXI.

      The Lover’s Leap—The Poem……………………………… 293

      CHAPTER LXII.

      Alfred Packer—The Cloud—Arrival of the Mail—The Worn Traveler—His Story—The Friend Perishing by the Wayside —Relief—Arrival of Packer………………………………….295

      CHAPTER LXIII.

      The Confession. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .301

      14 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.

      CHAPTER LXIV.

      Colorado Springs—The Artistic Choir — The Suspicious Old Lady —“He has got Religion”—Manitou—Catching the Mule …………………………………………………………….307

      CHAPTER LXV.

      A Camping Party—The Stalled Team—“ One Soft Foot ”—“It’s a Bear”—Bugs — Mosquitoes—The Deserted Town—The Candy-pulling—The Sunrise…………………………312

      CHAPTER LXVI.

      Jimmy’s Camp—Jim Baker—Landmarks Knocked Away—The Names of Rivers—The Pioneers’ Pride………………316

      Perchance the living still may look

      Into the pages of this book,

      And see the days of long ago

      Floating and fleeting to and fro,

      As in the well-remembered brook

      They saw the inverted landscape gleam,

      And their own faces like a dream

      Look up upon them from below.

      —Longfellow.

      “ Who so shall telle a tale after a man,

      He moste reherse, as neighe as ever he can,

      Everich word, if it be in his charge,

      All speke he never so rudely and so large;

      Or elles he moste tellen his tale untrewe,

      Or fienen things, or linden words newe.”

      —Chaucer.

      TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.

      _______________

      CHAPTER I.

      GOLD.

      A large proportion of the explorers, adventurers, pilgrims, prospectors and colonial “tramps” that, since the days of Noah, have marched away to establish settlements elsewhere, have been driven to it by some unpleasantness at home.

      Colorado was to some extent an outgrowth of the great financial crash of 1857. Time-honored houses had reeled, tottered and gone down in the overwhelming business convulsion of that period, and men were ready for any venture which gave even faint promise of rebuilding their ruined fortunes, when Green Russell, a Georgian, returned from Pike’s Peak, bearing “tidings of great joy.” He had found gold.

      The Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, makes frequent mention of gold and silver. Abraham “was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.” Solomon, the great king of the Hebrews, had portions of his temple “overlaid with gold.” The followers of Moses made a golden calf and worshipped it. Even before the recital of the creation of woman, the existence of gold is mentioned. Genesis 2 :12 reads: “And the gold of that land was good;” but we are not told who discovered it. However, all peoples in all ages have found it to be a good

      18 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS.

      thing to have in the house. It’s the fulcrum that moves the world; it buys everything, even a husband or wife.

      When Green Russell exhibited his buckskin bag of shining dust to the men who had lost their all, it caused a wild, indiscriminate rush to the new Eldorado, embracing good, bad and indifferent; the educated and illiterate; the merchant, the speculator, the mechanic, the farmer, the gambler, some of every kind—a sort of human mosaic, marshalled under a banner which bore the forceful if inelegant legend, “Pike’s Peak or Bust.”

      A journey from the Missouri river in those days occupied from six to seven weeks. Wagons christened “prairie schooners,” drawn by the contemplative ox and the patient mule, supplemented by the “foot and walker line,” were the only means of transportation. Pullman sleepers were unknown. There were no settlements on the way, no opportunity to procure supplies for man or beast, save at the occasional stations of Ben Holladay’s overland stage line to California. It was genuine courage that prompted the pioneers to such a journey in the face of approaching winter, for the plains, covered with snow and infested with hostile Indians and wild beasts, like the Clashing Islands that closed after the Argo and her crew of heroes, would cut them off from any communication with home or friends for months—years, perhaps; they knew not how long. It was by the help of Medea, who was found at the end of the road, that Jason captured the golden fleece. A few of the Argonauts of ’59, thinking “a bird in the hand worth two in the bush,” took their helpmeets with them. They were not painted society belles or light-brained coquettes, but women of good practical sense and moral and physical strength. They had

      GOLD. 19

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