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CHAPTER III.
TWIN LAKES
When the Deacon put in his appearance the next day according to appointment, he desired to know, first, whether I had gone up the cañon. I told him I had, then he wanted to know what I had seen to be pleased with. I advised him that when I had a week's leisure, and he felt inclined to listen, I would "dilate fully" my afternoon's experience; that a week devoted to the relation of each half day's enjoyment would be none too much; whereat he seemed tickled, for the cañon is a weakness with him. When I told him I had returned from the grotto in the cool of the afternoon after a delightful interview with the nymphs of the neighborhood, he insisted that I had made a mistake; that I should have climbed on up to the carriage road, and returned by that way, whence a delightful view of the valley and the wooded mountain sides could be obtained. But I reminded him I was in the humor to court the hidden recesses rather than the sunlight, and besides, that just above the grotto it was necessary, if I would go on, to swing-off a perpendicular rock six feet, and I did not care to risk the leap. Then he advised me of another trail turning off to the road, just below the Naiads' Bath, where the ascent was easy, and exacted a promise that the next time I would come out that way.
The Deacon being assigned to the office of guide and general counsellor concerning the early part of this expedition, he suggested that we take a trip into Manitou Park. It became my duty to inform him that we could not in a season, let alone three weeks, visit all the places of interest this side of White River; that we might stop a day or two at Twin Lakes and thence we must go straight into the wilderness.
"But there is a party going over into the park this afternoon; the station is only eight miles up the road, and we can have a delightful drive of half a dozen miles, and be back in time for the west-bound train to-morrow."
"Whom shall we have in this party, Deacon?"
"A couple of ladies, and a man – a dude – with an eyeglass; the ladies are pretty – "
"Deacon! Deacon! none o' that – "
"But see here, I mean the ladies are attractive, and – "
"Yes, I understand – one talks Darwin and wears glasses, and the other is a blonde."
"Exactly – where did you become acquainted with them? I had thought to introduce you."
I was compelled to set the Deacon right and inform him of my last winter's trip. Then I declined his offer of an introduction. He seemed a little nettled at my indifference, and thereupon I pleaded old age in extenuation of my lack of gallantry.
"But, Deacon, how long have you been acquainted with these ladies; and who are they?"
"Oh, several months – the train is coming, let us go in to dinner."
I conjectured that there was a sensitive spot in the Deacon's anatomy, and I had unconsciously touched it with a rude hand. To apologize further at present might provoke embarrassment, and yet I feared something more was demanded of me. He came to my relief by taking a seat at the same table with the parties in question, leaving me in company with the Major, who had arrived on the train.
"Where is the Deacon?" was the Major's first inquiry. I motioned in the direction.
"Whom have we there?" I could give him no information, of course, and we discussed our dinner with the prospects which Twin Lakes might afford.
From the rear end of the train as it nears Manitou Park station, a view is had of the great peak which dwarfs that from the plains. The mountain seems to quadruple in size and grows in grandeur, until the great mass overtopping its companions appears to be standing alone, endowed with the consciousness of its own majesty. Miles beyond, and when we are traversing the lower end of the great South Park, the noble pile still stands out, from its azure background, the gray of its rocks and the snow-drifts flashing down a royal smile in the afternoon light. Ahead of us is the Musquito Range, with Buffalo Peak serving as another grand landmark in the bewildering assemblage of lofty mountains; and the park, for thirty miles, seemingly as level as a floor, reposes peacefully in its cordon of hills.
At Idlewild our list of travellers is added to – a broad-shouldered young man and a young woman. The boot heels of the young man appear uncomfortably high, and he consequently bears his weight upon his turned-in toes. The new doeskin trousers incase a pair of caliper legs, carrying with them the impression that their owner is astride an invisible something and is not at all accustomed to walking; the Prince Albert is unbuttoned and the white vest is ornamented by a large chain with a silver horse pendant; a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, white felt hat with a wide leather band, is thrown back from a face that is sunburned but smiling; the eyes of the young man are, no doubt, keen even in repose, but there is a shade of embarrassment lingering about them; he evidently feels that everybody in the car understands the situation, and he is ready to be friendly or defiant as occasion may demand. The color in the young woman's cheeks deepens as she smilingly bustles into the only unoccupied seat, and when the couple have settled down there is plenty of room on the end of the seat for another. She has a paper bag of cookies; she takes a bite from one and reaches it up to him, he absorbs the remainder as complacently as a two-year-old being fed with a spoon. The cookies disappear rapidly after this fashion; meantime a sleeve of the Prince Albert, with an arm in it, has quietly stolen along the back of the seat, and a strong brown hand rests tenderly on the plump shoulder where it has a right to be. A backward look through the car discloses a smile on every face, but our new friends are busy with the sunny prospects of the radiant world just opening up to them, and have forgotten that they are objects of interest. The Major leaning a little toward me, whispers:
"I don't know just what you think of it, my boy, but I hope it will always be sunny for them to the end of the long trail."
From Hill-top, at the western side of the park, our way is well up on the mountain sides along well-timbered gorges. Presently, from the shelf in the gray granite, one may look down into the beautiful valley of the Arkansas. The pioneers and familiars of the neighborhood will tell to this day the delight they would feel on reaching the summit over the old trail, whence they could look into this vale. Sloping from the foot of what is now called Mount Princeton down to the river, is an emerald floor of six miles in width, skirted far to the east by pine-covered mountains; the river winds along the northerly side until it disappears through a gorge in the distant hills. Beyond Mount Princeton stand gray and solemn the massive piles of Mounts Yale and Harvard, as if they would shut out from intrusion and guard the lovely valley in perpetual tranquillity. From our vantage-point it seems quiet even now, with the busy town just below. Before the advent of the railroads and the multitude, one may understand why the early miners looked upon it as another dwelling-place of the Genius of Peace.
We lodge at Granite, one of the old mining camps, prominent early "in the sixties," and with golden prospects yet. I get a good bed in a room that reminds me of old times; clean, eight feet square, with a pipe running through the floor from the office stove beneath. The pipe is not to be despised, as an addition to one's bedchamber, if one is unaccustomed to a sudden drop to 45° from 90°. As I stand on the doorstep next morning and take a survey of the town, no longer to be called a camp, I conclude that it must have been named Granite because there is less of that rock here than anywhere else in the vicinity.
After breakfast, at which we taste our first trout of the season, we start on a six-mile ride over a splendid road to the lakes. Though we are fairly in the heart of the mountains the way may not be called mountainous; an exaggerated rolling prairie surrounded by magnificent peaks gives a better idea of the land. The air is fresh and cool, the sun is bright, with no sign of clouds save in the direction we are going. Reaching the mesa from the valley a storm seems to be gathering about the summits of the Twin Peaks and Mount Elbert. Climbing the last rising ground between our starting-point and destination, I find we are upon what I conceive to be a terminal moraine, or the remains of one, and can look down into the grand court where the Ice King, at some remote date, held high carnival; his throne, twenty or more miles away, guarded on either side by peaks over fourteen thousand feet in height; at my feet the ancient floor of his palace, covering an area of six thousand acres or more, no longer solid, but a pair of crystal lakes flashing under the bright rays of the morning sun. The July heat has not yet melted the white helmets on the sentinels' heads, and back of them the clouds I had seen but a little while before, fleecy and drifting in the azure, are gathering volume and blackness. Between them and me a gray mist, driving earthward in perpendicular sheets, tells of the rain coming down; the long lines brushed by the breath of the storm will wave to the right and left, and then drop again straight as a plummet, while the sun's rays here and there flash in the rainbow tints. The background of the sullen clouds begins to pale a little, then breaks, and a great mass of white and gray and rose-tinted vapor rolls majestically to the left, while the main storm, with its artillery in full play, follows south, down the range, and once more lets in the light upon the seat of ancient royalty.
We catch only a few scattering drops while we trot briskly around the south side of the lower lake to the rustic hotel. The landlord takes possession of my grip and I walk off alone to the stream that holds in bond the beautiful lakes; it is barely fifty feet wide by a hundred yards long.
I put my rod together with a coachman on the end of the leader. I had not taken time to soak anything and the kinks were not out, but nevertheless the fly had hardly touched the water before I hooked a ten-inch trout. He gave up readily and I lifted him out with an impression of a good time at hand. But a half-hour's work disclosed not another fin, and I concluded he was the last one there.
Wandering toward the shore of the Upper Lake, I overhauled a man with a cane pole and a bag. I gave him my trout by way of encouragement, as he said he was out of luck, and then I tried the head of the outlet without avail. The man said there were trout in the lakes, but the best way to catch them was to row about with half a dozen poles stuck out at different angles, and "hooks baited with grasshoppers and such-like." I sat on a rock and watched the tints of the Twin Peaks and Mount Elbert mirrored in the smooth water, and prayed for the destroyer, that if he had not already overtaken the pot-hunter, he would; and would burn, not drown him; toast him on a fork and turn him around and toast him some more; toast him slowly just in sight of the cool, clear waters he had helped to almost ruin. But the government promises to establish a hatchery here and to restock the waters. When that is accomplished what more attractive spot can be found in all these mountains for a summer sojourn for wife, babies and your precious self? It can be made a headquarters, if you wish, and thence you may make easy runs farther into the wilderness. With sweet air, pure water, grand scenery and trouting, what more can mortal ask when he is tired and the baby teething?
Though injured, the lakes are by no means depleted; the fishing is not quite so gratifying as it was twenty years ago, that is all. There are three different varieties of native trout here: the red or salmon-tinted, the lighter-colored variety, and a slender, active trout, different from the denizens of any other waters in the State except, perhaps, Trapper's Lake. The back is a pale green, just the color of the water in the lake, the lateral lines are fine and black, and the spots perfectly round and smaller than the finest shot; it is a graceful fish in its contour, running to three-quarters of a pound in weight, and possessed of excellent fighting qualities.
The State has made an attempt at improving the lakes, and I met the superintendent of the State hatchery here. He said I must go a-fishing. I asked him where, and he said on the lake, if I was not disposed to take a run of a couple of miles up to the falls, where the fishing was good. I told him what I had heard, that the trouting was nothing to boast of except as the market hunter potted his game. To this he replied that when I came to the lakes I must do as the lakers do. I told him I had not had an oar in my hands for a great many years and was in no humor to be drowned. But he promised to attend to the rowing while I fished. With this assurance and to oblige him I rigged up, under his directions, four pine poles, tied on the lines and fixed up a cast of a coachman for a stretcher and a brown hackle and a gray for droppers. I persuaded him to allow me to take my bamboo, and armed with the implements of torture and my rod, like Hyperion among Satyrs, we stepped into a skiff and started for the lower end of the lake. I stuck out those pine poles with their ten feet of line, two over the stern and one out each side, and sat on the butts. The flies trailed along on the water and I had room to ply the bamboo astern beyond the annoyances floating there. After fifteen minutes of this business, I asked the skipper if he did not think a fellow who called this trouting, ought to drown and go to – sheol. He laughed; I took to praying again and in my earnestness lost one of the poles. Shortly after I had a rise to the coachman on the bamboo and hooked a trout. Inside of two minutes I could not tell whether the fish was on the hook that struck him, or the other three lines, or whether I had four trout in tow. I found out very soon that there was one trout and four lines snarled. I pulled them all in, took off the trout, untangled the knots and stowed the poles. The man wanted to know whether I had become tired and I told him I had, whereat he proposed to tell everybody that I didn't know how to fish. I said he would oblige me by circulating the report, and that I was mortified only at having tried. With this I sent the coachman astern again and caught another trout; that was all; one trout to the mile. Then I prevailed on him to row me back to the landing at the hotel.
Looking down the lake after a little, I saw the Major bending manfully to his oars and coming home in grand style. When he reached us I discovered among his other trophies of the afternoon, two trout, one weighing four, and the other four pounds and a half.
"You did not go far enough toward the east shore," said the Major; "there is a place about half a mile above the outlet, on that side, where there is grass growing; I never failed in finding good sport there; it is the home of these big salmon-colored fellows. When you hook them they make for the grass below; then, you know, you have business in hand."
Later in the evening, while the Major and I enjoyed our pipes and watched the light of the full moon glimmering on the lake, he wondered what had "come over the Deacon."
Our friend had evidently determined to have another view of Manitou Park, and I informed the Major of the Deacon's proposition to me.
"Ah! if he were only here!" sighed the Major; "with the lake in front of him, and under this moonlight, or with the shadows of the pines down by the water's edge, and the melody of the miniature breakers to whisper inspirations – eh! old boy, maybe we should lose the Deacon – at least for this trip," he asserted hastily, as if unwilling to commit himself, against experience, and with a knowledge that the sweetest things in life demand a change. "They get tired of us, you know," continued the Major.
"You talk as if the Deacon were in love."
"The symptoms are marked, my boy – he called the other fellow a 'dude,' you say. It looks bad; I fear he'll spoil the biscuit."
CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH THE SAGUACHE RANGE
Much of the way from Granite to Leadville lies close to the Arkansas, and with the level of it, the river being but a few feet below the road. The Major and I conclude to occupy the rear platform and encounter an elderly lady on a camp-stool in possession of the car door. She is here evidently with a view to the scenery. As we squeeze past, we are regaled with an odor of rose leaves, suggestive of old-fashioned bureaus with obstinate drawers, catnip tea and grandmotherly tenderness. The velocity of the railroad train is not to be compared to the speed with which the perfume flashes one back through the decades, to the hard times, and I detect a sigh from the Major as he seats himself upon the car step.
"What are you sighing for, Major?"
With a hasty glance toward the car door: "For the happy times of nearly half a century ago."
"And the rose leaves – "
"Aha!" with a cheerful smile, "you caught the fragrance too, did you, my boy?"
Except for the rumble of the car wheels, silence reigned for five minutes; the Major's meditations were finally interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Dide, camp-stool in hand. The new arrival had just taken his seat on the side next the Major when the old lady exclaimed in a shrill treble:
"Land sakes! I believe in my heart that crick is runnin' up hill."
Certainly from our level, and running in an opposite direction, the current had that appearance when looked at casually.
Mr. Dide turned toward the lady, stared, and addressed her:
"Begpahdon! But weally that is not phenomenal."
"Eh?"
"It is not unusual foah watah to wun up hill."
"Where was you born and bred, young man?"
"New Yauk."
They were both serious, the old lady, with her head thrown a little forward and inclining to one side, gazing at him over her glasses.
"What's your business?"
"I am a gentleman of lesyah, madam," and for the first time something like a smile hovered about the mouth of Mr. Dide.
"Evidently you was brought up that way – you ain't married, surely?" with a manner implying that though the world were full of feminine fools, he had not discovered one foolish enough to enter into the marriage relation with him. Mr. Dide seemed discomfited, but rallied in a moment.
"Begpahdon! but you know the earth is not a spheah but a spheaoid, flattened at the poles, and the equatah is a dozen miles hiah than the surface at the poles, and that some of the pwincipal wivahs flow toward the equatah – "
"See here, young man, I don't know as I just rightly understand what you're talkin' about, and I don't think you do yourself. Seems to me you must be one of them chaps that believes his grandfather was a monkey, and lookin' at you I don't know as you're to blame. I've raised nine children, six boys and three girls, all married and settled down 'cept Hannah – she's next to the baby, and I don't know as she ever will; and if I'd had one like you, indeed I'm afraid I'd a-flew into the face of natur and set on him when a baby. Where's your mother? you'd better go to her and let her learn you not to talk to an old woman like me as if I was a fool – there now!"
"Begpahdon, but – "
"Oh, git away with your begp-a-h-don, as you call it – "
"But, my deah madam – "
"But me no buts, and don't dear madam me. I'll tell my Joshua and he'll shake that glass out of your eye for insultin' his mother, he will."
Either the condition of Mr. Dide reflected in the old lady's mind with his eyeglass gone, or his general demoralization under the hands of Joshua, mitigated her indignation; she laughed as she bridled.
"Weally, madam," and Mr. Dide arose, held on to the guard rail with one hand while he removed his hat with the other, and with a manner that went far toward making his peace, continued: "I should nevah faugive myself if I went away leaving you with the impwession that I intended an insult – believe me, I am incapable."
"Well – don't you try to make anybody believe again that water runs up hill."
"I will not, madam, I assauh you."
"And don't talk as if you was swearin' every time you say madam. Why don't you say ma'am like a Christian?"
"I will mahm, with plesyah."
"That's right. Set down now, I want to see out. I think somethin' might be made out of you with a little trainin', though mebbe it's too late; 'as the twig is bent the tree's inclined,' you know. What do you carry that little umbrill for, that thing you've got in your hand – don't you know the name of it?"
"Ah, weally – to wahd off the sun and the wain."
"Land sakes – mebbe you think you're sugar and'll melt; and you part your hair in the middle like a gal; I see it when you had your hat off."
"Weally – please excuse me, I would like to pass in."
"Set right down and don't let me drive you away. I've taken an interest in you; where's your mother?"
"Weally, ma – mahm – she has been dead many yeahs – I can just wemember her."
"I know'd it, and you've just been left to grow up of your own accord; been to college of course. 'Squire Dodd he let his Jake go off to college, and he staid just one year and come back with one of them glasses and lost it next day; the ole 'squire kep' him home after that, and set him to maulin' rails in the patch down by the hemlock p'int – "
For half an hour the dear old soul held the disconsolate gentleman in durance. I dared not look at the Major but kept my eyes fixed on the landscape, without seeing any of it.
Reaching Leadville, we searched in vain for the Deacon; his lady friends were also absent, and the Major remarked:
"The Deacon evidently is one point ahead in the game. If he does not turn up in the morning we shall be obliged to abandon him."
Leadville, that has added so many millions to the wealth of the world, is more dignified than half a dozen years ago; there is less of the revolver and saloon and a little more of the church and the Sabbath-school; no longer a mining camp, but a city with only a tithe of its resources developed.
It reposes very quietly this Sabbath morning under the bright sun. Turning from the range at the north with its snow-capped peaks and looking down the almost deserted avenue, I am reminded of another Sunday morning – and it seems only a little while ago – when the same street was wont to be alive with humanity. Coming out of an adjacent saloon a couple of young men faced each other, blear-eyed and dishevelled; they had plainly been making a night of it. Each stood with his hand on his hip, while epithets, the most choice in the camp vocabulary, flew thick and furious. It might be dangerous or not; perhaps not. But the innocent third party running away or seeking shelter at the side might be in peril. I took up a vibrating station, so to speak, immediately in the rear of one of the would-be murderers, and awaited the opening. It did not come, but ended in froth and the appearance of an autocrat with a star on his breast and a club in his hand. He gathered in the bad men and was about to possess himself of the undersigned, when I felt compelled to explain the situation. He complimented me by saying: "Your head's level," and I was suffered to depart.
From the carbonate metropolis to the tunnel through the Saguache Range the distance by rail is perhaps seventeen miles, the difference in elevation about thirteen hundred feet. To make this distance one can hardly realize that one is ascending, the grade is so light, winding on and about the mountain sides. Lake Valley, with its crooked band of water here and there widening into silvery pools, and the gold and green of its meadow-like spots, seems to be silently drifting down and away. At the foot lies the city we have just left, and beyond is the Mosquito Range. In following the tortuous line the grand peaks seem to change from one side of you to the other, all the motion being with them.
Mount Massive gives you the aptness of its name. You feel its magnificence as you approach, and that it may be the glorious court of blue-eyed Athena at whose vestibule you stand wonderingly, and whence she issues to kiss the petals of the wild flowers and endow the earth with health and beauty. All about you are the pines, with here and there a patch of aspens, their whitened trunks set in banks of larkspur empurpling the sloping mountain sides. Over deep gorges spanned by threadlike trestle-work, you feel awed at the audacity that planned and executed the way into this solitude. High above the utmost peak of the bulky mass, a spot no larger than your hand is poised in ether, or moving, passes between you and the sun, and you think perhaps of what Tennyson says:
"He clasps the crag with hooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands;
Ringed with the azure world he stands:
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls:
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."
Or as Campbell puts it:
"And stood at pleasure, 'neath heavens zenith, like
A lamp suspended from its azure dome,
Then downward, faster than a falling star,
He neared the earth, until his shape distinct
Was blackly shadowed on the sunny ground."
Or older still, as we find it in the Iliad:
"So the strong eagle from his airy height,
Who marks the swans' or cranes' embodied flight
Stoops down impetuous while they light for food
And, stooping, darkens with his wings the flood."
The Major thought he would give Campbell the benefit of his vote, though the old Greek tells us the bird was a robber in his day as he is in ours.
The shriek of the whistle echoes and re-echoes through the impressive silence; it startles you, and you feel as if warned in a weird way by the unseen spirits of these wilds, that you are an intruder. Suddenly you are swept from the bright sunlight, the lofty mountains and modest wild flowers into utter darkness. Your dream of the wise goddess may not be all a dream. You are being hurled, in her anger, from the heavenly heights to the depths of Erebus. Looking out, you see mysterious shadows moving with lights through clouds of smoke, and the lights burn dim and red. There is comfort only in the reflection that mortals have preceded us, and that we are merely in Hagerman Tunnel1 and not knocking at the gates of sheol.
In the ghostly light of the car lamp I discover the venerable incubus of Mr. Dide, and inquire what she thinks.
"Land sakes! it's flyin' in the face of the Almighty. I suppose it's all right, but I kind o' wish I was well out of it and with Joshua. I don't know but I was a little hard on that young man with the umbrill."
The Major, overhearing the wail, immediately entered upon the office of comforter, and had but fairly begun when, swish! and we were in the broad daylight once again, on the western slope of the Saguache Range.
There is a beautiful picture to the right; a few miles away, down the mountain side, you catch a view of a little lake, bordered by a strip of level ground carpeted in gold; back of this grow the pines, reaching on and up to the summits of their homes, made dark and green; and away beyond, delicately toned by the ever-present gray mist, stands a lofty mountain range. The engineer is kindly and pauses here, that you may have a glimpse of the enchanting retreat, over the memory of which you may dream when you are back in the turmoil, and that will make you sigh for the coming summer.
The character of the country through which we are now winding our way down toward the valley is more rugged than on the eastern side. The thickly wooded slopes give place to more frequent piles of granite, massive and gray. We come suddenly upon a little park and find the haymakers busy there, with a team of oxen, a motive power already growing quite novel; a little further over, where the gorge widens, affording a few acres of comparatively level ground, we find the white tents of the campers-out. There is a newness about the cotton habitations that suggests experiment. There are women in sun-bonnets and calico gowns and a ruddiness of complexion no city air can paint. Children with brown, bare legs scratched by the briars, their cheeks tanned to a russet that affords a contrast to the whiteness of their milk teeth. And these jolly little fellows always greet you with a broad smile and a hurrah that is without feebleness or fever. Young men in long rubber boots, helmet hats decorated with nondescript flies and sporting an endless variety of trout rods. All pause to look at the train, an act to which they would rarely condescend at home. But this one, maybe, brings accessions to their ranks from the outside world, or a newspaper, and serves as a link between what we call civilization and the glorious freedom of the wilderness. A little further on, standing upon the bank of a still reach, we encounter a tall "lone fisherman," dressed in overalls, a waistcoat ragged at the back, an old white felt hat with the battered brim thrown up from his face and drooping behind; in his hand a long cane pole which it makes one's arms ache to look at. But he will come in to-night with that canvas bag swung from his shoulder well filled with trout, and prove to you that the fishing is good. Artificial flies are not indispensable with him; grasshoppers when he can get them, bugs, grubs, a bit of beef or a strip from the belly of his first trophy of the day, will serve his purpose; he is "after meat" and gets it. What could he do with a fly and that walking-beam?
We reach a cañon whose sides at its mouth are clothed with pines and aspens; the rocks have changed from the granite to red sandstone and great mountains made up of boulders and red clay. The latter have been built here by the waters away back in the untold centuries, and of whose abundance the beautiful crystal stream now brawling over its pebbled bed is but a thread. As the once mighty force has cut its way through all impediments and dwindled century by century to a narrower channel, it has left exposed the great red cliffs; falling still farther, soil has accumulated on the more gentle slopes and has given these Titanic piles broad bases of green interspersed with wild flowers, and the delicate feathers of the clematis here and there twine among the willows. The winds and the rains have bestowed their aid and carved the red mass into castles, buttressed and pinnacled. And so, having traversed one of the grandest gorges in the State and enjoyed a fair view of some of the loftiest mountain peaks and ranges, we slow up in the beautiful valley of the Roaring Fork. The Major declared it was the most delightful ride he had ever taken, and was disposed to enthusiasm.
