ESTES PARK

Yesterday morning the mercury had disappeared, so it was 20° below zero at least.  I lay awake from cold all night, but such is the wonderful effect of the climate, that when I got up at halfpast five to waken the household for my early start, I felt quite refreshed.  We breakfasted on buffalo beef, and I left at eight to ride forty-five miles before night, Dr.  Hughes and a gentleman who was staying there convoying me the first fifteen miles.  I did like that ride, racing with the other riders, careering through the intoxicating air in that indescribable sunshine, the powdery snow spurned from the horses feet like dust!  I was soon warm.  We stopped at a trapper’s ranch to feed, and the old trapper amused me by seeming to think Estes Park almost inaccessible in winter.  The distance was greater than I had been told, and he said that I could not get there before eleven at night, and not at all if there was much drift.  I wanted the gentlemen to go on with me as far as the Devil’s Gate, but they could not because their horses were tired; and when the trapper heard that he exclaimed, indignantly “What! that woman going into the mountains alone?  She’ll lose the track or be froze to death!”  But when I told him I had ridden the trail in the storm of Tuesday, and had ridden over six hundred miles alone in the mountains, he treated me with great respect as a fellow-mountaineer, and gave me some matches, saying, “You’ll have to camp out anyhow; you’d better make a fire than be froze to death.”  The idea of my spending the night in the forest alone, by a fire, struck me as most grotesque.

We did not start again till one, and the two gentlemen rode the first two miles with me.  On that track, the Little Thompson, there a full stream, has to be crossed eighteen times, and they had been hauling wood across it, breaking it, and it had broken and refrozen several times, making thick and thin places-indeed, there were crossings which even I thought bad, where the ice let us through, and it was hard for the horses to struggle upon it again; and one of the gentlemen who, though a most accomplished man, was not a horseman, was once or twice in the ludicrous position of hesitating on the bank with an anxious face, not daring to spur his horse upon the ice.  After they left me I had eight more crossings, and then a ride of six miles, before I reached the old trail; but though there were several drifts up to the saddle, and no one had broken a track, Birdie showed such pluck, that instead of spending the night by a camp fire, or not getting in till midnight, I reached Mr. Nugent’s cabin, four miles from Estes Park, only an hour after dark, very cold, and with the pony so tired that she could hardly put one foot before another.  Indeed, I walked the last three miles.  I saw light through the chinks, but, hearing an earnest conversation within, was just about to withdraw, when “Ring” barked, and on his master coming to the door I found that the solitary man was talking to his dog.  He was looking out for me, and had some coffee ready, and a large fire, which were very pleasant; and I was very glad to get the latest news from the Park.  He said that Evans told him that it would be most difficult for any one of them to take me down to the plains, but that he would go, which is a great relief.  According to the Scotch proverb, “Better a finger off than aye wagging,” and as I cannot live here (for you would not like the life or climate), the sooner I leave the better.

The solitary ride to Evans’s was very eerie.  It was very dark, and the noises were unintelligible.  Young Lyman rushed out to take my horse, and the light and warmth within were delightful, but there was a stiffness about the new regime.  Evans, though steeped in difficulties, was as hearty and generous as ever; but Edwards, who had assumed the management, is prudent, if not parsimonious, thinks we wasted the supplies recklessly, and the limitations as to milk, etc., are painfully apparent.  A young ex-Guardsman has come up with Evans, of whom the sanguine creature forms great expectations, to be disappointed doubtless.  In the afternoon of yesterday a gentleman came who I thought was another stranger, strikingly handsome, well-dressed, and barely forty, with sixteen shining gold curls falling down his collar; he walked in, and it was only after a careful second look that I recognized in our visitor the redoubtable “desperado.”  Evans courteously pressed him to stay and dine with us, and not only did he show the most singular conversational dexterity in talking with the stranger, who was a very well informed man, and had seen a great deal of the world, but, though he lives and eats like a savage, his manners and way of eating were as refined as possible.  I notice that Evans is never quite himself or perfectly comfortable when he is there; and on the part of the other there is a sort of stiffly-assumed cordiality, significant, I fear, of lurking hatred on both sides.  I was in the kitchen after dinner making rolled puddings, young Lyman was eating up the relics as usual, “Jim” was singing, one of Moore’s melodies, the other being in the living-room, when Mr. Kavan and Mr. Buchan came from “up the creek” to wish me good-bye.  They said it was not half so much like home now, and recalled the “good time” we had had for three weeks.  Lyman having lost the cow, we have no milk.  No one makes bread; they dry the venison into chips, and getting the meals at all seems a work of toil and difficulty, instead of the pleasure it used to be to us.  Evans, since tea, has told me all his troubles and worries.  He is a kind, generous, whole-hearted, unsuspicious man, a worse enemy to himself, I believe, than to any other; but I feel sadly that the future of a man who has not stronger principles that he has must be at the best very insecure.

I.L.B.