RANCH, PLUM CREEK

You must understand that in Colorado travel, unless on the main road and in the larger settlements, there are neither hotels nor taverns, and that it is the custom for the settlers to receive travelers, charging them at the usual hotel rate for accommodation.  It is a very satisfactory arrangement.  However, at Ranch, my first halting-place, the host was unwilling to receive people in this way, I afterwards found, or I certainly should not have presented my credentials at the door of a large frame house, with large barns and a generally prosperous look.  The host, who opened the door, looked repellent, but his wife, a very agreeable, ladylike-looking woman, said they could give me a bed on a sofa.  The house was the most pretentious I have yet seen, being papered and carpeted, and there were two “hired girls.”  There was a lady there from Laramie, who kindly offered to receive me into her room, a very tall, elegant person, remarkable as being the first woman who had settled in the Rocky Mountains.  She had been trying the “camp cure” for three months, and was then on her way home.  She had a wagon with beds, tent, tent-floor, cooking stove, and every camp luxury, a light buggy, a man to manage everything, and a most superior “hired girl.”  She was consumptive and frail in strength, but very attractive person, and her stories of the perils and limitations of her early life at Fort Laramie were very interesting.  Still I “wearied,” as I had arrived early in the afternoon, and could not out of politeness retire and write to you.  At meals the three “hired men” and two “hired girls” eat with the family.  I soon found that there was a screw loose in the house, and was glad to leave early the next morning, although it was obvious that a storm was coming on.  I saw the toy car of the Rio Grande Railroad whirl past, all cushioned and warmed, and rather wished I were in it, and not out among the snow on the bleak hill-side.  I only got on four miles when the storm came on so badly that I got into a kitchen where eleven wretched travelers were taking shelter, with the snow melting on them and dripping on the floor.  I had learned the art of “being agreeable” so well at the Chalmers’s, and practiced it so successfully during the two hours I was there, by paring potatoes and making scones, that when I left, though the hosts kept “an accommodation house for travelers,” they would take nothing for my entertainment, because they said I was such “good company!”  The storm moderated a little, and at one I saddled Birdie, and rode four more miles, crossing a frozen creek, the ice of which broke and let the pony through, to her great alarm.  I cannot describe my feelings on this ride, produced by the utter loneliness, the silence and dumbness of all things, the snow falling quietly without wind, the obliterated mountains, the darkness, the intense cold, and the unusual and appalling aspect of nature.  All life was in a shroud, all work and travel suspended.  There was not a foot-mark or wheel-mark.  There was nothing to be afraid of; and though I can’t exactly say that I enjoyed the ride, yet there was the pleasant feeling of gaining health every hour.

When the snow darkness began to deepen towards evening, the track became quite illegible, and when I found myself at this romantically situated cabin, I was thankful to find that they could give me shelter.  The scene was a solemn one, and reminded me of a description in Whittier’s Snow-Bound.  All the stock came round the cabin with mute appeals for shelter.  Sheep-dogs got in, and would not be kicked out.  Men went out muffled up, and came back shivering and shaking the snow from their feet.  The churn was put by the stove.  Later on, a most pleasant settler, on his way to Denver, came in, his wagon having been snow-blocked two miles of, where he had been obliged to leave it and bring his horses on here.  The “Gray Mare” had a stentorian voice, smoked a clay pipe which she passed to her children, raged at English people, derided the courtesy of English manners, and considered that “Please,” “Thank you,” and the like, were “all bosh” when life was so short and busy.  And still the snow fell softly, and the air and earth were silent.

I.L.B.