Cole of Spyglass Mountain

by Arthur Preston Hankins

It is to be feared that the true reason for the repeatedly hammered thumbnail of Cole of Spyglass Mountain was not due to awkwardness but to the captivating companionship of his helper.

Fall was manifest in the air. Fleecy clouds hung over the mountains, and there was an exhilarating nip in the kiss of the wind from Stirrup Lake. Frost covered the ground of mornings, and Joshua was afraid to accept the dare of Shanty Madge to touch his tongue to the steel of the tools. Wild ducks were circling high over the lake, for the water grasses were full ripe now and drew mallards and canvasbacks and pintails from afar. Old Man Winter was not far distant, and they worked early and late to outmaneuver him.

They completed the cabin and the stable of the Mundys first. Then they went at Joshua’s cabin at the foot of Spyglass Mountain. The work was kept back by Joshua’s having to leave and haul more building materials, and on one trip in he found that his telescope had arrived by freight. The thousand pounds that it represented, when added to a load of lumber, made the lumber content of that load pretty light. But Cole of Spyglass Mountain was a boy with a new toy. Nothing would do but that he should uncrate his treasure and set it up on its pedestal in his half-completed cabin, which served very well as an observatory then because the roof was not yet on.

Madge was as enthusiastic as he was, and after a hard day’s work with saw and hammer she was not too tired to spend hours of the night with Joshua looking at the heavenly bodies, crowing with delight.

It was a wonderful telescope. The tube was approximately ten feet long, and the pedestal was of iron. There was a clock attachment which automatically moved the instrument so that it would follow a stellar body across the sky without the attention of the operator. There was a finder, of course, and once the image was settled upon Joshua had nothing to do but give his every faculty to observation.

Winter was almost upon them by the time Joshua’s cabin and stable were up. Then Joshua hauled lumber and metal roofing for his observatory. This he was obliged to leave at the foot of Spyglass Mountain while he worked at the continuation of his trail to the summit.

Madge had decided to put a team at work clearing the sagebrush—dragging it down with a length of railroad steel which she had used for like purposes on the grade. Then, too, there was the winter’s wood to be cut and hauled. And before the spring drive of the Box-R cattle into the mountains, the homesteads must be fenced. It seemed that there were a million things that should be done at once in order to gain time, but Madge discarded all of them and helped Joshua build his trail.

No amount of argument on his part would change her mind. One look at the marvels of the skies through the new telescope seemed to have fevered her with the desire to get the materials for building the observatory to the top of Spyglass Mountain at the earliest possible date. So Joshua compromised with her, and they felled trees and hauled them to the cabins during the crisp mornings and hacked at the trail to the top of Spyglass Mountain during the mellow afternoons.

They made the trail no wider than necessary for a tandem team to pull a narrow sled up the steep side. The mountain rose so abruptly from the gentle slope above the lake that they were obliged to switch back and forth, make hairpin curves and buttonhook bends, and twist in and out about great gaunt rocks and clusters of scrubby piñon pines. Spyglass Mountain was perhaps a thousand feet above the level of the lake, and a bench mark that Joshua had discovered hidden away in the sage showed that the lake was about six thousand seven hundred and fifty feet above the sea. So the telescope, when installed for work on the summit, would be at an altitude of approximately seven thousand seven hundred and fifty feet. The mountain was bleak and rugged and dry, for it overlooked the desert and was under the influence of the desert rather than the moister country on the coast side of the range. It was a huge, steep pile of rocks and red-quartz outcroppings, with low piñons, sage, a few junipers, and an occasional yucca palm to tone down its grimness, and render its coloring contrasty when the sun so willed. But to Cole of Spyglass Mountain it was the most wonderful spot on earth!

Snow was flying before the trail had been completed, but this did not deter the workers. They were nearing the summit now, where the snow did not lie in drifts as it did down by the lake. Then, the high winds which arose drove it from the top and sides in fleecy puffs. This aided the work, but it worried Joshua. An observer cannot expect “good seeing” when the atmosphere is disturbed by gales. But the high winds, he had been told, were usually confined to the winter months in that locality, so the young astronomer was by turns elated and depressed.