It was well seen that the house was for themselves to live in. Never have I seen a house grow so quickly or watched the progress of one so keenly. Moreover the walls were not all out of the vertical or the windows far from square as one generally gets in home-made houses (and very often other kinds too!)
"You'd better stay and have something to eat, brother," said mine host as I was strapping my bag on Lizzie's back in preparation to depart. "We've only got stewed beans, but they're a mighty wholesome food."
But I had visions of apricot pie in Pueblo, thirty miles ahead, and urged my desire to be getting on the road "right now" while the weather lasted.
They were good folks, those house-builders of Nepesta. Not a cent would they accept under any circumstances for their hospitality to me. They worked hard and feared God, and every time they partook of their frugal meals grace was said beforehand and afterwards as well, in thanksgiving for the blessings that rewarded their toils. One could not refrain from comparing the civilization of the West with the sordid life-scramble of the East.
Once on the road again the despondent sort of gloom that seemed to surround everything became a thing of the past, as gradually the Rockies loomed up on the horizon; at first faint and mysterious they gradually deepened in colour and sharpened in outline. What a refreshing and soul-inspiring sight after nearly 1,000 miles of travel across the dusty, dreary, tiring plains!
In the late afternoon a thin cloud of curling black smoke was seen upon the horizon. This is invariably the forerunner of a western town. Long before one actually draws near to one's destination, if that destination be a town, it is discernible sometimes twenty and even thirty miles away by the tufts and clouds of smoke that hang over it. The sight is as that of a huge Atlantic liner no more than a fraction above the horizon. One cannot discern its hidden size or form, but the smoke from its funnels threads upwards into the heavens like a sentinel in the engulfing vastness of the sea.
Thus does one approach a town set in the heart of a bewildering plain. Gradually it is possible to discern here and there a chimney-stack and sometimes the reflection of a solitary window in one of the tallest buildings will scintillate on the distant horizon.
The busy town of Pueblo drew nigh. With a rapidly increasing population of over 50,000 and nearly 300 factories, some of which are among the largest steel-manufacturing plants in the States, Pueblo is known as the "Pittsburgh of the West." But let not the reader be misled by this title into thinking that Pueblo is miserable and gloomy and odoriferous as is the wont of most towns of its character. Its streets are wide, clean and well-lit with electric lamps; its buildings also are clean and of comely architecture; there are no slums or poverty-stricken quarters, and with the giant mountains looming in the distance Pueblo is an ideal manufacturing town in ideal surroundings, besides being the centre of a rich mining district.