Cripple Creek
“They all have t.b.,” he whispered, otherwise we should never have known it.
After lunch he showed me his sleeping-porch. Nothing unusual in that; everyone has a fad for sleeping out of doors nowadays. He did, however, happen to mention that his Jap boy was bully whenever he was ill, but it was only in his almost emotional gladness to see us, his wistful eagerness for every small detail of news from home that I caught a suspicion of what might once have been homesickness. Perhaps I only imagined that faint suspicion. Certainly he seemed cheerful and happy and spoke of himself as a “busted lunger” as lightly as he might have said he was six feet two inches tall! As a matter of fact, his “busted lungs” are pretty well mended—for so long as he stays out here. Later we heard that there was likely to be a wedding between Jim and the young quite-lately widow who sat opposite him at table. She happily is not a member of the t.b. fraternity, but came out some years ago with a dying husband.
“What an old fox you are! Why didn’t you tell me about her?” I said to him afterward. He grinned until he looked almost idiotically foolish; then he exclaimed:
“Isn’t she wonderful?” and he squeezed my hand as though I and not he had made the remark.
Besides the conspicuous and palatial homes that one associates instinctively with Broadmoor, there are a few little bungalows, each with its sleeping-porch, a living-room, dining-room and a bedroom or two. There are also, in Colorado Springs itself, many boarding-houses, and in both of these the people do live very simply and follow more or less the prescribed life of a health resort. But in the general impression of Colorado Springs, one might imagine oneself in a second Newport, Monte Carlo, or Simla in India. Not that any of these places bear much physical resemblance to the heart of the Rocky Mountains, especially Simla, yet this last is suggested most of all. The conditions are much the same in that the people are there because they have been ordered to be, rather than because it is a home they have themselves chosen. In India the people can’t do very much because the climate is too enervating; in Colorado the people can’t do very much because their health is too uncertain. In both places there is an underlying recklessness of attitude, of wanting to get all the fun out of their enforced extradition that they can; and the “fun” consists in both places in riding, driving, playing, or watching polo or tennis, flirting and gambling. The latter two are the favorites, as they afford the most diversion for the least physical effort. The Anglo-Indians plunge into whatever form of amusement offers because the place would be deadly otherwise; the Coloradoites lead as gay a life as health will permit and ingenuity devise, because the deadliness may at any time be earnest. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow——” was never more thoroughly lived up to, even in the time of the ancients who originated the adage. Anything for excitement, anything for amusement, anything not to realize that life is not as gay as it seems!
Death is the one word never mentioned. If by chance they speak of one who has gone, they say he has “crossed the great divide.” If someone leaves to go home hopelessly, the women say good-by as casually as they can; a few men at the club drink to him—once. That is all. They are people facing the grim specter always, yet never allowing their eyes to see. Personally I should have had no inkling of the sadder side; I should have taken everything at its happy face value had it not been for one awakening incident.
I was sitting in the wide, cheerfully homelike hall of the Antlers Hotel when the people from an arriving train came in. Among perhaps a dozen indiscriminate tourists one in particular attracted my attention and interest. He was little more than a boy—twenty-two perhaps or twenty-three—good-looking, well-bred, and well off if one might judge of these things by his manner and appearance, and the pigskin bags, golf clubs, polo mallets and other paraphernalia that two porters were carrying in his wake.