Chum sings:
“Now is the time for disappearing,” and takes a header out of the side door. It is my cue to follow suit, but instead the Madame picks up her parasol and sails out with dignity. She wouldn’t make a bad figure in the Lancers, I think, as she closes the door. I had intended to do some writing before the time came to pursue our journey, but I don’t feel like it now and pick up Felix Holt and a cigar. Presently the two return in high good humor over some joke, and luncheon is ordered and eaten amid a fusilade of chattered nonsense.
Betweentimes I extract bits of information in regard to Montrose and its neighborhood. The town is the center of a very large agricultural district. It supplies all of the valley of the Uncompahgre as far south as Dallas creek, and westward nearly to Delta; while northward its bailiwick extends over to widely scattered but numerous settlers on the North Fork of the Gunnison and its tributaries. A glance at the map will show the reader that a great number of small streams come down from the mountains lying north of the Gunnison, and of its North Fork, to feed those trunk-streams. The mountains themselves, and the spurs that stretch down between the creeks are rocky, sterile, and too cold for farming; but in the valleys where the descent is always rapid, water is easily led aside in irrigating ditches, and the soil is invariably found to be rich and responsive. Throughout these remote creek-sides, then, a large farming and stock-raising population has already settled itself; and though out of sight, it forms a large element in the class of buyers for whom the merchant at the railway station must provide. Those living on the lower part of the North Fork trade at Delta.
Lately coal has been found within half a dozen miles of town, and veins of great thickness and soundness are being opened in several places by Montrose men, who can sell it much cheaper than it has hitherto been brought from Crested Butte. At Cimmaron, about twelve miles from Montrose, coal of very good quality occurs in great abundance, and is being mined. On the mesas, surrounding Montrose, grows timber of unusual size and importance, and nearly all the large sticks—some forty-four feet in length,—used by the railway in the construction of bridges on this half of the line, were derived from those forests of yellow pine. Several sawmills, each a nucleus of small settlements, buy and sell at Montrose. Local cattle-owners make the town their headquarters, the herds ranging on the upland pastures within a few miles. The cattle business in this region has just begun, but everything proves so favorable that great expectations are entertained of it as a source of wealth. The object is to raise fat beef for local markets, and Durham blood is being introduced to raise the grade of the native stock. The Cimmaron range, the heights beyond the North Fork and the Uncompahgre mesa, supply the chief ranges at present. A good many people are employed at Montrose, also, in the forwarding business,—that is, the re-loading of merchandise and other goods into the huge trailed wagons which they used to call “prairie schooners” on the plains, to be dragged away to the mountain mining camps. Finally, the town is the county seat.
EXPLORING THE WALLS.
While these resources are all of importance Montrose depends mainly upon the farming which she says is to make her valley and the dun-colored mesas, “blossom as the rose.”
“They tell me,” says Chum, “and they prove it, too, that there is nothing you cannot raise here short of tropical fruits, and they’re not quite sure about that, for they propose peaches, nectarines, and apricots. And as for grain, great Injuns! why I saw stalks of oats as big as a walking-stick, and stems of barley that looked like gun-barrels.”