"Yes, mother, of course you will, and you know how I do care for you. I couldn't begin to do without you even for a day; but someway you don't understand. It's because you are a woman. Sometimes I feel as if I would be the happiest boy in the Clear Creek School if I just had a father I could look up to and be proud of and—"
"O, but Willis, be careful." Her voice was low and full of feeling. "You can do all that, my boy, and more. I know you miss him, but you must not forget we had him once, both of us, and that he was the very best father in all the world." She stopped, for now the tears were coming fast. "The only trouble is that he was taken away before you were lad enough to know him and love him as you would if we had him now. But that is all the more reason why you should grow into a worthy man, my boy—for his sake and mine. He loved you dearly, and I've often thought it was that love and ambition for you that made him determine to make money, so that you might have the future he planned for you. He left you, my boy, something better than money—a heritage of clean, noble blood and character. You aren't old enough just yet to know all that that means, but some day you will be truly thankful."
"You are right—always right; but you know what I mean, don't you? You have never told me all about him, have you, mother? Won't you tell me now? I never wanted to know so badly as I do tonight. He seems to come near to me sometimes, even if I can't see him, and I want to know more about him."
The fire burned low; the storm had increased in its fury; it seemed as if each gust would lift the house from its foundations. Still, to these two, opening their hearts to each other in the kindly glow of the firelight, the storm was forgotten.
After a pause she began softly and very slowly to tell the story.
"Your father was a noble man, Willis, such as I am sure you will be if you are spared to live. His boyhood I do not know much about, only that it was spent on his father's farm. He went to Kalamazoo for his schooling, and it was there that I first met him. He worked hard, saved his money, and went to Ann Arbor for his college work. He was ambitious to become a great engineer, and was always tinkering at some kind of a machine. He used to joke with me about becoming a great inventor, and after we were married he did try his hand at a patent coupler and a back-firing device for a gas engine. He was just like you, my boy, always dreaming and seeing things in the out-of-doors. I can remember the delight he found in rising early on summer mornings to search for caterpillars, moths, and worms in the nearby woods, and he would put a strange bug in every bottle I had in the house.
"After our marriage we moved to Lansing, and he became superintendent in an electrical manufacturing company. He had a little shop of his own in the basement at home, and during the long winter evenings of the first year that we were there he built furniture for our little home. The chair we are sitting in, Willis, is one of his first pieces. We were very happy together there, and it wasn't long before you came. The summer before you were born his company sent him West to install mine machinery. It was then that he became interested in the great gold mines of Colorado. Everybody seemed to be prospecting and staking gold claims. He thought he saw his chance to get rich quickly, so he, too, began prospecting. He very soon developed a great love for the mountains, and while you were a baby he used to go to Colorado Springs for his vacations. His mind was very active, and as he became more closely acquainted with the mines he conceived an idea for a machine to roast gold ore by electricity. In the winter evenings he would sit sketching its parts and dreaming over his plans. Sometimes in his boyish enthusiasm he would assure me that he would yet be a rich man."
"And what about his mine, mother; doesn't that come into the story pretty soon?" "Yes, yes, but don't hurry me, son. It seems so very strange to be sitting here telling you all about him, for it seems to have happened so long, long ago.
"On one of his trips west he fell in with an old mountaineer named Kieser, Tad Kieser. Tad became interested in his roasting machine, and they decided to locate claims together. Tad was to put up the 'grub stakes,' as they called it, for your father had no money except his salary. All one fall, when he was not installing machinery, they explored the mountains south of Colorado Springs, especially along the old Stage Road to Cripple Creek, looking for suitable claims. The old Stage Road was a steep, rocky mountain road over which they hauled provisions and passengers into the Cripple Creek district.
"Several miles from the city there was an old log hostelry—'Wright's Road House' they called it. Here lived a strange old man, a mountaineer of the oldest type. Daddy Wright, they called him. He and Tad were old friends, so your father became very well acquainted with him. The stages to and from the gold camp always stopped at Dad's; sometimes for a meal and sometimes for all night. It was one of the delights of your father's business trips to spend an evening with this old man in his rough mountain cabin, sitting before his crude stone fireplace smoking and listening to stories of the days of 'forty-nine,' when Dad had hunted for gold in the mountains of California. Your father and Tad were both in the old road house the night it was burned and barely escaped with their lives. He didn't tell me about it until long afterwards.