Furthermore, I had done that work. I had put together in Main Traveled Roads and its companion volumes a group of thirty short stories (written between 1887 and 1891), in which I had expressed all I had to say on that especial phase of western life. To attempt to recover the spirit of my youth would not only have been a failure but a bore—even to those who were urging me to the task. It was my business to keep moving—to accompany my characters as they migrated into the happier, more hopeful West. Like them I was "Campin' through, podner, just a campin' through."
As in The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, I had dealt with the three-cornered fight of the cattlemen, the Indian, and the soldier, so now, in 1902, I returned to the mountain West, to picture another conflict, equally stirring and possessing a still finer setting and back-ground. In Hesper I was concerned with a war, in which most of the action had taken place among the clouds, on the hilltops nearly two miles above sea-level. There was something grandly pictorial in this drama; but, after writing a few chapters of it, I felt the need of revisiting the scene.
Zulime again accompanied me and as our train slid down the familiar road leading to Colorado Springs and we could see the lightning flashing among the high summits on which I had laid the scenes of my story, Zulime glowed with joy and I took on a renewed sense of power. For an hour I felt equal to my task, to be historian of the free miner seemed to me a worthy office.
The Ehrichs were again our hosts and they (as well as Russell Wray, the Editor of the Gazette) took the keenest interest in my design. From Wray and his friends I began at once to derive an understanding of the part which "Little London" (as the miners called the Springs) had taken in the war. I relied on a visit to Bull Hill and Victor to furnish the Sky-town or "Red-neck" point of view.
Wray was especially valuable to me, for he had taken part in the famous expedition of the "Yaller Legs" and his experiences as a reporter and his sense of humor had enabled him to report both sides of the controversy. He had many friends in the camp, to whom he gave me letters.
The character which interested me most, in all the warring factions, was the free miner, the prospector, the man of the trail. Him I clearly understood. He had been companion in most of my trips into the wild. He was blood brother to my father, and cousin to my heroic uncles. He represented the finest phases of pioneering. "Matt Kelley," "Rob Raymond" and "Jack Munroe," I knew and loved, and their presence in this labor war redeemed it from the sordid, uninspired struggle which such contests usually turn out to be. In my design these three characters filled heroic place.
Zulime (with no literary problems to distract her) had another easeful, idyllic summer. The Ehrichs, the Wrays and the Palmers welcomed her as an old friend, and in their companionship she rode and camped and dined in easeful leisure, but I was on the move. I visited a ranch on the plains of Eastern Colorado, joined a round-up in the Sierra Blanca country, explored the gambling-houses and mines of Cripple Creek and Victor, and spent two weeks reëxploring the White River Plateau, this time with Walter Wykoff, of Princeton. For a week or two, Wykoff, Miss Ehrich and Zulime and I camped high on the shoulder of Pike's Peak. Vast and splendid scenes of storm and sun were printed on my mind, and, while the actual writing of my novel halted, I felt certain that I was doing just the right thing. I felt sure of finishing it in the proper spirit of enthusiasm.
The trip not only enabled me to finish Hesper—it suggested several of the stories which went into They of the High Trails and gave me the plan of The Forester's Daughter. I returned to West Salem, brown as an Indian and bursting with energy, and for several weeks toiled with desperate haste to put my impressions, imaginings in form.
Each morning of those peaceful days I took to mother's room, on the sunward side of the old Homestead, and there wrought into final shape the materials I had gathered. I had only to shut my eyes to see again the clouds circling the walls of Shavano. In imagination I rode once more with Matt Kelley up Bull Hill, or, sitting opposite the chief of the Miners' Union, reënjoyed his graphic account of the coming of the Federal troops. The bawling roar of the round-up on the meadow came back to fill my eyes with pictures of the Sierra Blanca foothills. In truth I had no need of notes. I was embarrassed with material. I threw my note-books into a drawer and forgot them.
Letters from my publishers informed me that The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop was marching on, but that they hoped I was at work on something to follow it. To this I replied: