Wild Roses: A Tale of the Rockies

by Howard R. Driggs

This again was a hard thing for Alta to decide. Except for her trouble with Bud she had always opened her heart freely to her foster father, for he was the only friend in whom she could confide. Indeed, he had been both father and mother to her for many years—ever since her own parents had passed away. She had lost her father when she was a babe in arms. Her mother too, a sweet, frail lily, whom Alta could just remember, had passed away some three years later.

Then Uncle Tom came into her life, back out of the rugged West, where he had gone after the war—came to lay his brother’s wife tenderly away among the green hills of Ohio, and to take her baby girl to his own rugged heart. How she had softened and molded that old bachelor-soldier heart, how she had played upon it with a thousand childish whims, set it throbbing with anxiety, filled it with joy and love, we can but suggest here. Alta had grown to be part of Colonel Morgan’s very life. For her sake he had tried to settle down again in Ohio, remaining there at his brother’s home for nearly a year.

But the call of the craggy West came back in the springtime, and though it half broke his heart to do it, he yielded to his love of the strong life among the mountains, struck out across the plains again with full purpose to make a fortune in California and then return to take care of his “little squirrel” and bring her up in a life that befitted her.

Alta was left meanwhile with “Aunt Betty,” a maiden sister of Colonel Morgan’s mother, who had been nurse for the child since the young mother’s death. It was a sore trial for both of them to see Uncle Tom leave. Every night, for months afterward, the child would cuddle down in the motherly arms of Aunt Betty, to talk about her “dear daddy” ’way out West, express her fears that the wicked Indians would hurt him, and often cry herself to sleep. But Aunt Betty, though the silent tears at times trickled down her own withered cheeks, for this and other hidden sorrows, would cast aside the troubles cheerily and soothe and snuggle her “little squirrel” and sing her away to dreamland.

It was easier to keep cheery when Alta, a beribboned little maid of six, would trip away to the schoolhouse on a near-by hill. Bright and happy always, she learned her lessons in a flash and made friends of everybody. School days were to her a delight. They winged themselves away swiftly, carrying Alta into a beautiful girlhood, brimming with life, and pure and sweet as a rosebud.

Aunt Betty, gentle but firm, had watched and guided her unfolding throughout those tender years with almost more than a mother’s care. They were companions in the highest sense. No thought of the child’s but was freely shared with her foster mother; and this wise old lady, by tactful management and sweet suggestion, had cultivated in the child’s heart such a sense of helpfulness, kindness, and virtue as had made her soul even more beautiful than her face, if that were possible. Alta Morgan was a wholesome, serviceable, charming girl. Aunt Betty was a teacher of the heart and hands as well as of the head.

But changes came, as changes will. Colonel Morgan had not found the end of the rainbow as quickly as he had hoped, though he sought for it faithfully among the mines of California, Nevada, and finally of Idaho. Despairing at last of ever striking the lucky vein, he turned to other fields, and eventually settled to the thought of ranching. Such a life was at least less uncertain of returns and would afford the quiet his age was beginning to demand. This decision made, he bought a well-stocked ranch, added to his acres by taking up more, and was just getting things into comfortable shape, when a message from Alta, with whom, of course, he had kept in close touch all of these years, brought the startling news that Aunt Betty had been taken away. “God has called her from me,” the tender words ran; “won’t daddy hurry home to his broken-hearted little girl?”

An hour later Colonel Morgan was driving posthaste to the station, sixty miles away. A few days later he stepped from the train at his old home town in Ohio. As he swung the gate and hurried toward the house, a beautiful girl ran down the path to fling her arms about his neck and kiss his rugged face again and again. Then they walked slowly to the little cottage, sat in Aunt Betty’s old armchair on the porch, and clung to each other while they sobbed out their sorrow in the twilight together.

“Oh, daddy, dear, take me away, take me away. This will never be home again with my Aunt Betty gone. Take me, daddy, take me,” cried the anguish-stricken girl.

“There, ‘little squirrel,’ don’t cry; I will take you and keep you by me always. Oh, how I’ve missed you these long years!”