I glimpsed his flaming eyes and wide-open, fang-filled mouth.
In common with all small boys, I was the hero of my dreams, and in my fancy saw myself growing into a magnified composite of Nimrod, Robin Hood, Kit Carson, and Buffalo Bill, all molded into one mighty man who dwarfed the original individuals! I confess reality was retarding my growth considerably. It looked as though Kit Carson would go unrivaled by me as a trapper; certainly the shades of Nimrod and Robin Hood had no cause to be uneasy lest I win their laurels from them, and as for Buffalo Bill—both the Buffalo and the redskins, whose scalps had always dangled in fancy from my belt in revenge for their plaguing my mother on her brave drive with my sick father across those long unsettled miles, were far beyond my puny vengeance.
The Parson told me that the Utes, a nomadic tribe, had once roamed the mountains and valleys around Estes, but that it was not generally believed that they had permanent settlements here. It was thought they made temporary or seasonal camp when hunting or fishing was at its height, and that they used the alpine valley as a vast council chamber when they met to discuss inter-tribal matters. Certain it is, I puzzled over curious, dim, ghostly circles, or rings, in the valleys, where neither grass nor any other vegetation had gained root even after all these years. The old-timers told me these had been made by the Indians banking dirt around their lodges. A few scattered tepee frames still stood, here and there, in sheltered groves along the river. Occasionally I picked up arrowheads—once upon a high-flung ledge I came upon a score or more. How my imagination soared! Here, no doubt, an Indian had stood, in eagle-feathered war bonnet and full regalia, guarding this pass; he had been wounded sore unto death, he fell! His bones, and all his trappings, the wooden shaft of his arrows, had disintegrated and disappeared. Only these bits of flint enmeshed in the clinging tendrils of Indian tobacco, or kinnikinic, were left to tell the tale of his heroism.
Of course, I didn't give up hunting or trapping or even my hope of finding a gold mine, altogether. I continued to exercise my six-shooter, though repeated failures to find my mark made it easy for me to depend more and more on my camera for "shots." I still inspected my trapline, with mental resolutions against trailing trap-maddened coyotes.
My trip over the Divide gave me a keener appreciation of winter upon the heights. When, from the window of our snug log cabin, I looked up toward Long's Peak, and saw the clouds of snow dust swirling about its head, I pictured just what was happening up there far more accurately than I could ever have done before I had that experience. I made frequent trips above timberline, sometimes to find arctic gales that filled the air with icy pellets which penetrated like shot, cutting my face; gales that drove the cold through the thickest, heaviest clothes I could put on; gales that blew the snow about until it enveloped me in a cloud-like veil, making vision impossible. On such days, retreat was the only possible, if not valorous, course. To have remained would have been foolhardy, for blinded and buffeted by the storm, I might easily have stepped off a precipice with less fortunate consequences than had attended my experience on my journey over the Divide.
But sometimes, the conditions on the heights were astonishing. Once I left our valley chill and gloomy, all shut in by lowering clouds, and climbed up toward the hidden summits of the peaks, to emerge above the clouds into bright, warm sunshine. Another day, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet, I found it only twelve below freezing, while, at the same time, as I learned later, it was twenty-four degrees below zero at Fort Collins, a town forty miles away on the plains. Strange freak of weather! The explanation lay in the difference between the winds that blew over the respective sections, a blizzardly north wind was sweeping over the low, exposed plains, while up on the peak-encircled heights a balmy "chinook" gently stirred from the west. Mountaineers know that as long as the west wind blows no severe storm is to be feared. It is the chill east wind that comes creeping up the cañons from the bleak plains and prairies of the lowlands, which bring the blizzards.
One rare, windless day upon the heights, my little hay-making friend, the cony, greeted me with an enthusiastic "squee-ek." He was sunning himself upon a rock and looked so sleek and plump I knew his harvest had been bountiful. He lay gazing off into space, apparently contemplating the Divide. But when, a few minutes later, a beady-eyed weasel challenged my right of way, I wondered whether little "Squee-ek's" thoughts were so remote as those distant peaks! In both storm and sunshine, I saw weasels abroad on the heights. They were bold, fearless little cutthroats, approaching within a few feet to stare at me wickedly. I saw them below timberline pursuing snowshoe rabbits many times their size.
Occasionally I came across fox tracks. These sly fellows seemed indifferent to cold or wind. They stalked the ptarmigan above timberline, and the grouse that had migrated up the slopes to winter, below it, and accounted for the death of many. One moonlit night, as I prowled upward, I heard an unearthly, uncanny squall. I couldn't help the shiver that ran down my spine. All the pent-up anguish and torment in the world broke forth in that sound. But perhaps it was only his foxy protest because his prey had outfoxed him.