"Cover up that paw o' yours and go after your cayuse—don't you see it up yonder in the willers?" And Joshua took our visitor by the arm and started him in the right direction. He led him farther than was necessary, the pony being in sight, and they had some conversation on the way, but we did not overhear it, and they seemed to part with a satisfactory understanding.
The next day we made a move still farther down stream and camped in the vicinity of the site selected by the government for the erection of a sawmill that was to aid in civilizing the Utes. The habitations that had been erected at great expense were no longer visible; literally not one stone remained upon another. The boiler was perforated with bullet-holes, and rusty bits of machinery lay scattered over a square mile of the level mesa. A more complete wreck than this, effected by the gentle savages, would be hard to conceive, and a more sorrowful exhibition of sheer viciousness could not have been expressed; it was as if the destroyers had determined to obliterate every vestige that might give rise even to a memory of the kindness intended them. Those beautiful symbols of peace, the doves, were plentiful, flitting about the ruins, as docile as if the valley had never known a wrathful moment. The birds were not within the protection of the law, but to kill them in such a place seemed like adding sacrilege to cruelty, so not one was harmed.
Upon the breaking up of this camp our company was to be divided. The Deacon and his relatives would turn off to the right a few miles below, to visit the Thornburg battle-ground, while the Major and I would take our way back over the old route to Glenwood Springs. One more day's sojourn on the beautiful river at our first camping-ground, below Meeker, and we bade farewell, reluctantly, to the charming valley. But the keen edge of our unwillingness was softened by an assurance to ourselves that another summer would find us again with our tent pitched amid the sweet peacefulness. We would come again, if for no other purpose, to make acquaintance with the trail to Trapper's Lake—the gem of the Roan Range.
There is no comfort whatever in towels, with a tin cup for a bath-tub; the White River is no place to bathe in, unless one would encourage pneumonia or the rheumatism. The sight of the great pool at Glenwood, after several weeks of travesty, gave a hint of marvellous luxury. It was as if we approached the performance of a religious rite; we stood upon the edge, filled with the eagerness of neophytes, but hesitating for a moment before penetrating the mystery whose revelation we sought. But once within the warm embrace of the voluptuous crystal, the Wesleyan admonition was made manifest; we washed, and worshipped close to the throne. Then we thanked the men whose enterprise had converted the possibility of the luxury into a fact.
"Epicurean Rome could boast of no such treat as this," exclaimed the Major, shaking the crystal drops from his shaggy mane, as he rose to the surface after the first plunge.
"I don't know much about Rome," said Joshua, "but this suits me, this does."
We left the bright little city beautifully nestled among the carmine hills, as the afternoon sun was caressing the summits of the mountains in the west. We were again on the rail, speeding up the valley of the Roaring Fork. A slight bend in the road and Mount Sopris towers grandly, in front and to the right of us, with its long patch of snow offering a perpetual challenge to our daily friend.
The ride up the great gorge in the western slope to the top of the Saguache Range affords a grander pageant than that in descending. One experiences a sensation of quiet, while one is looking down upon a panorama that is drifting. As the sun touches only the highest peaks the magnificent cliffs and wooded mountain sides are in shadow, seem animate, and as if stealing away, phantom-like, into the deepening twilight below. But the sunlight of the morrow will clothe the scene in new beauties, and the summer days to come will be bountiful in fresh surprises for the sojourner in these recesses of the majestic hills.
The Switchback.