With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters

by Lewis B. France

Having gone to bed, it is a very good place to stop; and as to the trip down to the Springs, if those mules give me any trouble I will let you know about it.

MULES.

The morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.” That was my matutinal orison as I tumbled out of bed at Gaskill’s. The air was fragrant with the perfume of the pine, and the hardy wild flowers were brilliant in liquid diadems. Some other fellow would say that he ”drank in the life-giving tonic“; but I don’t drink, so I breathed it, with my head out of the garret window, and felt as though this world has some things to enjoy, and that fresh air is one of them. The blue seemed nearer, and as I looked over into the Park, and over the fir-crowned hills to the majestic piles of granite, everywhere set off with a background of azure, I felt as though there was a mistake somewhere in my make-up. I ought to have been born with a gift to make the whole world feel as I did then—happy but humiliated among these magnificent monuments of Divine greatness. I’m not a self-made man, that’s the trouble; if I’d had the ordering of it, I’d have got up a success. There is nothing like success, even in a fraud, until it stands face to face with such evidences of the sublime handiwork as I looked out upon that bright morning; then the “uses of this life” seem “flat, stale and unprofitable,” as we use them.

But I must not forget the mules. Gaskill has a couple of cinnamon bears, in a room at the end of the barn. I can’t say that the Devil got into the mules, because the Devil is now ruled out; without a hell to put him in, he is no longer of any earthly use. I am sorry to lose him, because under certain circumstances I am a believer in intimidation; it is wholesome. I have known a single quiet and orderly hanging in a summary way, to make a neighborhood that would have terrorized Satan himself, as nice and well behaved as a community of Quakers. I heard one of our Denver preachers once say—and we all loved him—that there was “a certain class of mortals whom it was necessary to take by the neck and choke before they could be made ready for conviction.” The Devil has always been useful for that purpose, and I think he could be made available yet.

But I started to say something concerning those mules. The Devil, as I have said, did not get into the mules, but they got scent of those bears, and I venture the assertion that the bears discounted the Devil in his palmiest efforts, as heretofore reported. To speak without exaggeration, those mules were frightened; the bears were in their heads, heels, hair and eyes; inside and out, above and below, and all around, were bears. To those mules, it rained bears, and the atmosphere was pregnant with bears about to be delivered. If those mules had been human I would have thought it the worst case of delirium tremens that ever racked a diseased imagination. As the driver expressed it: “they was plumb crazy.” There was no crookedness about it; they were frightened horizontally as well as straight up and down, as I suppose the driver meant to be understood. It is impossible for me to tell what they did or attempted. They seemed capable of any extravagance except dying. I like to ride after mules in that condition; there is something exhilarating in dashing down a mountain road with one’s hair straightening out behind as though it would disappear by the roots; careening around short curves and making lightning-like estimates of the thousands of feet to the bottom of the gulch; picking out the softest rocks upon which to fall; flying over boulders and becoming entangled in tree tops fifty feet in the air, there to remain a torn and wretched monument of indiscretion. It wouldn’t be much of a monument, but enough to tell the tale. I thought how grand it would be, and told the driver that I preferred to have him pick me up whole some distance down the road; I felt confidence in my ability to control my own legs; the air was just right for a brisk morning walk; besides, much of the pleasure of the ride would be denied me by reason of my not having any hair to speak of that might stream in the wind. I made these suggestions and started. I believe the driver thought I was afraid to ride after those mules; but that was a mistake. I intended to ride after them provided there was anything to ride in when he should catch up to me, if he ever did. About two miles down the range I sat on a log and waited for the wreck. Presently I heard the rumbling of the wagon; soon it came in sight, the driver sitting at his post singing, as well as the roughness of the road would permit: “I want to be an angel.” I certainly thought he did, and asked him if the mules had not tried, at least, to run away, when they were being harnessed.

“Oh, no; they was too bad scared. You see, when they get that way they want to stay right with me; a mule is an obstinate cuss, you know, and only runs away for fun.”

Just then the ears of the off mule stuck out straight as the prongs of a magnified clothes pin, and she began to dance. This time it was a ground squirrel, not much larger than a lead-pencil. But the brake had to come down before the mule did. Shortly after, the nigh mule went through a like performance for a similar cause, and then they both waltzed to the music of the Frazier. I was sorry when we got as far as Cozzens’, because there it was plain sailing, with plenty of room to turn round and run away in, and yet those delightful mules trotted right along twenty-two miles to the Springs, regardless of gophers, old clothes, tin cans and two badgers. If Gaskill’s bears had got in the way, I firmly believe those mules would have trotted over them, or kicked them out of the road. Kick! They could kick in pure cussedness. “I should say so.”

A mule is a natural kicker, as a rule, but this pair had so improved upon nature’s gift, by constant practice, that they had reduced the accomplishment to an exact science. “They can fetch anything they go for, from a gnat on a stall post to a self-confident hostler.” “The nigh mule can take a fly off her right ear with her nigh hind foot.” I can’t describe how she does it, not having seen the feat performed, but the driver explained it to me so that I understood it. From my confidence in the veracity of the driver, but especially from my knowledge of the mule, I am ready to be sworn. But it is about time these mules were lost.