One trip which Jack deferred was to Long's Peak, and as day succeeded day he was conscious that his little party cast longing glances toward that snowcapped, uncompromising sentinel of the plains. So few ventured to undertake the fatigue incident to the wearisome and perilous journey that little was heard of the experiences, and those who did accomplish it seemed loath to recount much of their experience. When the signs in the zodiac at last became propitious, and all were physically and morally equal to the attempt, preparations were made to go to the Half Way house, Lamb's ranch, and the next morning, at four o'clock, make an early start to climb the peak. No fishing tackle was carefully stowed away, no odds wagered on results, and no great amount of unrestrained merriment attended the "make ready" as wraps, lunches, heavy ironshod walking sticks and sundry necessaries were packed into the vehicles. Three good saddle ponies of the Indian variety were provided for the ladies, while Jack and Cal made arrangements to get their saddle animals at Lamb's. The road to the Half Way house was of the usual rough thoroughfare, corduroyed in places, steep and fringed with pine trees, whose uncanny whisperings added to an already semi-funereal gloom which hung oppressively over the party. This was partially due to the impressive monosyllabic advice given in low voices by guides, hostlers and residents of the park.
After a restless night, just as the gray dawn of morning was breaking through the eastern sky, the lengthening and shortening of stirrups, changing of packs, wrapping up bundles of extra clothing and other miscellany occupied the time while breakfast was being prepared. With a good-bye to those who remained at the ranch, a cavalcade of a dozen, including guides, started away in the crisp, frosty air, each one eager to be in the lead, and on the return each one was contented to be the drone. The sun was perhaps two hours high when timber line was reached. Frequent stops for breathing had to be made and saddle girths adjusted as higher altitudes and steeper grades were encountered. The inexperienced noted the panting horses, but did not fully grasp the terrific effort required to climb those precipitous inclines at eleven thousand feet above sea level. Not a cloud, not a particle of haze blurred the clear atmosphere. The pines soughed dreamily and waved their needle tipped arms in a lazy, indolent manner, wafting fragrance and vigor to the world. The trail wound its serpentine way around hill after hill toward the monster peak, standing cold and aloof, riveted, as it were, to the deep blue firmament against which it seemed to rest. As the sky was approached nearer and nearer, the vegetation grew sparse and stunted. Coarse rye grass in clumps few and far between gave evidence of nature's provision, even at that altitude, for wandering deer or elk that might be left behind when the great winter migration of the restless bands sought the lower regions. Great boulders appeared more frequently and the trail led the party over slide rock a great portion of the way. The squeaks of conies and shrill whistles of groundhogs could be distinguished above the clatter of horses' hoofs, for timber line is their home.
At last the trees were left behind, the great boulder bed stretched before them, an ocean of waste rock, formidable, repellant, uninviting. The "Key Hole" was plainly visible, two miles distant, while the summit of the peak towered far above, almost over them. Horses were lariated, saddles taken off, and lunches stowed into pockets, the stout iron pointed sticks were brought into service and the signal given, "Onward." The way at first was over soft grassy spots interspersed between the waves of rocks, here and there a scrawny runt of a pine tree, looking more like roots growing needles than a tree, beneath the shelter of which the famous ptarmigan, or mountain quail, kept lonely vigil.
The last vestige of verdure passed, the immensity of that vast area of huge, desolate, dreary waste of rock appalls the mind. Step by step, up, up, over those ever increasing boulders, it did not seem like mounting higher and higher, but as though one was in a gigantic, fearful stone tread mill and the earth gradually sinking away, down, down, into space below. After the boulder bed, the snow, hard, crusty, firm enough to bear a horse. The "Key Hole"—and as the party passed through to the eastern slope, they found spread out beneath their feet the dry, dusty plain, with its brown coat of grass and alkali, stretching away into nothing. A venture to the edge of an immense great rock upon which one could lie down and gaze into the depth below was like looking into eternity, the contemplation of which baffles the mind for words to describe the awesome, fearful grandeur of God's handiwork as viewed from Long's Peak. No other peak so barren, no other peak so lonesome, no other peak so supernaturally devoid of at least one redeeming feature as Long's. From its barren crest one seems able to touch the sky, and one bound into space would land him beyond the world. To the right could be seen Denver, there the Platte River, Longmont in a maze of alfalfa beds and wheat fields, but these were as a drop of water to the ocean, a grain of sand to the plains. A hasty lunch, dry indeed, but for the accommodating snow bank which leaked enough to furnish ice water that coursed in a stream about the size of the lead in a pencil down a boulder, which dwarfed Cheops' pyramid. The labor involved in the return trip caused dejection and woe. Lameness was the rule and only after much coaxing, and threatening, could every one understand the peril which awaited them, once the night settled down before the boulder beds were crossed.
Just below the "Key Hole" the guide conducted the party to a wooden slab standing unpainted, weatherbeaten, bearing this inscription:
Here
Carrie J. Welton
Lay to Rest
Died Alone
Sept. 28—1884.
It was in a spot at the base of the "Key Hole" where the rocks stood on end and seemed to disappear into the boulders, that made up that vast boulder bed. From a prayer book, which Jack carried, he read the following tale of the awful tragedy:
PERISHED ALONE.
From the Half Way House at break of day
A maiden gaily strode away,
To climb the heights of Long's Peak bold,
With guide to show the trail, I'm told;
For there's no path and the way is steep,
And death lurks 'round that grim old peak.
'Twas at the dawn of an autumn morn,
The pine trees soughed as if to warn
As two climbed o'er the boulder bed.
"Come back! The storm! 'Twill come," he said.
"On to the summit," she made reply.
"Why need we falter, you and I?"