The fascination and charm which held the listener spellbound could not be analyzed. Chiquita in her college dress and college speech was not the Chiquita of the forest. Day after day as the party wended its course along the Grand River and over the range to those famous springs at the Buena Vista ranch, she pointed out hunting grounds, battle fields where Cheyennes fought the Utes, or Sioux came down from the north to wage a war of conquest.
The buckboard was at Hot Sulphur Springs when they arrived. Miss Asquith and Cal, it is needless to remark, found this conveyance more to their liking, at least a part of the time, than the saddle method.
From the ranch excursions were made to Egeria Park, where the towering Toponas rock lifted its ragged summit over five hundred feet in the air, and on whose side a city of swallows, martins and mud-nesting birds numbering into tens of thousands, dwelt until the winter breath drove them to the warm southland. A trip to the famous Steamboat Springs, with its porcelain frescoed caves, belching forth the peculiar chug, chug, chug of a Mississippi boat, as though some giant ventriloquist were navigating one of those floating palaces in the bowels of the earth. Great trout were captured, after arduous labor, from the sluggish waters of the Bear River, but little peace was afforded the whole trip from the pestiferous swarms of red-legged grasshoppers exiled from the plains, to be buffeted back and forth from the surrounding ranges of snow-capped mountains, until the white man's destroying agency should catalogue them with the auk, the buffalo and the red man; as Chiquita chronicled it, "another example of the onward march of civilization."
The removal of the Utes from White River to the Uintah reservation had been so distasteful to Chiquita that she seldom visited the remnants of her people domiciled in a strange land. Many of these, however, made pilgrimages to her ranch, and the various tourists who shared in her hospitality had opportunity to see the blanket Indian in all his modern splendor of cast-off army garments and civilian society apparel.
Yamanatz made his home a greater part of the year at his daughter's place, but the aged chief had lost his vigor and only waited the call to the Great Hunting Ground beyond. He took little interest in the comings and goings of strangers, but enjoyed the company of Jack, who made it his mission to entertain the old warrior in every manner possible as far as he could.
The time for Chiquita to return to college was approaching. She had given up the trip to California on account of the sequel which the little romance of Miss Asquith and Cal had brought about. Chiquita had obtained their promise that the wedding should take place at the Buena Vista ranch.
The preparations were made and the services of a clergyman, who was making a tour of the mountains, was secured. Cal was elated at the unexpected turn of affairs and Miss Asquith was easily reconciled. Jack gave away the bride and the "wedding bells" which comprised a part of the ceremony "pealed forth" from a lot of Indian tom-toms, sleigh bells and tin pans in the hands of some visiting Utes.
The newly made man and wife started, after the wedding repast was served, for Denver. Jack, Hazel and Chiquita followed a few days later, Chiquita to return to college, Jack to continue his journey to the mine.