“Set yourselves down. Make yourselves comfortable—the logs or the grass.”
He sat down on the fallen tree and Judy, on the stiff undergrowth, looked up at him with deep, commiserating eyes.
“I don’t see how you can bear to live in that little cabin all winter. I should think you’d die of lonesomeness or freeze to death!”
“It’s never that cold, Miss. The sun’s good and hot even on the coldest days. And I’m used to it.”
He looked at Lynne. “Came here as a boy when my father worked in the silver mines and I’ve stayed here, off and on, ever since.”
He fished out a pipe from his shirt pocket and the girls watched the gnarled fingers first clean it and then stuff it with some yellowish weed.
“Was Ashcroft ever like Aspen? You know what I mean, well populated, with lots of mines?” Lynne asked, as the old man puffed contentedly on his pipe.
“Well, yes and no. Ashcroft was built up before Aspen, but Aspen got ahead faster.”
“Why?” Judy asked.
“I’ll tell yer. For one thing, the mines out this way were hard to work and new mines weren’t easy to locate. At Aspen things were different. New veins kept on being opened all the time and they weren’t so hard to mine. Nature favored it more, or maybe it was better equipment. Anyhow, prospectors and settlers both got discouraged. They gradually took off. Yep, they just moved away. A lot of them dragged their houses with them by mule team.”