For two weeks or more I remained at work on this section, then I knew that I must be going; for the autumn was at hand, and I aimed to cross the Rockies and reach the milder climate of the Southwest by the beginning of winter. But the actual parting with the gang presented the usual embarrassments. I had become used to the men, and they to me, and we worked together harmoniously and were on terms of easiest friendliness. Besides, no one had appeared who would take my place, and there were many sleepers to be laid.
I always stipulated with my employers at the beginning of an engagement that I wished to be free to go when I pleased, as they were free to discharge me when they wished, but this rarely smoothed the way of going, for they lost sight of the agreement as they grew accustomed to me as a hand.
When I told Osborn one evening that I must be gone in a day or two, his eyes took on a look of perplexity that did not relieve my embarrassment, and he began to plead the pressure of the work and the difficulty of getting section-hands until I felt like a deserter. But there was no help for it, and early one September morning, after reluctant good-byes to the family and the men, I set off down the line with my wages in one pocket and in another a luncheon that the boss’s mother put up for me.
When the sun was setting that evening, I had entered a region where the cornfields were fewer, where the cattle country had begun, and the alkali shone white in the soil, and the bones of dead cattle lay bleaching on the plain.
“A BURRO-PUNCHER”
“A BURRO-PUNCHER”
Mike Price was a prospector by nature; his prospecting through the summer and autumn of 1892 in the Wagon Wheel Gap country of southwestern Colorado was a mere incident in a long career. Phœnix, Ariz., was his head-quarters, and he would fain return there for the Indian summer of its winter climate; for he hated snow and the hard cold of the Rocky Mountain camps, where, as he said, a man must hibernate until spring. But Phœnix was the best part of 600 miles away across a thinly settled frontier. Burros and blankets and food for the journey were to be had only for ready money, and Price had not “struck it rich”; indeed, he had not struck it at all. One after another the parts of his camping outfit had gone into a pawnbroker’s shop at Creede, in the progress of a luckless season, until the late autumn found him without burro or blanket or bacon, and bereft even of the “gun” (a six-shooter) which General —— had given him in recognition of his services as a scout.
It was late November when I met him, and Price was making a precarious living at odd jobs for civil engineers. One of these was my friend Hamilton, who had known Price for years and who proved himself a friend in need to both of us, for he brought us together and proposed the journey which took us to Phœnix, and which gave me six weeks’ experience as a “burro-puncher.”