From Cañon City I crossed the Arkansas and struck up into the mountains in the direction of Green Mountain Valley. The weather had favored me marvellously. Not since I had left my job as a navvy at Buda on the Union Pacific Railway had I been hampered by a drop of rain. Down through Colorado and among the mountains so far, I had enjoyed an unbroken succession of most delightful autumn days. But the clouds began to gather now as I made my way through Green Mountain Valley. I well remember the cold, threatening morning of October 18th, when I walked through the all but deserted mining camp of Silver Cliff. That night I spent with a ranchman in the heart of the rich valley; when I set out in the morning snow had begun to fall, and I realized, with some concern, that I still had a considerable range to cross and several days’ march to the mining camp of Créede.
I did not get very far on that memorable 19th. For an hour or two I had no difficulty in keeping the road, but the snow had thickened to a blinding storm by then, and the wind was fast rising to a gale. Anything like that snow-fall I have never seen. A whole landscape was blotted out as in a moment, and the road which just now was a clearly defined way through the valley became almost instantly indistinguishable in the general sweep of flaky whiteness, over which fresh snow was falling so fast that you could not see ten yards ahead.
I found out afterward that I had been very near to losing my way on a plain where I might have wandered in endless circles, for the falling snow instantly covered one’s tracks and left no trace of the way one had come. As it was, seeing that it was impossible to make headway in such a storm, I struck out for shelter, and before I realized my actual danger I ran up against a ranchman’s cabin.
It was a very small affair, with a lean-to for a kitchen, but a dark little German woman with a soft musical voice, who opened the door, bade me a most cordial welcome; and as she placed a chair for me before the fire, she assured me, again and again, of the anxiety that she should feel if one of her boys were caught out in such a storm, and of her gratitude to anyone who might shelter him. I began to understand that I was coming in for a good deal of vicarious attention, for she took my wet coat and boots to dry them in the kitchen and insisted upon my drinking some hot tea.
It was a very cosy nest into which I had fallen. The ranchman himself was a mild-mannered German, with a blonde beard and dreamy eyes, and an air of abstraction, who looked up to his wife in all things, for she was vastly his superior. Two boys were at home, magnificent young fellows of about fifteen or sixteen, handsome, clear-eyed, ruddy-faced lads, with the carriage of men who are most at ease in the saddle. And visiting her prospective in-law relations, was the fiancée of the oldest son, who is a merchant, I think, in West Cliff. It was worth far more than all the risks of the storm to see her. She was a Swedish girl in the very bloom of youth, and her light hair had in it the living fire of red gold. It was brushed straight back and done up behind her head in a great mass of interweaving coils in which the light played superbly. Some shorter hairs had worked loose, and these fell in almost invisible curling threads of gold about her white forehead. Her cheeks were of translucent pink, and her rich red lips were as delicately formed as in the Psyche of Praxiteles.
The child was perfectly unaware of her beauty. In her wide, blue eyes there was not a suggestion of self-consciousness. And the family about her seemed not to consider it either; perhaps they all regarded it, as the poor instinctively accept much in life, as belonging to the natural order and not to be counted in an individual sense.
We had a jolly time that day playing games and telling stories far into the evening. It was perfectly clear next morning, with a warm sun fast melting the deep snow. I could not venture on, however, for the way was too obstructed, and in another day spent in the cabin I got on quite intimate terms with the family, especially with the ranchman’s wife, who told me much of their life and many of her troubles. They were very serious, though her life was not without its compensations. It was pitiful to see the care-lines deepen in her sensitive face and an infinite perplexity cloud her eyes as she talked to me of her sorrows.
“My man is a good husband,” she would say, “but he’s not a good farmer. I don’t know what’s to become of us. He gets deeper and deeper into debt. Sometimes he works hard and manages well and I think that we are going to get on; and then in the middle of it the prospecting fever takes him, and he leaves everything and goes off into the mountains and spends every cent that he can raise, looking for silver.
“You see a fortune-teller told him once that he’d ‘find his fortune in stone,’ and ever since then he’s been crazy to prospect and he’s squandered everything off there in the mountains. The boys have to work too hard and they don’t get the proper schooling, and I don’t know what’s to become of us.
“But there’s my son John that keeps store in West Cliff”—and it was beautiful to see her face light up—“no woman ever had a better son than him. He’s been like a father to the family. I don’t know what we’d ever have done without him, for he’s been the greatest help to us in all our troubles.”