A Mountain Boyhood Part 16

Katy, dear, it's been a month since I started this letter. Things have settled down here now, and the fly-by-nights have vanished. But there's a few of us sticking to our holes with the notion if we go deep enough they'll pan out rich. But there's no way of...

They came for me to help with a poor fellow who got hurt when his tunnel caved in on him. Guess he'll make a die of it too. Seems terrible, just when he thought he had struck a bonanza, to be killed that way. Makes me lonesome to think how things turned out for him.

I've got a secret cache straight west of my cabin, forty-eight steps.

Under a big rock I've hid a buckskin sack with the golddust another fellow and I panned from a bar in the Colorado river. It's not so very much; but it'll help out in a pinch.

Kate, this camp's played out. I'm quitting, disgusted. After all the hard work here there's nothing rich; just low-grade stuff that won't pay freighting charges. Maybe if we had a mill--but there's no use talking mill, when every fellow here is in the same fix--on his last legs. We got to get out or starve; we're all living on deer and wild sheep, but its getting so we can hardly swallow it much longer. I'll let you know as soon...

It was unfinished.

The sides of the gulch were "gophered" with prospect holes, most of them very shallow, with little mounds of dirt beside them, like the graves of dead hopes. Occasionally a deeper hole had picked samples from the ore vein it followed piled near its opening. Likewise, outside, some of the cabin doors were little heaps of choice ore which hopeful owners had brought in against the time when s.h.i.+pments would be made, or an ore mill set up near by.

I had chanced upon an abandoned mining town, left forever as casually as though its residents had gone to call upon a neighbor. There are many such in the mountains of Colorado. During the early gold rushes, when strikes were made, mining towns sprang up overnight, and later when leads played out or failed to pan out profitably, or rumor of a richer strike reached the inhabitants, they deserted them to try their luck in new fields of promise. Often they were eager to be the first ones in on the new finds and left without preparation or notice, trailing across mountains and through canons, afoot, each anxious to be the first man on the ground, to have his choice of location, to stake his claim first. They could not carry all their household goods on their shoulders, nor pack them on a burro's back, and to freight them over a hundred miles of mountain trails cost more than the purchase of new goods in the new town. So they departed with only such necessities as they could carry, and abandoned the rest to pack rats and chance wanderers such as I.

So these towns, born of their high hopes, died, as their dreams flickered out, and were abandoned when new hopes sprung up in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

I forgot my hunger in unraveling the mysteries of the silent village, but my companion showed no such inclination. Being a pack burro, and having a prospector for a master, he had come to look upon tragedy with a philosophical eye. No doubt he had seen deserted towns before, and been the innocent victim of the desertion. He grew bored as I lingered over letters and the other evidence of bygone days and nudged me frequently to remind me of our original object in searching the cabins.

At last he protested with a vigorous, "Aww-hee-awwhee, a-w-w-h-e-e--"

Remembering his loyalty of the night before, to appease him I left off rummaging in those dust-covered cabins.

"All right, pal, I'll come. We'll leave this grave-yard right away and try our luck at fis.h.i.+ng."

He seemed to understand for he capered about like a playful puppy.

I knew of several small streams below the town, alive with trout. I headed for the nearest one, the burro plodding patiently behind, silent, expectant.

The smell of smoke, coffee, and other camp odors came up the trail to meet us. Soon we came abruptly in sight of two prospectors who were eating a belated breakfast.

"Reckon you better have a bite with us," invited one of the men as he set the tin-can coffee pot upon the coals of their fire.

"Thet thar burro bin a pesterin' you?" asked the second man, fixing the burro with a searching gaze.

"Oh, no!" I denied, remembering my debt to the animal. "We put in the night together, and he even ate some of my hardtack this morning," I ended laughing.

"He's the tarnationist critter, always a galavantin' roun', an' a gittin' inter somebody's grub."

The burro chose to overlook these insults and drew near the fire, unostentatiously. The old prospector slipped him part of his breakfast.

"Which way you headin'?" asked the first man, plainly puzzled because I carried neither gun nor mining tools.

"To climb Arapahoe peak."

"Climb the peak," he repeated, much mystified.

"What's the idear?" the second wanted to know. "Goin' way off thar jes' to git up a mountain, when thar's plenty right hyar, higher ones too?" He indicated the ranges to the east.

"Any place up that way to get out of the rain?" I asked, for the clouds were dropping again with the threat of gathering storm.

The men exchanged glances. Abruptly the small one got to his feet and led the burro out of sight among the willows. The other man faced me.

"Better take a friend's advice and keep outen there," he swept a grimy hand westward.

"What's up?"

"Better do your climbin' round hyar," he replied suggestively.

"But I want to climb Arapahoe; I have heard the Indians used it for a signal mountain and..."

He beckoned me to follow, and led the way into the grove mysteriously.

At length he stopped, peered about uneasily, then whispered.

"There's an ole cabin up yonder"--he faced toward Arapahoe--"that's ha'nted."

"Haunted?" my interest quickening, my fears of the depressing night forgotten.

He nodded--dead earnest.

"Are you sure about that? Did you ever see the, the----"

His look silenced me.

"Ole feller died up thar," he declared; "n.o.body knows how." His tone was awesome.

I made a move down the trail, thanking him for the meal.

"Wouldn't go, if I wus you," he persisted, following me as far as his camp.

Then, as I took the unused trail that led down toward North Park, he called after me:

"Remember, I've warned you!"

Fis.h.i.+ng was good in the stream a few miles below their camp, and I soon had all the trout I wanted and was on my way to the round dome of Arapahoe peak, jutting above some clouds that were banked against its lower slope. Through the willow flats and a dense forest of spruce, the way led up between parallel ridges over a game trail, deeply worn and recently used. I was right upon a log wall before I knew it. Then I circled and saw that the wall was part of an old cabin built in a little opening of the forest.

A section of the roof had fallen in and the fireplace had lost part of its chimney; the slab door had a broken hinge, and swayed uneasily on the one remaining, and the dirt floor bore no traces of recent habitation.

Having gathered wood for the night, for I had no blankets and must keep the fire burning, I broiled several trout for my supper. How I relished that meal!

Supper over, I climbed upon a cliff behind the cabin and watched the moon rise silently above a ridge to the eastward, and listened to the faint clamor of the coyotes far below. Shadows crept closer to the cliffs as the moon climbed higher, while from the peaks above came the moaning of the wind. Never had been such a night!

It was late when I went inside the old cabin, and the fire had burned low. I put on fresh wood, removed my shoes, and stretched out before the comforting blaze. I was asleep almost instantly. From time to time, as had become my habit, I roused enough to feed the fire; then quickly dropped off to sleep again.

Just when, I am not sure, but I think about midnight, I awoke with a strange feeling that an unseen presence was in the room. The prospector's warning came to me vaguely, and I tried to rouse up to listen, but I dropped back to sleep almost immediately.

Later, coming awake suddenly as though some one had shaken me, I sat up and, rubbing my eyes to open them, glanced around, but the interior of the cabin was dark, only the stars sparkled close above the broken roof. I yawned expansively, rolled nearer the low fire, and fell asleep.