The Prospector, and The Silver Queen
Author: Cy Warman; Fitz-Mac
Date: 2024-10-06T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Creede; Nicholas C.; 1843?-1897; Creede (Colo.) -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Prospector, and The Silver Queen

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Title: The Prospector, and The Silver Queen

Author: Cy Warman

Fitz-Mac

Illustrator: Zella Neill

Release date: October 6, 2024 [eBook #74521]

Language: English

Original publication: Denver: The Great Divide Publishing Company, 1894

Credits: D A Alexander, Charlene Taylor, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROSPECTOR, AND THE SILVER QUEEN ***

The Prospector and The Silver Queen

N. C. CREEDE. | D. H. MOFFAT. | CAPT. L. E. CAMPBELL.
S. T. SMITH. | WALTER S. CHEESMAN.

THE
PROSPECTOR.

STORY OF THE LIFE OF
NICHOLAS C. CREEDE.

BY
CY WARMAN.

DENVER
The Great Divide Publishing Company
1894.

Copyrighted 1894, by Cy Warman,
Denver, Colorado.

PREFACE.

The purpose of these pages is to tell the simple story of the life of an unpretentious man, and to show what the Prospector has endured and accomplished for the West.

The Author.

INTRODUCTORY.

The convulsion was over. An ocean had been displaced. Out of its depths had risen a hemisphere; not a land finished for the foot of man, but a seething, waving mass of matter, surging with the mighty forces and energies of deep-down, eternal fires. The winds touched the angry billows and leveled out the plains. One last, mighty throe, and up rose the mountains of stone and silver and gold that stand to tell of that awful hour when a continent was born. The rain and gentle dew kissed the newborn world, and it was arrayed in a mantle of green. Forests grew, and the Father of Waters, with all his tributaries, began his journey in search of the Lost Sea.

That miniature race, the Cliff Dwellers, ruled the land, and in the process of evolution, the Red Man, followed by our hero, the Prospector, who brushed away the mysteries and disclosed the wonders, the grandeur, the riches of the infant world. Before him the greatest of the earth may well bow their heads in recognition of his achievements. His monument has not been reared by the hands of those who build to commemorate heroic deeds, but in thriving villages and splendid cities you may read the history of his privation and hardship and valor. He it was who first laid down his rifle to lift from secretive sands the shining flakes of gold that planted in the hearts of men the desire to clasp and possess the West.

It was the Prospector who, with a courage sublime, attacked the granite forehead of the world, and proclaimed that, locked in the bosom of the Rocky Mountains, were silver and gold, for which men strive and die. He strode into the dark cañon where the sword of the Almighty had cleft the mountain chain, and climbed the rugged steeps where man had never trod before, and there, above and beyond the line that marked the farthest reach of the Bluebell and the Pine, he slept with the whisperings of God. His praises are unsung, but his deeds are recorded on every page that tells of the progress and glory of the West. He has for his home the grand mountains and verdant vales, whose wondrous beauty is beyond compare.

From the day the earth feels the first touch of spring, when the first flower blooms in the valley, all through the sunny summer time, when the hills hide behind a veil of heliotrope and a world of wild flowers; all through the hazy, dreamy autumn, this land of the Prospector is marvelously beautiful.

When the flowers fade, and all the land begins to lose its lustre; when the tall grass goes to seed and the winds blow brisker and colder from the west, there comes a change to the Alpine fields, bringing with it all the bright and beautiful colors of the butterfly, all the rays of the rainbow, all the burning brilliancy and golden glory of a Salt Lake sunset. Now, like a thief at night, the first frost steals from the high hills, touching and tinting the trees, biting and blighting the flowers and foliage. The helpless columbine and the blushing rose bend to the passionless kisses of the cold frost, and in the ashes of other roses their graves are made.

When the God of Day comes back, he sees upon the silent, saddened face of Nature the ruin wrought by the touch of Time. The leaves, by his light kept alive so long, are blushing and burning, and all the fields are aflame, fired by the fever of death. Even the winged camp robber screams and flies from the blasted fields where bloom has changed to blight, and the willows weep by the icy rills. All these wondrous changes are seen by the Prospector as he sits on a lofty mountain, where the autumn winds sigh softly in the golden aspen, shaking the dead leaves down among the withered grasses, gathering the perfume of the pines, the faint odor of the dying columbine and wafting them away to the lowlands and out o’er the waste of a sun-parched plain.

THE PROSPECTOR.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTHPLACE—SCHOOL DAYS—BOY LIFE ON THE FRONTIER—FAVORITE SPORTS.

FIFTY years and one ago, near Fort Wayne, Indiana, Nicholas C. Creede, the story of whose eventful life I shall attempt to tell you, first saw the light of day. When but four years old his parents removed to the Territory of Iowa, a country but thinly settled and still in the grasp of hostile tribes whose crimes, and the crimes of their enemies, have reddened every river from the Hudson to the Yosemite.

In those broad prairies, abounding with buffalo and wild game of every kind, began a career which, followed for a half century, written down in a modest way, will read like a romance.

When but a mere lad, young Creede became proficient in the use of the rifle and made for himself a lasting reputation as a successful hunter. He was known in the remote settlements as the crack shot of the Territory, and being of a daring, fearless nature, spent much of his time in the trackless forest and on the treeless plain.

As the years went by, a ceaseless tide of immigration flowed in upon the beautiful Territory until the locality where the Creedes had their home was thickly dotted with cabins and tents, and fields of golden grain supplanted the verdure of the virgin sod. As the population increased, game became scarce, and then, as the recognized leader, young Creede, at the head of a band of boyish associates, penetrated the wilds far to the northward in pursuit of their favorite sport. On some of these hunting expeditions they pushed as far north as the British line, camping where game was abundant, until they had secured as much as their horses could carry back to the settlements.

This life in the western wilds awoke in the soul of the young hunter a love for adventure, and his whole career since that time has been characterized by a strong preference for the danger and excitement of frontier life.

The facilities for acquiring an education during young Creede’s boyhood were extremely limited. A small school-house was erected about three miles from his home, and there the boys and girls of the settlement flocked to study the simplest branches under a male teacher, who, the boys said, was “too handy with the gad.” The boy scout might have acquired more learning than he did, but he had heart trouble. A little prairie flower bloomed in life’s way, and the young knight of the plain paused to taste its perfume. He had no fear of man or beast, but when he looked into the liquid, love-lit eyes of this prairie princess he was always embarrassed. He had walked and tried to talk with her, but the words would stick in his throat and choke him. At last he learned to write and thought to woo her in an easier way. One day she entered the school-room, fresh and ruddy as the rosy morn; her cherried lips made redder by the biting breeze; and when the eyes of the lass and the lover met, all the pent-up passion and fettered affection flashed aflame from her heart to his, and he wrote upon her slate:

“The honey bee for honey tips
The rose upon the lea;
Then how would be your honeyed lips
If I could be the bee?”

N. C. CREEDE.

The cold, calculating teacher saw the fire that flashed from her heart to her cheek, and he stepped to her desk. She saw him coming and she spat upon the slate and smote the sentiment at one swift sweep. Then the teacher stormed. He said the very fact that she rubbed it out was equal to a confession of guilt, and he “reckoned he’d haf to flog her.” A school-mate of Creede’s told this story to me, and he said all the big boys held their breath when the teacher went for his whip, and young Creede sat pale and impatient. “He’ll never dare to strike that pretty creature,” they thought; “she is so sweet, so gentle, and so good.”

The trembling maiden was not so sure about that as she stepped to the whipping corner, shaking like an aspen. “Swish” went the switch, the pretty shoulders shrugged, and the young gallant saw two tears in his sweetheart’s eyes, and in a flash he stood between her and the teacher and said: “Strike me, you Ingin, and I’ll strike you.” “So’ll I, so’ll I,” said a dozen voices, and the teacher laid down his hand.

CHAPTER II.

HIS FATHER’S DEATH—DRIFTING WESTWARD—ADVENTURES ON THE MISSOURI.

DEATH came to the Creede family when young Creede was but eight years old. A few years later the youth found a step-father in the family, and they were never very good friends. The boy’s home-life was not what he thought it should be, and he bade his mother good-by and started forth to face the world. In that thinly settled country, the young man found it very difficult to secure work of any kind, and more than once he was forced to fancy himself the “merry monarch of the hay-mow,” or a shepherd guarding his father’s flocks, as he lay down to sleep in the cornfield and covered with the stars. The men, for the most part, he said, were gruff and harsh, but the women everywhere were his friends, and many a season of fasting was shortened by reason of a gentle woman’s sympathy and kindness of heart. The brave boy battled with life’s storms alone; and when but eighteen years old he set his face to the West.

Omaha was the one bright star in the western horizon toward which the eyes of restless humanity were turned, and on the breast of the tide of immigration our young man reached the uncouth capital of Nebraska. Perhaps he had not read these unkind remarks by the poet Saxe:

“Hast ever been to Omaha, where rolls the dark Missouri down,

And forty horses scarce can draw an empty wagon through the town?

If not, then list to what I say: You’ll find it just as I have found it,

And if it lie upon your way, take my advice, and you’ll go round it.”

Omaha was then the great outfitting point for the country to the westward,

Where everything was open wide,

And men drank absinthe on the side.

In the language of Field, “money flowed like liquor,” and a man who was willing to work could find plenty to do; but the rush and bustle of the busy, frontier town was not in keeping with the taste of our hero, and he began to pine for the broad fields and the open prairie. At first it was all new and strangely interesting to him; and often, after his day’s work was done, he would wander about the town, looking on at the gaming tables and viewing the festivities in the concert halls; and when weary of the sights and scenes, he would go forth into the stilly night and walk the broad, smooth streets till the moon went down. At last he resolved to leave its busy throng, and joining a party of wood-choppers, he went away up the river where the willows grew tall and slim. He was busy on the banks of the sullen stream; he felt the breath of Spring and the sunshine, and while the wild birds sang in the willows, he wielded the ax and was happy.

The wood was easily worked and commanded a good price at Omaha, and the young chopper soon found that he was quite prosperous; was his own master, and he whistled and chopped while the she-deer fondled her fawn and the pheasant fluttered near him, friendly and unafraid. Once a week the wood was loaded on a “mackinaw” and floated down to the city, where barges were always waiting, and where sharp competition often sent prices way above the expectation of the settlers.

One day, while making one of these innocent and profitable trips down the river, young Creede nearly lost his life. For some reason, they were trying to make a landing above the city, and Creede was in the bow of the boat, pulling a long sweep oar fixed there on a wooden pin. While exercising all his strength to turn the boat shoreward in the stiff current, the pin broke, he was thrown headlong into the water and the boat drifted above him. As often as he rose to the surface, his head would strike the bottom of the boat and he would be forced down again. It seemed to him, he said, that the boat was a mile long and moving with snail-like speed. He was finally rescued more dead than alive, so full of muddy water that they had to roll him over a water-keg a long time before he could be bailed out and brought back to life.

When he reached Omaha and received his share of the cash from the sale of the wood, he abandoned that line of labor, and with the restlessness of spirit and love for adventure which has characterized his whole life, again started westward.

The sturdy bull, with stately tread,
Submissive, silent, bows his head
And feels the yoke. The creaking wain
Rolls leisurely across the plain:
Across the trackless, treeless land,
An undulating sea of sand,
Where mocking, sapless rivers run;
With swollen tongue and bloodshot eye,
Still on to where the shadows lie,
And onward toward the setting sun.

With weeping eyes he looks away
To where his free-born brothers play
Upon the plain, so wild and wide;
He turns his head from side to side,
He feels the bull-whip’s cruel stroke;
Again he leans against the yoke.
At last his weary walk is done.
He pauses at the river’s brink
And drinks the while his drivers drink.
Almost beside the setting sun.

CHAPTER III.

INDIAN FIGHTING—THE UNION PACIFIC—BUFFALO HUNTING.

CREEDE’S arrival at the Pawnee Indian Reservations on the Loop fork of the Platte River marked an era in his eventful life. He began at this place a period of seven years’ Indian fighting and scouting, which made him known in the valley of the Platte, and gave him a fame which would have been world-wide had he, like later border celebrities, sought for notoriety in print and courted the favor of writers of yellow covered literature.

Being naturally of a retiring, uncommunicative nature, he shrank from public attention; and no writer of fiction, or even a newspaper correspondent could wrest from him a single point on which to hang a sensational story. While genial and sociable among his associates on the trail, his lips were locked when a correspondent was in camp.

At that time the Union Pacific railway was in course of construction, and hostile Indians continually harassed the workers and did all in their power to retard the progress of the work. United States Cavalry troops were put into the field to protect the working corps, and workmen themselves were provided with arms for their own defense. The Pawnee Indians were lying quietly on their reservation, at peace with the whites, never going forth except on periodical buffalo hunts, or on the war-path against their hereditary enemies, the Sioux.

Under these circumstances was begun the building of a line across the plains. It was here that the now famous “Buffalo Bill” made his reputation as a buffalo killer, which has enabled him to travel around the world, giving exhibitions of life on the western wilds of America.

Mr. Frank North, then a resident of the Pawnee country, and thoroughly familiar with their language and customs, conceived the idea that the Pawnees would prove valuable allies to the regular troops in battling with the hostile Sioux, and with but little difficulty secured governmental authority to enlist two or three companies and officer them with whites of his own choosing. One of the very first men he hit upon was Creede, whom he made a first lieutenant of one of the companies, a relative of the organizer being placed in command with a captain’s rank. This man was a corpulent, easy-going fellow, who sought the place for the pay. There was nothing in his nature that seemed to say to him that he should go forth and do battle with the fearless hair-lifters of the plain. Even at his worst, two men could hold him when the fight was on. He was a very sensible man, who preferred the quiet of the camp and the government barber to the prairie wilds and the irate red man.

With Creede it was different. He was young and ambitious, and having been brought up by the firm hand of a step-father, peace troubled his mind. Nothing pleased him more than to have the captain herd the horses while he went out with his hand-painted Pawnees to chase the frescoed Sioux. He set to work assiduously to learn the language of the Pawnees and soon mastered it. By his recklessness in battle and remarkable bravery in every time of danger, he gained the admiration and confidence of the savage men, who followed fearlessly where their leader led. They looked upon Creede as their commander, regarding the Captain as a sort of camp fixture, not made for field work, and many of their achievements under their favorite leader awoke amazement in their own breasts and made them a terror to their Indian foes. If there are those who think these pages are printed to please rather than from a desire to tell the truth and do justice to a name long neglected, I need but state that it stands to-day as a prominent page of the history of Indian warfare in the West, that during their several years of service, the Pawnee scouts were never defeated in battle. The intrepid, dashing spirit of their white leaders inspired their savage natures with a confidence in their own powers which seemed to render them invincible.

E. DICKINSON.

Major North was himself a brave, energetic officer, fearless in battle and skilled in Indian craft, and not a few of his appointments proved to be valuable ones from a fighting standpoint. Because he was always with them, sharing their danger and leading fearlessly when the fight was fierce, the red scouts came to regard Lieutenant Creede as the great “war chief”; and never did they falter a moment when they were needed most by the Government. Every perilous expedition was intrusted to Creede and his invincibles. A favoritism was shown which permitted certain officers to remain in camp away from danger. They never knew how proud the Lieutenant was to lead his gallant scouts. It was a comparatively easy road to fame with so brave a band of warriors, and the attendant danger only served to appease the leader’s appetite for adventures.

The notable incidents which marked Lieutenant Creede’s career during his seven years’ service as a scout would fill many volumes such as this. But a few can be touched upon; just enough to exhibit his fearless nature and his often reckless daring in the face of danger.

CHAPTER IV.

Hard down the plain the Red Man rode
Against the Red Man; Pawnee slew
His hated enemy, the Sioux,
And bathed him in his brother’s blood.

For they were wily, wild and strong,

Revengeful, fearless, fierce and fleet.

They murmured: Oh, revenge is sweet

When Red Men ride to right a wrong.

LIEUTENANT MURIE—“GOOD INDIANS”—“DON’T LET HER KNOW.”

“READ to me, Jim,” said the sweet girl-wife of Lieutenant Murie.

“I can’t read long, my love,” said the gallant scout. “I have just learned that there is trouble out West and I must away to the front. That beardless telegrapher, Dick, has been here with an order from Major North and they will run us out special at 11:30 to-night.”

The Lieutenant picked up a collection of poems and read where he opened the book:

“Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I flee.”

“Oh, Jim,” she broke in, “why don’t they try to civilize these poor, hunted Indians? Are they all so very bad? Are there no good ones among them?”

“Yes,” said the soldier, with a half smile. “They are all good except those that escape in battle.”

“But tell me, love, how long will this Indian war last?”

“As long as the Sioux hold out,” said the soldier.

At eleven o’clock the young Lieutenant said good-by to his girl-wife and went away.

This was in the ’60’s. The scouts were stationed near Julesburg, which was then the terminus of the Union Pacific track. The special engine and car that brought Lieutenant Murie from Omaha, arrived at noon, the next day after its departure from the banks of the muddy Missouri.

Murie had been married less than six months. For many moons the love-letters that came to camp from his sweetheart’s hand had been the sunshine of his life, and now they were married and all the days of doubt and danger were passed.

An hour after the arrival of the special, a scout came into camp to say that a large band of hostile Sioux had come down from the foot-hills and were at that moment standing, as if waiting—even inviting an attack, and not a thousand yards away. If we except the officers, the scouts were nearly all Pawnee Indians, who, at the sight or scent of a Sioux, were as restless as caged tigers. They had made a treaty with this hostile tribe once, and were cruelly murdered by the Sioux. This crime was never forgotten, and when the Government asked the Pawnees to join the scouts they did so.

The scouts did not keep the warriors waiting long. In less than an hour, Lieutenant Murie was riding in the direction of the Sioux, with Lieutenant Creede second in command, followed by two hundred Pawnee scouts, who were spoiling for trouble. The Sioux, as usual, outnumbered the Government forces, but, as usual, the dash of the daring scouts was too much for the hostiles and they were forced from the field.

Early in the exercises, Murie and Creede were surrounded by a party of Sioux and completely cut off from the rest of the command. From these embarrassing environments they escaped almost miraculously. All through the fight, which lasted twenty minutes or more, Creede noticed that Murie acted very strangely. He would yell and rave like a mad man—dashing here and there, in the face of the greatest danger. At times he would battle single-handed, with a half dozen of the fiercest of the foe, and his very frenzy seemed to fill them with fear.

When the fight was over, Lieutenant Murie called Creede to him and said he had been shot in the leg. Hastily dismounting, the anxious scout pulled off the officer’s boot, but could see no wound nor sign of blood. Others came up and told the Lieutenant that his leg was as good as new; but he insisted that he was wounded and silently and sullenly pulled his boot on, mounted, and the little band of invincibles started for camp. The Pawnees began to sing their wild, weird songs of victory as they went along; but they had proceeded only a short distance when Murie began to complain again, and again his boot was removed to show him that he was not hurt. Some of the party chaffed him for getting rattled over a little brush like that, and again in silence he pulled on his boot and they continued on to camp.

Dismounting, Murie limped to the surgeon’s tent, and some of his companions followed him, thinking to have a good laugh when the doctor should say it was all the result of imagination, and that there was no wound at all.

When the surgeon had examined the limb, he looked up at the face of the soldier, which was a picture of pain, and the bystanders could not account for the look of tender sympathy and pity in the doctor’s eyes.

Can it be, thought Creede, that he is really hurt and that I have failed to find the wound? “Forgive me, Jim,” he said, holding out his hand to the sufferer, but the surgeon waved him away.

“Why, you—you couldn’t help it, Nick,” said Murie. “You couldn’t kill all of them; but we made it warm for them till I was shot. You won’t let her know, will you?” he said, turning his eyes toward the medical man. “It would break her heart. Poor dear, how she cried and clung to me last night and begged me to stay with her and let the country die for itself awhile. Most wish I had now. Is it very bad, Doctor? Is the bone broken?”

“Oh no,” said the surgeon. “It’s only painful; you’ll be better soon.”

“Good! Don’t let her know, will you?”

They laid him on a cot and he closed his eyes, whispering as he did so: “Don’t let her know.”

“Where is the hurt, Doctor?” Creede whispered.

“Here,” said the surgeon, touching his own forehead with his finger. “He is crazy—hopelessly insane.”

All night they watched by his bed, and every few moments he would raise up suddenly, look anxiously around the tent, and say in a stage whisper: “Don’t let her know.”

A few days later they took him away. He was not to lead his brave scouts again. His reason failed to return. I never knew what became of his wife, but I have been told that she is still watching for the window of his brain to open up, when his absent soul will look out and see her waiting with the old-time love for him.

One of his old comrades called to see him at the asylum, a few years ago, and was recognized by the demented man. To him his wound was as painful as ever, and as he limped to his old friend, his face wore a look of intense agony, while he repeated, just as his comrades had heard him repeat an hundred times, this from Swinburne:

“Oh, bitterness of things too sweet,
Oh, broken singing of the dove.
Love’s wings are over-fleet,
And like the panther’s feet
The feet of Love.”

“Good-by, Jim,” said the visitor, with tears in his voice.

“Good-by,” said Jim. Then glancing about, he came closer and whispered: “Don’t let her know.”

It is a quarter of a century since Murie lost his reason and was locked up in a mad-house, and these years have wrought wondrous changes. The little projected line across the plain has become one of the great railway systems of the earth. “Dick,” the beardless operator who gave Murie his orders at Omaha, is now General Manager Dickinson. The delicate and spare youth, who wore a Winchester and red light at the rear end of the special, is now General Superintendent Deuel, and Creede, poor fellow, he would give half of his millions to be able to brush the mysteries from Murie’s mind.

CHAPTER V.

TURNING PROSPECTOR—TRADING HORSES.

HAD N. C. Creede remained a poor prospector all his days, these pages would never have been printed. That is a cold, hard statement; but it is true. Shortly after the fickle Goddess of Fortune sat up a flirtation with the patient prospector, the writer met with a gentleman who had served on the plains with the man of whom you are reading, and he told some interesting stories. We became very well acquainted and my interest in the hunter, scout, prospector and miner increased with every new tale told by his companion on the plains. Those who know this silent man of the mountains are well aware of his inborn modesty and of the reticence he manifests when questioned about his own personal experiences. Hence, the writer as well as the reader must rely largely upon the stories told by his old comrade, the first of which was this:

A large body of Sioux Indians were camped near North Platte, Nebraska, having come there to meet some peace commissioners sent out from Washington. We were camped about eight miles below them, quietly resting during the cessation of hostilities, yet constantly on the alert to guard against a foray from our foes above. The Sioux and the Pawnees were bitter enemies, constantly at war with each other, and as we knew they were aware of the existence of our camp, we feared some of them might run down and endeavor to capture our stock. Our best scouts were sent out every evening in the direction of North Platte to note any evidences of a night raid that might appear, and our Indians were instructed to have their arms in perfect order and in easy reach when they rolled up in their blankets for sleep.

Creede’s horse had become lame and was next to useless for field work. We did not have an extra animal in camp, and for three or four days he tried hard to trade the crippled horse to an Indian scout for a good one. He offered extravagant odds for a trade, but the Indians knew too well the near proximity of a natural enemy and would take no risks on being without a mount should trouble come.

We were sitting in the tent one evening, taking a good-night smoke, when some one began to chaff Creede about his “three-legged horse.” Nick took it all good-naturedly, smiling in his own quiet way at our remarks, and soon he sat with his eyes bent on the ground, as if in deep reflection. Suddenly he arose, buckled on his pistols, picked up his rifle and started from the tent without a word.

“Where are you going, Nick?” some one asked.

“Going to see that the pickets are out all right,” he replied, as the tent flap closed behind him.

This seemed natural enough, and we soon turned into our blankets and thought no more of the matter. When we rolled out at daybreak next morning, it was noticed that Creede’s blankets had not been used and that he was not in the tent. One of the boys remarked that he had lain down out in the grass to sleep and would put in an appearance at breakfast time, and we all accepted this as the true explanation of his absence. Half an hour later, when we were about to eat breakfast, one of the pickets came in and reported something coming from up the river. Our field-glasses soon demonstrated the fact that it was a man riding one horse and leading four others. As he came closer, we recognized Creede, and he soon rode in, dismounted and began to uncinch his saddle, with the quiet remark:

“Guess I ought to get one good mount out of this bunch.”

“Where did you get them?” Major North asked.

“Up the river a little ways.”

“How did you get up there? Walk?”

“Not much I didn’t. I rode my lame horse.”

“What did you do with your own horse?”

“Traded him for these even up.”

He had gone alone in the night, stolen into the herd of the Sioux near North Platte, unsaddled his lame horse and placed the saddle on an Indian’s, and, leading four others, got away unobserved and reached camp safely. It was a bold and desperate undertaking, but one entirely in keeping with his adventurous spirit.

CHAPTER VI.

INDIANS OFF THE RESERVATION—ALONE IN CAMP—PROMPT ACTION.

DURING the summer of ’68, a large party of Pawnee Indians, men and squaws, left the reservation on the Loop fork for a buffalo hunt in the country lying between the Platte and Republican Rivers. These semi-annual hunts were events of great interest to the tribe, for by them they not only secured supplies of meat, but also large numbers of robes, which were tanned by the squaws and disposed of to traders for flour and groceries, and for any other goods which might strike the Indian fancy.

At this time the Pawnee scouts were lying in camp on Wood River, about a mile from the Union Pacific Railroad station of that name. The hostile Indians had for some weeks made no aggressive demonstration, and our duties were scarcely sufficient to edge up the dull monotony of camp life. Once a week about half of the company would be sent on a scout to the west along the railway, two days’ march, four days of the week being consumed by these expeditions.

Half of the company had gone on this weekly scout, leaving but one white officer in camp, Lieutenant Creede. He had, if I recollect aright, but eighteen men fit for duty, a number of others being disabled by wounds received in recent battles. The second day after the hunting party left, the section men from the west came into Wood River Station on their hand-car, and excitedly reported that a band of about fifty Sioux had crossed the track near them, headed south. Joe Adams was the agent at Wood River, and he at once sent a messenger to the Pawnee camp to tell Lieutenant Creede of the presence of the hostiles. Creede hastily mounted his handful of warriors, and in less than twenty minutes was dashing forward on the trail of the Sioux. The time consumed by the section men in running into the station, a distance of about four miles, and the consequent delay caused by sending the news to Creede, and the catching up and saddling of the ponies had given the Sioux a good start, and when the scouts had reached the Platte the hostiles had crossed over and were concealed from view in the sand-hills beyond.

Crossing the wide stream with all possible haste, the game little ponies, struggling with the treacherous quicksand for which that historic river is noted, the scouts struck the trail on the opposite bank and pushed rapidly forward. Although they knew that the Sioux outnumbered them three to one, the Pawnees were eager for the fray—an eagerness shared in by their intrepid commander. Chanting their war-songs, their keen eyes scanning the country ahead from the summit of each sand-hill, they pushed onward with the remorseless persistence of blood-hounds up the trail of fleeing fugitives.

About three miles from the river, on reaching the top of a sand-hill, the enemy was discovered a mile ahead, moving carelessly along, oblivious of the fact that they were being pursued. Concealed by the crest of the hill, the Pawnees halted to view the situation, and Lieutenant Creede covered the hostiles with his field-glass. An imprecation came from his lips as he studied the scene in front, and crying out a sentence in the Pawnee tongue, his warriors crowded about him. His experienced eye had shown him that they were Yankton Indians, then at peace with the whites. He took in the situation in a moment. They had learned of the departure of the Pawnee village on a buffalo hunt, and were after them to stampede and capture their horses, kill all of their hated enemy they could and escape back to their reservation.

All this he told to his warriors, and the field-glass in the hands of various members of the party corroborated the fact that, as United States scouts, they had no right to molest the Yankton bands. The impetuous warriors chafed like caged lions, and demanded in vigorous terms that the chase should be resumed. One cool-headed old man, a chief of some importance in the tribe, addressed Lieutenant Creede substantially as follows:

“Father; you are a white man, an officer under the great war chief at Washington, and you would rouse his anger by battling with Indians not at war with him and his soldiers. We are Pawnee Indians, and the men yonder are our hated foes. They go to attack our people, to kill our fathers, sons, brothers, the squaws and children, and steal their horses. It is our duty to protect our people. It is not your duty to help us. Go back, father, to our camp, and we, not as soldiers, but as Indians, will push on to the defense of our people. Listen to the words of wisdom and go back.”

The situation was a trying one. The Lieutenant well knew that if he led his scouts against the Yanktons he would have to face serious trouble at Washington and meet with severe censure from General Augur, then commanding the Department of the Platte. He realized that his official position would be endangered, and that he might even subject himself to arrest and trial in the United States Courts for his action. For some moments he stood with his eyes bent upon the ground in deep reflection, the Indians eying him keenly and almost breathlessly awaiting his reply. It was a tableau, thrilling, well worthy the brush of a painter. The hideously painted faces of the Indians scowling with rage; their blazing, eager eyes reflecting the spirit of impatience which swayed their savage souls; the hardy, faithful ponies cropping at the scant grass which had pierced the sand; the Lieutenant standing as immovable as a rock, his face betraying no trace of excitement, calmly, silently gazing at the ground, carefully weighing the responsibilities resting upon him,—all went to make up a picture so intensely thrilling that the mind can scarcely grasp its wild features.

When the Lieutenant spoke, he did so quietly and calmly. There was a light in his eyes which boded no good to the pursued, but his voice betrayed not the least excitement. He said:

“For several years I have been with you—have been one of you. We have often met the enemy in unequal numbers, but we have never been defeated. In all the battles in which I have led you, you never deserted me. Should I desert you now? I know that I will be censured, perhaps punished, but those Yanktons shall never harm your people. I will lead you against them as I would against a hostile band, and on me will rest all the responsibility. We go now as Pawnee Indians, not as United States scouts, and go to fight for our people. Mount!”

Grunts of satisfaction greeted his words. They would have been followed by wild yells of savage delight had there been no fear of such a demonstration disclosing their presence to the Yanktons. Horses were quickly mounted, and the band again took the trail with an impatience which could scarcely be curbed.

The Yanktons were soon again sighted, and the scouts adopted the Indian tactics of stealing upon their foes. Skirting the bases of sand-hills, keeping from sight in low grounds and following the bed of gulches, they pressed on, until the enemy was discovered less than three-fourths of a mile ahead, and yet unconscious of the presence of a foe.

Halting in a low spot in the hills, the Pawnees hastily unsaddled their ponies and stripped for the fight. Indians invariably go into a battle on bareback horses, as saddles impede the speed of the animals in quick movements. When again mounted, the Lieutenant gave the command to advance. On reaching the crest of a sand-hill, the Pawnees discovered their enemy just gaining the summit of the next, about five hundred yards distant. The Yanktons discovered their pursuers at the same moment, and great commotion was observed in their ranks. They hastily formed themselves for battle, and then one of them who could speak English, cried out:

“Who are you, and what do you want?”

“We are Pawnee Indians, and we want to know where you are going,” Creede shouted in reply.

“You are Pawnee scouts, and are soldiers of the United States. We are Yankton Sioux at peace with the Government, and you cannot molest us.”

“You are moving against the Pawnee village, now on a buffalo hunt,” Creede replied. “You want to kill our people and steal their horses. We are Pawnee Indians, and are here to fight for our people. If you take the trail back across the Platte, we will not disturb you, but if you attempt to move forward, we will fight you. Decide quick!”

The leaders of the Yankton band gathered about the interpreter in council, while Creede interpreted what had been said to his warriors. It was with difficulty he could restrain them from dashing forward to the attack. In a few moments the Yankton interpreter shouted:

“If you attack us, the Government will punish you and reward us for our loss. We do not fear you as Pawnees, but we are at peace and do not want to fight you because you are soldiers of the great father at Washington. We are many and you are few, and we could soon kill you all, or drive you back to your camp. Go away and let us alone.”

“You are the enemy of our people, and you go to kill them,” the Lieutenant replied. “We will fight for them, not as soldiers, but as Pawnees. You must make a move now, instantly. We will wait but a minute. If you take the back trail, it will be good. If you move forward, we will make you halt and go back.”

The only reply was a command from the Yankton leader to his followers, in obedience to which they started forward in their original direction. Creede shouted a command to his men, and with wild yells they dashed down the slope and up the side of the hill on which their enemy had last been seen. On a level flat beyond the hill, the Yanktons were found hastily forming for battle, and with tiger-like impetuosity, the scouts dashed forward, firing as they advanced.

The wild dash of the Pawnees seemed to bewilder the Yanktons, and they were thrown into confusion. They quickly rallied, however, and for fully an half-hour they fought desperately. The mad impetuosity of the Pawnee again threw them into confusion, and scattering like frightened sheep, they fled from the field. The Pawnees pursued them, and a running fight was maintained over several miles of country. The Yanktons were at last so scattered that they could make no show of resistance, and with all possible speed sought the river crossing and fled toward their agency. It was afterwards learned that they sustained a loss of eight killed and quite a large number wounded. The Pawnees lost but one man killed, but many were wounded on the field. Several horses were killed. Creede’s army blouse was riddled with bullets and arrows.

AMETHYST MINE.

Returning from the field, “Bob White,” a Pawnee, reached Wood River in advance of the scouts, and by making motions as of a man falling from a horse, and, repeating the word, “Lieutenant,” created the impression that Creede had been killed, and the agent telegraphed the news to Omaha, where it was published in the daily papers. When the scouts reached the station, however, the gallant Lieutenant was at their head. When he dismounted, it was observed that he limped painfully, and in explanation said, that in one of the charges his horse had fallen upon him, severely bruising and spraining one of his legs. This was what “Bob” had tried to tell, but the agent interpreted his signs to mean that the intrepid leader had been killed in battle.

When the Yanktons reached their agency, they reported that while quietly moving across the country, the Pawnee scouts, being in the service of the United States, had attacked them in overwhelming numbers and driven them back to their reservation. The matter was laid before the authorities at Washington, referred to General Augur, and by him to Major North, who was already in possession of Creede’s explanation of the affair. Considerable red-tape correspondence followed, and as the Yanktons were off their reservation without permission, and in direct violation of orders, the matter was allowed to drop. Creede was doubly a hero in the eyes of his scouts after this episode, and when the Pawnee village returned, and it was learned how the Lieutenant had battled in their behalf, they bestowed upon him the most marked expressions of gratitude and adoration.

CHAPTER VII.

TRAIL OF INDIAN PONY TRACKS—DESPERATE ENCOUNTER—HARD TO MAKE THE SCOUTS BELIEVE HIS STORY.

ONE of the most daring acts in the history of this daring man was committed in Western Nebraska in 1866. From boyhood days, he had been noted as a hunter, and during the years which he spent in the scouting service, his splendid marksmanship and extraordinary achievements in the pursuit of game earned for him the reputation of being the best hunter west of the Missouri River. His success in that line was phenomenal and elicited expressions of surprise from all who had a knowledge of his work, and from those who were told of it.

Killing buffalo was not regarded by Creede, or by any of the hunters, as the best evidence of skill in marksmanship or in hunting. Any one who could ride a horse and fire a rifle or revolver could kill those clumsy, shaggy animals much easier than they could pursue and kill the ordinary steers on the western ranges to-day. In fact, the range steer is a far more dangerous animal when enraged than was the buffalo, for it possesses greater activity, and is more fleet of foot. The men who have gained notoriety on account of the number of buffalo they have killed are looked upon with quiet contempt by the true hunters of the plains and mountains, who justly claim that hunting excellence can only be shown in the still hunt, where tact and skill are required to approach within shooting distance of the elk, deer or antelope, and proficient marksmanship is necessary to kill it. When buffalo were plenty on the western plains, it was not at all unusual for women to ride after and kill them, and incur little, if any, risk of personal danger. Miss Emma Woodruff, a school teacher on Wood River in the sixties, and who afterwards married a telegraph operator at Wood River Station, became quite noted as a buffalo hunter, and regarded it but as an ordinary achievement to mount her pony and kill one of the shaggy monsters. The long-haired showmen who infest the country and tell thrilling stories of their desperate adventures and narrow escapes while hunting the buffalo, draw largely upon their imagination for bait to throw out to the gullible. No one in a dozen of them ever reached the west bank of the Missouri River. Every frontier man will agree that the so-called scouts, cowboys and Indian fighters who pose in dime museums, dime novels or behind theatrical foot-lights, are in nearly every instance the most shameless frauds, whose long hair and unlimited “gall” make them heroes in unexperienced eyes. Since the death of Kit Carson, but one long-haired man has earned a reputation as a scout, and while he was once, for a brief season, allured into the dramatic business, and now gives platform entertainments when his duties will permit him to do so, he is not a showman, but is yet in Government employ. He is a trusted secret agent of the Department of Justice, and is engaged in a calling almost as dangerous as was his scouting service—that of running down the desperate men who are engaged in selling liquor to Indians. Long hair is the exception and not the rule among scouts, and a cowboy who permits his locks to cluster over his shoulders is laughed at by his fellow knights of the saddle and classed as a crank.

You shall read this story as it fell from Creede’s own lips when I pressed him to tell it to me. It was this incident which first gained from him the full confidence and unstinted admiration of the Indian scouts:

“Game, through some cause, was very scarce near our camp, and one day I saddled my favorite horse and rode southward, determined to get meat of some kind before returning. I went about fifteen miles from camp, and after hunting some four or five hours without success, made up my mind the game had all left the country. I started to return by a circuitous route, desiring to cover as large a scope of country as possible, and get some meat if it was at all to be found. After traveling perhaps an hour through the sand-hills, I came upon a fresh trail of pony tracks, and I knew the tracks were made by Indian ponies, and hostile Indians, too, for none of our scouts were away from camp. I determined to follow the trail and ascertain if the ponies all bore riders, and, if possible, to get close enough unobserved to see from the appearance of the Indians who they were, and if it was a hunting or war party. They were headed in the direction in which I desired to go, and after tightening up my saddle cinches and looking to see if my pistols were in order, I took the trail. I judged from the trail that there were about twenty-five or thirty Indians in the party, and I soon learned that my estimate was a nearly correct one.

“When I reached the top of the first little hill ahead of me, I came in full view of the party not more than a quarter of a mile distant. They saw me at the same time, as I knew from the confusion in their ranks. I tell you, in a case of that kind, one wants to do some quick thinking, and if ever a man jogged his brain for a scheme to get out of an ugly scrape, I did right then and there. If I tried to run, I knew they would scatter and get me, and in less time than it takes me to tell it, I had made my plan and started to put it into execution. I saw that my only chance, though a desperate one, would be to make them believe I was ahead of a party in their pursuit, and taking off my hat, I made frantic motions to the rear, as if hurrying up a body of troops, and then, putting spurs to my horse, dashed right toward them, and when close enough, began firing at them with my rifle. The scheme worked beautifully, for without firing a shot, they seemed to become terror-stricken and fled on through the hills. The course lay through low sand-hills which often concealed them from view, but I pressed on, firing at every chance. I chased them for fully three miles; two of them died and I captured three ponies which fell behind, and then left the trail and made for camp. I found it hard to make the scouts believe my story, and some of them quite plainly hinted that I had found the ponies in the hills and had seen no Indians. I saw at once that they doubted me, and determined to convince them of the truth of what I had told them. The next morning I took a dozen or more of them and went back to the scene of the chase, and we were not long in finding all the coyotes had left of the two bodies.

“That affair firmly established my reputation with the scouts, and ever after they fully relied on my judgment as a war chief. Through all our future operations, they trusted me implicitly, and would follow me any place I chose to lead them.”

CHAPTER VIII.

WHEN NEW FLOWERS BLOOM ON THE GRAVES OF OTHER ROSES—PLUNKETY PLUNK OF UNSHOD FEET—HE HAD RECKONED WELL.

IN the early springtime, at that time of the year when all the world grows glad; when the green grass springs from the cold, brown earth; when new flowers bloom on the graves of other roses; when every animal, man, bird and beast, each to his own kind turns with a look of love and tender sympathy, we find the restless Red Men of the Plains on the war-path.

One day at sunset, Lieutenant Creede rode out from Ogallala, where the scouts were stationed, guarding the railway builders. It was customary for some one to take a look about at the close of day, to see if any stray Sioux were prowling around. About six miles from camp, he came to a clump of trees covering a half dozen acres of ground. Through this grove the scout rode, thinking perhaps an elk or deer might be seen; but nothing worth shooting was sighted, till suddenly he found himself at the farther edge of the wood and on the banks of the Platte. Looking across the stream, he saw a small band of hostile Sioux riding in the direction of the river, and not more than a mile away. His field-glasses showed him that there were seven of the Sioux, and without the aid of that instrument, he could see that they had a majority of six over his party. They were riding slowly in the direction of the camp. Creede concluded that they intended to cross over, kill the guards, and capture the Government horses. His first thought was to ride back to camp, keeping the clump of trees between him and the Indians, and arrange a reception for the Sioux.

The river was half a mile wide and three feet deep. Horses can’t travel very rapidly in three feet of water.

In a short time they had reached the water’s edge and the scout could hardly resist the temptation to await their approach, dash out, take a shot at them, and then return to camp. That was dangerous, he thought; for, if he got one, there would still be a half a dozen bullets to dodge. A better plan would be to leave his horse in the grove, crawl out to the bank, lie concealed in the grass until the enemy was within sixty yards of him, then stand up and work his Winchester. The first shot would surprise them. They would all look at their falling friend; the second would show them where he was, and the third shot would leave but four Indians. By the time they swung their rifles up another would have passed to the Happy Land, and one man on shore, with his rifle working, was as good as three frightened Indians in the middle of the river.

Thus reasoned the scout, and he crept to the shore of the stream. He had no time to lose, as the Indian ponies had finished drinking and were already on the move.

As the sound of the sinking feet of the horses grew louder, the hunter was obliged to own a feeling of regret. If he could have gotten back to his horse without them seeing him, he thought it would be as well to return to camp and receive the visitors there. Just once he lifted his head above the grass, and then he saw how useless it would be to attempt to fly, for the Indians were but a little more than a hundred yards away. Realizing that he was in for it, he made up his mind to remain in the grass until the Sioux were so near that it would be impossible to miss them. Nearer and nearer sounded the plunkety-plunk of the unshod feet of the little horses in the shallow stream, till at last they seemed to be in short-rifle range, and the trained hunter sprang to his feet. He had reckoned well, for the Indians were not over sixty yards away, riding tandem. Creede’s rifle echoed in the little grove; the lead leaped out and the head Indian pitched forward into the river. The riderless horse stopped short. The rifle cracked again, and the second Red Man rolled slowly from the saddle; so slowly that he barely got out of the way in time to permit the next brave, who was almost directly behind him, to get killed when it was his turn. The remaining four Indians, instead of returning the fire, sat still and stone-like, so terrified were they that they never raised a hand. Two more seconds; two more shots from the trusty rifle of the scout and two more Indians went down, head first, into the stream. Panic-stricken, the other two dropped into the river and began to swim down stream with all their might. They kept an eye on the scout and at the flash of his gun they ducked their heads and the ball bounded away over the still water. Soon they were beyond the reach of the rifle. Returning to their own side of the river, they crept away in the twilight, and the ever sad and thoughtful scout stood still by the silent stream, watching the little red pools of blood on the broad bosom of the slowly running river.

Three of the abandoned bronchos turned back. Four crossed over to Creede and were taken to camp.

The two sad and lonely Sioux had gone but a short distance from the river, when one of them fell fainting and soon bled to death. He had been wounded by a bullet which had passed through one of his companions who was killed in the stream. The remaining Indian was afterwards captured in battle and he told this story to his captors, just as it was told to the writer by the man who risked his life so fearlessly in the service of Uncle Sam.

CHAPTER IX.

SIT-TA-RE-KIT SCALPED ALIVE—AN INDIAN NEVER CARES TO LIVE AFTER HE HAS LOST HIS SCALP.

DURING the month of May, 1865, the scouts were given permission to go with the Pawnees on their annual buffalo hunt. The Pawnees were greatly pleased, for where there are buffaloes there are Indians; and the Sioux were ever on the lookout for an opportunity to drop in on the Pawnees when they were least expected. Late one afternoon a party, eight in number, of the scouts became separated from the main force during the excitement incident to a chase after buffaloes; and, before they had the slightest hint of danger, were completely surrounded by a band of at least two hundred Sioux. The hunters were in a small basin in the sand-hills while the low bluffs fairly bristled with feathers. The Sioux would dash forward, shoot, and then retreat. Lieutenant Creede, two other white men and five Pawnees composed the party of scouts. This little band formed a circle of their horses, but at the first charge of the savage Sioux, the poor animals sank to the sand and died. The scouts now crouched by the dead horses, and half a dozen Sioux fell during the next charge. One savage who appeared to be more fearless than the rest, dashed forward, evidently intending to ride over the little band of scouts. Alas for him! there were besides the Lieutenant, three sure shots in that little circle, and before this daring brave had gotten within fifty yards of the horse-works, a bullet pierced his brain. Instead of dropping to the ground and dying as most men do, this Indian began to leap and bound about, exactly like a chicken with its head cut off, never stopping until he rolled down within fifteen feet of the scouts.

There was a boy in Creede’s party, Sit-ta-re-kit by name, a very intelligent Pawnee, eighteen years old, who had gone with the Lieutenant to Washington to see the President of the United States. There seemed to be no shadow of hope for the scouts; and this young man started to run. Inasmuch as he started in the direction of the camp, which was but a mile away, it is but fair to suggest that he may have taken this fatal step with the hope of notifying the Pawnees of the state of affairs. This was the opinion of Lieutenant Creede; while others thought he was driven wild by the desperate surroundings. He had gone less than a hundred yards when a Sioux rode up beside him and felled him to the ground with a war club. The young scout started to rise, was on his knees, when the Sioux, having dismounted, reached for the scout’s hair with his left hand. All this was seen by the boy’s companions.

“Oh, it was awful!” said Creede, relating this story to the writer. “We had been together so much. He was so brave, so honest and so good. Of course, he was only an Indian; but I had learned to love him, and when I saw the steel blade glistening in the setting sun—saw the savage at one swift stroke sever the scalp from that brave boy’s head, I was sick at heart.” After he had been scalped, the boy got up and walked on, right by the savage Sioux. He was safe enough now. Nothing on earth would tempt an Indian to touch a man who had been scalped, not even to kill him.

A Pawnee squaw was working in the field one day when a Sioux came down and scalped her. She knew if she returned to her people she would be killed. It was not fashionable to keep short-haired women about; and, in her desperate condition, she wandered back to the agency. The agent was sorry for her and he took her in and cured her head and sent her back to her people. But they killed her; she had been scalped.

But let us return to the little band in the basin surrounded by the Sioux. It is indeed a small band now. Four of them are dead, one scalped and gone; but as often as their Winchesters bark, a Sioux drops. There was nothing left for them now but to fight on to the end.

Death in this way was better than being burned alive. There was no hope—not a shadow; for, how were they to know that one of their companions had seen the Sioux surround them and that the whole force of Pawnee scouts were riding to the relief of this handful of men, who were amusing themselves at rifle practice while they waited for death.

With a wild yell, they dashed down upon the murderous Sioux, and, without firing a shot, they fled from the field, leaving thirteen unlucky Indians upon the battle ground.

The brave boy never returned. He took his own life, perhaps; for an Indian never cares to live after he has lost his scalp, knowing that his companions look upon him as they look upon the dead.

CHAPTER X.

LOYAL IN FRIENDSHIP, TRUE TO A TRUST—A CRUEL CAPTAIN.

N. C. CREEDE, the Prince of Prospectors and new-made millionaire, is one of the gentlest men I have ever met, notwithstanding most of his life has been spent in scenes not conducive to gentleness. His friendship is loyal and lasting; and he is as true to a trust as the sunflower is to the sun. Although a daring scout and fearless Indian fighter, he is as tender and sympathetic as the hero of the “Light of Asia.”

Creede and I were traveling by the same train one day, when he asked me if I knew a certain soldier-man—a Captain Somebody; and I said, “No.”

“I raised my rifle to kill him one day and an Indian saved his life,” said he, musingly.

I looked at the sad face of my companion in great surprise. I could hardly believe him capable of taking a human life, and I asked him to tell me the story.

“It was in ’65, I believe,” he began. “We had just captured a village on a tributary of the Yellowstone, and were returning to our quarters on Pole Creek. Just before going into camp, we came upon five stray Sioux, who had been hunting and were returning to their camp on foot. Two of the Sioux were killed and three captured. On the following morning, General Augur, who was in command, gave orders to my Captain to take thirty picked scouts and go on an exploring trip, and to take the three captives with us, giving special orders to see that none of the prisoners escaped.

“When everything was in readiness, the three Sioux were brought out and placed on unsaddled ponies, with their hands tied behind them. Not a word could they utter that we could understand; but O, the mute pleading and silent prayers of those poor captives! It was a dreary April morning; the clouds hung low and the very heavens seemed ready to weep for the poor, helpless Indians.

“I don’t know why they did, but every few moments, as we rode slowly and silently across the dank plain, they would turn their sad eyes to me, so full of voiceless pleading that I found it was impossible to hold my peace longer. Riding up to the side of the Captain, I asked him what he intended to do with the captives. ‘Wait and you will see,’ was his answer. ‘What,’ said I, ‘you don’t mean to kill them? That would be cold-blooded murder.’ ‘I’ll see that they don’t get away,’ said the cruel Captain. I thought if he would only give them a show, and suggested that we let them go two hundred yards, untie their hands and tell them to fly; but to this proposition he made no reply. Then we went on silently, the poor captives riding with bowed heads, dreaming day-dreams, no doubt, of leafy arboles and running streams; of the herds of buffalo that were bounding away o’er the distant plain.

“The scouts were all Pawnees, and their hatred for the Sioux dated from the breaking of a treaty by the latter, some time previous. After the treaty had been completed, the two tribes started on a buffalo hunt. When they arrived at the Republican River, and the Pawnees had partly crossed, and the rest were in the stream, the Sioux opened fire upon them and slew them without mercy. The Pawnee were divided into three bands by this treacherous slaughter and never got together afterward. The bitterest hatred existed between the two tribes, and the Government was using one to suppress the other.

“The three captives would never have surrendered to the Pawnees had they not seen the white men, to whom they looked for mercy. How unworthy they were of this confidence, we shall soon see.

“The Pawnees were by no means merciful. I have heard them tell often, how they skinned a man alive at Rawhide, a little stream in Nebraska, with all the gruesome and blood-curdling gestures. The white man, the victim of the skinners, had made a threat that he would kill the first Indian he saw. It happened to be a squaw; but the man kept his word. His rifle cracked and the squaw dropped dead. The train had gone but a few miles when the Indians overtook the wagons and forced them to return to the scene of the shooting, where they formed a circle, led the victim to the center, and actually skinned him alive, while his companions were compelled to look on.”

I agreed that all this was interesting; but insisted upon hearing the story of the cruel Captain and the captives.

“Oh, yes,” said the prospector. “Well, I had dropped back a few feet, two of the naked Indians were riding in front of the Captain, when he lifted his pistol; it cracked and I saw a little red spot in the bare back of one of the bound captives. His fettered arms raised slightly; his head went back, and he dropped from the horse, dead. The pistol cracked again: Another little red spot showed up between the shoulders of the other Indian. I felt the hot blood rush to my face, and impulsively raised my rifle—mechanically, as the natural helper of the oppressed—when a Pawnee, who was riding at my side, reached out, grasped my gun, and said, ‘No shoot ’im.’

“The third captive, who was riding behind with the Indian scouts, attempted to escape, seeing how his companions were being murdered, but was killed by the guard.

“The Captain dismounted and scalped the two victims with a dull pocket-knife, and afterward told how they rolled up their eyes and looked at him like a dying calf.

“I could tell you more; but when I think of that murder, it makes me sick at heart, and I can see that awful scene enacted again.”

CHAPTER XI.

A GLIMPSE OF THE ROCKIES—THE PATH OF THE PROSPECTOR, LIKE THAT OF THE POET, LIES IN A STONY WAY.

MR. CREEDE’S success is due largely to his lasting love for the mountains, which was love at first sight. It was in 1862 that the scouts were ordered to Dakota; and it was then he saw for the first time the grand old Rockies. They were nearing the Big Horn Range, and the sight of snow in August was something the Indians of the plains could not understand. In fact, they insisted that it was not snow, but white earth, and offered to stake their savings on the proposition. Some of them were foolish enough to bet their ponies that there was no snow on the ground in summer time. Late that evening they camped at the foot of the range, and on the following morning, four men were sent up to investigate and decide the bets. The result was a change of horses, in which the Indians got the worst of the bargain. For nearly a week they lingered in the shadows of the cooling mountains and were loth to leave them.

When, some years later, the scouts were mustered out of service, Creede returned to his old home in Iowa. But he soon tired of the dull, prosy life they led there; and, remembering the scent of wild flowers and the balmy breeze that blew down the cool cañons of the Big Horn Mountains, he determined to return to the region of the Rockies. Already he had seen his share of service, it would seem. For more than a dozen years he had slept where night had found him, with no place he could call his home; and yet there are still a dozen years of doubt and danger through which he must pass. For him the trail that leads to fortune and fame, is a long one; and many camps must be made between his pallet on the plains and his mansion by the sea. The path of the prospector, like that of the poet, lies in a stony way, and nothing is truer than the declaration that:

The road is rough and rocky,—
The road that leads to fame;
The way is strewn with skeletons
Of those who have grown lame
And have fallen by the wayside.
The world will pass you by,
Nor pause to read your manuscript
Till you go off and die.

CHAPTER XII.

IN COLORADO—THE PROSPECTOR LABORED AND LOOKED AWAY TO THE MOUNTAINS.

THE life of a prospector is one fraught with hardships and privations and, in locations infested by Indians, often one of peril. But in his search for the precious metals, the hardy prospector gives but little thought to personal danger. With his bedding, tools and provisions, packed upon the backs of trusty little burros, he turns from the haunts of men and plunges into the trackless wilds of the mountains. Guided by the star of hope, he pursues his ceaseless explorations in the face of hardships which would appall any heart not buoyed up by a keen expectation of “striking it rich” in the near future, and springing at one bound from poverty to wealth.

Of the great army of prospectors constantly seeking to unearth the vast treasure hidden in the rocky breast of the mountain ranges of the West, few attain a realization of the hopes which lead them onward, and secure the wealth for which they so persistently toil. The instances are very rare in which the prospector has reaped an adequate reward for his discoveries. In the great majority of cases where really valuable leads have been located, the discoverers, not possessing the capital necessary to develop them, have accepted the first offer for their purchase, and have sold for a mere song properties which have brought millions to those who secured them. The most notable instance in the annals of mining in the West, where fortune has rewarded the prospector for his labors, is that in which figures Mr. N. C. Creede. His is a life tinged with romance from boyhood to the present time. This story may serve as an incentive to less fortunate prospectors to push onward with renewed hopes; for in the great mountain ranges of the West, untold riches yet lie hidden from the eye of man.

The register at the Drover’s Hotel, Pueblo, if it had a register, held the name of N. C. Creede, some time in the fall of 1870. He marveled much at the Mexicans. For years he had lived among the Indians and was well acquainted with many tribes; but this dark, sad-faced man, was a new sort of Red Skin.

Pueblo in ’70, was not the city we see there to-day. It was a dreary cluster of adobe houses, built about a big cotton-wood tree on the banks of a poor little river that went creeping away toward the plain, pausing in every pool to rest, having run all the way from Tennessee Pass over a rocky road through the Royal Gorge.

Less than thirty summers had brought their bloom to him, but he felt old. Life was long and the seven years of hard service on the plains had made him a sad and silent man. So much of sorrow, so much of suffering had he seen that he seldom smiled and was much alone. Away from his old companions, a stranger in a strange land, he looked away to the snow-capped crest of the Sangre de Christo and said: “There will I go and find my fortune.” Then he remembered he was poor. But he was young, strong and willing to work, and he soon found employment with Mr. Robert Grant, who was very kind to this lone man in many ways. For six months he labored and looked away to the mountains, whose stony vaults held a fortune and fame for him. In the spring of 1871, the amateur prospector went away to the hills and spent the summer hunting, fishing and looking for quartz. After this, life away from the grand old mountains was not the life for him. Here was his habitation. This should be his home.

CHAPTER XIII.

FRUITLESS SEARCHES—MET A STREAK OF HARD LUCK—BUT LATER HE STOOD ON THE SUN-KISSED SUMMIT.

THE winter of 1871-2 was spent at Del Norte, and in the following spring Creede, with a party of prospectors, went to Elizabethtown, New Mexico. This town was a new one, but was attracting considerable attention as a placer field. Like a great many other mining camps, the place was overdone, and unless a man had money to live on, the outlook was not very cheerful. Finding no work to do the young prospector staked a placer claim and commenced operations single-handed and alone, and the end of the third day, cleaned up and found himself in possession of nine dollars’ worth of gold dust. This gave him new courage. He worked all the summer; but when winter came on, he discovered that after paying his living expenses which are always lofty in a new camp, he had only made fair wages; the most he had made in a single day was nine dollars.

The winter following found the prospector in Pueblo again, working for another stake, this time in the employ of Mr. George Gilbert. Early in the spring of 1873, he took the trail. Upon this occasion, he found his way to Rosita in Custer County where the famous Bassick Mine was afterward discovered, and within a few miles of Silver Cliff, which was destined to attract the attention of so many prospectors, bringing into the mining world so much shadow and so little shine.

From Rosita he went to the San Juan district and prospected for several months, returned to the east side of the range, and finally made a second trip to the San Juan, but found nothing worth the assessment work.

About this time the Gunnison country began to attract attention and with other fortune-seekers Creede went there. This trip, like all his prospecting tours west of the “Great Divide” panned poorly. Never did he make a discovery of importance on the western slope, and now he made a trip to Leadville. Here he met with a well-defined streak of hard luck. After hunting in vain for a fortune, he was taken with pneumonia, lingered for a long time between life and death, but finally recovered. If Creede had died then, he would have received, probably, four lines in the Herald, which would have been to the effect that a prospector had died of pneumonia in his cabin at the head of California Gulch, and had been dead some time when discovered, as the corpse was cold and the fire out. He was of no great importance at that time, but since then he has marched from Monarch to the banks of the Rio Grande, leaving a silver trail behind him, until at last, standing on the sun-kissed summit of Bachelor mountain, he can look back along the trail and see the camp-fires that he lighted with tired hands, trembling in the cold, burning brightly where the waste places have been made glad by the building of hundreds of happy homes.

DEATH of “BOB” FORD
REMOVING THE BODY

Creede has labored long and faithfully for what he has, never shrinking from the task the gods seem to have set before him. Almost from his infancy he has been compelled to do battle with the world alone, and the writer is proud of the privilege of telling the story of his life, giving credit where credit is due, and putting the stamp of perfidity upon the band of stool-pigeons who have camped on his trail for the purpose of claiming credit for what he did.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MONARCH CAMP—JEALOUS MINERS WANTED THE NAME CHANGED.

FOREST fires started by the Indians, carelessly or out of pure deviltry, had swept the hills to the east of the divide in Chaffee County, and sufficient time had elapsed to allow a pompadour of pine to grow in the crest of the continent, so thick that it was almost impenetrable. In July, 1878, having chopped a trail through this forest, Creede came to the head of the little stream where the prosperous town of Monarch now stands. For thirteen days the prospector was there alone, not a soul nearer than Poncha Springs, fifteen or twenty miles away.

Elk, deer and bear were there in abundance, and the prospector had little difficulty in supplying himself with fresh meat. In fact, the bear were most too convenient,—they insisted upon coming in and dining with the silver-seeker.

Creede located a claim, called it the Monarch, and gave the same name to the camp. Among the first claims located was one called the “Little Charm.” It proved to be a good property—but not till it had passed into other hands. The formation in the Monarch district was limestone, and in limestone the prospector never knows what he has. To-day he may be in pay ore and to-morrow pick it all out. Creede had picked out some promising prospects in the same formation. He had discovered the Madonna, but had more than he could handle. He took Smith and Gray up there and told them where to dig; they dug and located the Madonna claim. They kept it and worked the assessments for five years and then sold it to Eylers of Pueblo for sixty thousand dollars.

AMETHYST TRAMWAY.

The ore is very low grade, but was of great value to these men, who were smelters, for the lead it carried.

By the time the snow began to fall there were a number of prospectors in the new camp, and having tired of the place, which was one of the hardest, roughest regions in the state, Creede sold what claims he had for one thousand seven hundred dollars, but returned every summer for five years, cleaning up in all about three thousand dollars.

In Monarch, as in his last success, there were a number of jealous miners who wanted the name of the camp changed.

They were, or most of them, at least, light-weight politicians, who didn’t care a cent what the town was called so long as they had the honor of naming it, but the name was never changed.

CHAPTER XV.

BONANZA CAMP—THE PONCHA BANK—CREEDE DETERMINES TO SEE OTHER SECTIONS.

LEAVING Monarch, the prospector journeyed through Poncha Pass, over into the San Luis Valley, and began to climb the hills behind the Sangre de Christo range. On a little stream called Silver Creek he made a number of locations, among them the Bonanza, and he called the new camp by that name, just as he named Monarch after what he considered his best claim. The country here was more accessible and consequently a more desirable field for prospecting. South of Bonanza, Creede located the “Twin Mines,” which proved to be good property. The ore in the twin claims carried two ounces of gold to the ton.

A year later when the pioneer prospector decided to pull out and seek new fields, he was able to realize fifteen thousand dollars in good, hard-earned money. One claim was sold for two thousand dollars, the money to be deposited in Raynolds’ bank at Salida; but the purchasers for some reason insisted that the money be deposited in a Poncha bank, very little known at that time, but whose president shortly afterward killed his man and became well, but not favorably, known. Creede’s two thousand dollars went to the banker’s lawyers. The bank closed, and now you may see the ex-president in a little mountain town pleading at the bar—not the bar of justice.

The camp has never astonished the mining world, but it has furnished employment for a number of people, and that is good and shows that the West and the whole world is richer and better because of the discoveries of Creede.

Creede now determined to see a little, and learn something of mining in other sections of the West. Leaving Colorado, he traveled through Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California, prospecting and studying the formation of the country in the different mining camps. The knowledge gained on this trip proved valuable to the prospector in after years. This was his school. The wide West was his school-house, and Nature was his teacher.

CHAPTER XVI.

A BEAR STORY—THE BEAST INFURIATED—A NEW DANGER CONFRONTS HIM.

AN old prospecting partner of Mr. Creede’s told the following story to the writer, after the discovery of the Amethyst, which lifted the discoverer into prominence, gave him fame and a bank account—and gave every adventuress who heard of his fortune, a new field:

A man by the name of Chester, Creede and I were prospecting in San Miguel County, Colorado, in the 80’s. We had our camp in a narrow cañon by a little mountain stream. It was summer time; the berries were ripe, and bear were as thick as sheep in New Mexico. About sunset one evening I called Creede out to show him a cow which I had discovered on a steep hillside near our cabin.

The moment the Captain saw the animal he said in a stage whisper: “Bear!” I thought he was endeavoring to frighten me; but he soon convinced me that he was in earnest.

Without taking his eyes from the animal, he spoke again in the same stage whisper, instructing me to hasten and bring Chester with a couple of rifles. When I returned with the shooting irons I gave the one I carried to Creede, who instructed me to climb upon a sharp rock that stood up like a church spire in the bottom of the cañon. From my high place I was to signal the sharp-shooters, keeping them posted as to the movements of the bear.

“You come with me,” said Creede to the man who stood at his side. It occurred to me now for the first time that there was some danger attached to this sport. I couldn’t help wondering what would become of me in case the bear got the best of my two partners.

If the bear captured them and got possession of the only two guns in the camp, my position on that rock would become embarrassing, if not actually dangerous. I turned to look at Chester, who did not seem to start when Creede did. Poor fellow, he was as pale as a ghost. “See here,” he said, addressing the man who was looking back, smiling and beckoning him on as he led the way down toward the noisy little creek which they must cross to get in rifle range of the bear, “I’m a man of a family, an’ don’t see why I should run headlong into a fight with a grizzly bear. I suppose if I was a single man, I would do as you do; but when I think of my poor wife and dear little children, it makes me homesick.” Creede kept smiling and beckoning with his forefinger. I laughed at Chester for being so scared. He finally followed, after asking me to look after his family in case he failed to return. Just as a man would who was on his way to the Tower.

Having reached the summit of the rock, I was surprised to see the big bear coming down the hill, headed for the spot where the hunters stood counseling as to how they should proceed. I tried to shout a warning to them, but the creek made such a fuss falling over the rocks that they were unable to hear me.

A moment more and she hove in sight, coming down the slope on a long gallop. Probably no man living ever had such an entertainment as I was about to witness. In New York ten thousand people would pay a hundred dollars a seat to see it; but there was no time to bill the country—the curtain was up and the show was on. Creede, who was the first to see the animal, shot one swift glance at his companion, raised his rifle, a Marlin repeater, and fired. The great beast shook her head, snorted, increased her pace and bore down upon her assailants. Again and again Creede’s rifle rang out upon the evening air, and hearing no report from Chester’s gun, he turned, and to his horror, saw his companion, rifle in hand, running for camp. Many a man would have wasted a shot on the deserter, but Creede was too busy with the bear, even if he had been so inclined. Less than forty feet separated the combatants when Creede turned, and at the next shot I was pleased to see the infuriated animal drop and roll upon the ground. In another second she was up again, and she looked more like a ball of blood than an animal. Now she stood up for the final struggle. I saw Creede take deliberate aim at her breast. He fired and she fell. I shouted with joy as I thought she must be dead now, but was surprised to see that Creede was still shooting. As rapidly as I clapped my hands his rifle shouted, and he put four more great leaden missiles into the body of the bear.

With that unaccountable strength that comes to man and beast in the last great struggle, the mad monster stood up again. Nothing on earth or under the earth could be more awful in appearance than was this animal. One eye had been forced from the socket, and stood out like a great ball of fire. Blood fairly gushed from her open mouth, and the coarse, gurgling, strangling sound that came from the flooded throat, was so awful that it fairly chilled the blood in my veins. For a second she stood still and glared at her adversary as if she would rest or get a breath before springing upon him.

Again I saw the hunter take deliberate aim. This time he aimed at the open mouth, the ball crashed up through the brain and the bear dropped dead.

I did not shout now. This was the third time I had seen him kill that same bear, and I expected her to get up again. Creede was not quite satisfied, for I saw him hastily filling his magazine; and it was well.

The hunter stepped up to the great dead animal and placed his feet upon her, as hunters are wont to do, when another danger confronted him.

Attracted by the shooting and the coarse cries of the wounded bear, her mate came bounding down the slope to her rescue.

The first act had been interesting, but I confess that I was glad when the curtain dropped. Creede was tired. Even an experienced hunter could hardly be expected to go through such a performance without experiencing some anxiety. I almost held my breath as the big animal bore down upon the tired hunter. Nearer and nearer he came, and Creede had not even raised his rifle to his shoulder. Now the bear was less than twenty feet away and Creede stood still as a statue with one foot resting on the body of the dead.

I was so excited that I shouted to him to shoot, but he never knew it; and if he had, it would have made no difference.

At last the bear stopped within eight feet of the hunter, and bear-like, stood up. Now the rifle was leveled and it seemed to me it would never go, but it did. The big bullet broke the bear’s neck, and he fell down dead at the hunter’s feet.

CHAPTER XVII.

SMITH, ABBOTT AND CREEDE—AGREED THEY ABANDON THE HOLE.

IN 1886 at Monarch, George L. Smith, Charles H. Abbott and N. C. Creede formed a company for prospecting purposes. Smith and Abbott were to furnish the funds, while Creede did the searching. This company lasted for nearly four years, during which time a number of locations were made, some of which they could have sold at a good profit; but they held on for more money, always spending liberally for the development of their property.

NO. 378 INTERIOR OF LAST CHANCE MINE BOARDING HOUSE
CREEDE COLO. MAR. 24, 1893

Just before the little company went to pieces, Smith and Abbott went over in the mountains to where Creede with two miners had worked all winter, on Spring Creek. After making a thorough examination of the prospects, it was agreed that they should abandon the hole and break up the partnership. This action was not taken because of any disagreement; but the men who were putting up the money were discouraged.

Just before visiting the property, Smith and Abbott received a letter from Creede, in which he said:

“I notice by the general tone of your letters lately, that you are both becoming discouraged with my hard luck. I assure you that I am doing the best I can. Take new courage, stay with me a little longer, and I shall find the greatest silver mine in America. I feel it in my bones.”

But they had tried so long and spent so much money, that they had become discouraged.

Smith, since that time has made a small fortune out of mines. Senator Abbott, who is well known and universally respected, is the manager of a Monarch property in which he is largely interested. He has a home in Denver where his family live; but spends most of his time in the mountains, still toiling, and hoping that he, too, may find a fortune in the hoary hills.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE HOLY MOSES—ELIJAH WAS AWKWARD AND HARD TO SPELL—WAGON WHEEL GAP.

SHORTLY after the abandonment of the claim on Spring Creek, and the withdrawal of Senator Abbott from the company, Smith and Creede went over to the head of West Willow. They believed that at that point they could find an extension of the vein they had been working, and Creede believes to this day that they did. Here they located a claim. They were not working together that day and Creede was alone when the location was made. Many are the stories that have been told as to how the first mine in the now famous camp of Creede got its name, none of which are within a mile of the truth.

Having driven a stake, Creede sat down to think of a name. There was little or nothing in a name, he thought, but he wanted to please his partner. He remembered that Smith had named three claims in Monarch, the “Madonna,” the “Cherubim,” and the “Seraphim,” and he would follow in that line. Creede was not well versed in Biblical history, so knew very little of the saints and angels. He looked above where the eagle flew by the ragged rocks and thought of Elijah; how he hid away in the hills, and how the ravens came down and fed him. He looked at his torn and tattered trousers, and thought of Lazarus. Neither of these names pleased him. Lazarus suggested poverty and Elijah was awkward and hard to spell. He looked away to the stream below, where the willows were, and thought of the babe in the bulrushes. He looked at the thick forest of pine that shaded the gentle slopes, and thought of the man who walked in the wilderness. And he called the mine the Moses; then fearing that his partner might object even to that, rubbed it out, and wrote “Holy Moses.”

The story of the new strike spread like a prairie fire, and soon found its way to the ears of Mr. D. H. Moffat, then president of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company, who was always on the lookout for a good mine. One day in the early autumn of 1890, Mr. Moffat, with a party of friends, including Mr. Eb Smith, his mining expert, and Capt. L. E. Campbell, then quartermaster at Fort Logan, set out in the president’s private car for Wagon Wheel Gap, which was at that time the terminus of the track. Captain Campbell had turned the traffic of the post to the “Scenic Line” and in a little while a warm friendship sprang up between him and the railway management, the result of which has proved very beneficial to all concerned.

Arriving at Wagon Wheel Gap, the party set out in stages for the Holy Moses, a distance of ten miles. The road lay along the grassy banks of the Rio Grande, one of the prettiest streams in the West. A ride through such a beautiful country could not be tiresome, and before they began to feel the fatigue of the journey, they reached the claim.

It took but a short time to convince the speculators that the Moses was good property, and before leaving, a bond was secured at seventy thousand dollars. Returning to Denver, the property was divided. Mr. Moffat took one half, the other half being divided between Captain Campbell, Mr. Eb Smith, Mr. S. T. Smith, who was then general manager of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company, and Mr. Walter S. Cheesman, at that time a director, each paying in proportion to what he got. Most of the men interested in this new venture were very busy, and they were at a loss to know what to do for a reliable man to manage the property. About that time Captain Campbell secured a year’s leave of absence from the army and took up his residence at the new camp. A comfortable cottage was built in the beautiful valley, just where the West Willow pours her crystal flood into the Rio Grande, and here the Campbells had their home. Mrs. Campbell, who is a niece of Mrs. General Grant, had lived many years in Washington, but she appeared as much at home in Creede camp as she did in the Capital.

CHAPTER XIX.

Here’s a land where all are equal,
Of high and lowly birth;
A land where men make millions
Dug from the dreary earth.
Here the meek and mild-eyed burros
On mineral mountains feed,
It’s day all day in the day-time,
And there is no night in Creede.

The cliffs are solid silver,
With wondrous wealth untold;
And the beds of the running rivers
Are lined with purest gold.
While the world is filled with sorrow
And hearts must break and bleed,
It’s day all day in the day-time,
And there is no night in Creede.

CREEDE CAMP—THE NEW FIELD—INCORPORATION OF THE AMETHYST.

AS manager of the Holy Moses, Captain Campbell employed Mr. Creede, in whom he had implicit confidence, to prospect, on a salary, with the understanding that the prospector should have one third of what was found. Creede had a world of faith in the country, and had imparted this confidence to the Captain.

An ordinary mortal would have been satisfied with thirty-five thousand dollars, but Creede’s dream had not yet been realized. The prophecy made in his last letter to his old partners had not been fulfilled. He had now enough to keep him when old age should come upon him, and laying his little fortune aside for a rainy day, he started out with the intention of wasting his grub-stake, his salary and his time.

As if he would lose all trace of the Moses vein, he passed over a low divide and began to toil up the steep, densely-wooded side of Bachelor Mountain. How many miles this man had walked in the wilds of the mountains, alone with Nature and Nature’s God! The frosts of fifty winters have touched his face and there are streaks of gray in his soft, thin hair. At his heels is the faithful dog. He, too, has seen his share of service, and is as gray as his master.

The mountain gets its name from the Bachelor mine which was one of the first discoveries. This claim was located by a Mr. Bennett in the year, 1885. Mr. John Herrick, a jolly bachelor of Denver, formerly of New York, had been pounding away in this claim for several years; but not until the mountain had given up millions to others, did he wrest a fortune from her rugged breast.

Slowly up the mountain-side the lone prospector worked his way. Some float was found and traced along through the heavy forest. Now and then the great roots of the pine trees forced some rich-looking rock to the surface, and the prospector was tempted to stop and dig, but the float kept cropping out. There was mineral in that mountain and he would follow the outcropping until it disappeared.

Already the prospector began to dream day-dreams of fortune and fame. Slowly up the mountain he toiled, finding fresh signs of wealth at every step. Once in a while the temptation to stop was so great, that it was almost irresistible; but still he went on. When half-way up the long slope, the outcroppings disappeared and he turned back. His trained eye soon led them to the proper place and before the sun went down that day, Creede had laid the foundation for the fortune of not less than a half dozen people.

MR. ALLENBY,
Foreman of the Amethyst.

The new find was called the Amethyst, and upon this vein are located now the Last Chance, New York Chance, the Bachelor and a number of other valuable claims that are worth, or will be when silver is remonetized, from one to five million dollars apiece.

In May, 1892, the Amethyst Mining Company was incorporated.

Mr. D. H. Moffat was elected president; N. C. Creede, vice-president; Walter S. Cheesman, secretary and treasurer, and Captain L. E. Campbell, general manager. A tramway was built to carry the ore from the mine to the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company’s track, which cost the Amethyst company many thousands of dollars. Splendid shaft and ore houses were built at the mine, making almost a little city where Creede had walked through a wilderness of pines. The Last Chance, adjoining the Amethyst, owned by Senator E. O. Wolcott, and others, spent a fortune in development work; but the mine has yielded millions to its owners. To Mr. Jacob Sanders of Leadville is due the credit for having organized the Last Chance Mining Company, one of the strongest in the camp.

When the news of the incorporation of the Amethyst Mining Company went out to the world, many inquiries were made by brokers for stock; but none was ever offered for sale.

The capital stock, five million dollars, is divided as follows; Mr. Creede owns one third, Mr. Moffat one third, Captain Campbell one sixth, Mr. S. T. Smith and Mr. Cheesman, a twelfth each. When the statement is made that this mine for some time paid a monthly dividend of ninety thousand dollars, it is easy to figure the daily income of any or all of the gentlemen interested in the property. What a striking example for the monometallist who argues that silver can be produced at a profit at the present prices; but it stands as a well-known fact, that, taking the whole output of Creede camp from the date of the discovery of the Amethyst vein to the present time, every ounce of silver that has gone down the Rio Grande has cost the producers more than a dollar.

Of the army of prospectors who lose themselves in the hills every spring, nothing is ever heard, except of the very few who find a fortune. Among the gambling dens in a mining camp, the scores of men who lose from one to one thousand dollars every night keep their own secret; but let one man win a hundred, and you will hear the barber tell the city marshal that “Redy Quartz broke de bank at Banigan’s las’ night, too easy.” Mining and prospecting are only legitimate gambling, and it is the tens of thousands of little losers that keep the game going.

CREEDE’S COTTAGE AT CREEDE.

CHAPTER XX.

WANDERING IN THE WILDS—AMONG THE MILES OF MOUNTAINS—BENEATH A SUMMER SKY.

AWAY in the hills, far above the bluebells, where the day dawned early and the sunlight lingered when the day was done, the lone prospector had his home. At times he would have a prospecting partner; but often for months he lived alone in the hills, with no companion save his faithful dog, who for thirteen years followed silently where his master led. One day while talking of his past experiences, the prospector said: “When I try to taste again the joy that was mine when I first learned that I was a millionaire, I am disappointed. Like Mark Twain’s dime, it could be enjoyed but once. Great joys, like great sorrows, are soon forgotten; but there are things that are as fresh in my memory as if these years had been but moments. I shall never forget the many beautiful spots where my little dog and I have camped—always on the sunny south hills where the sun coaxed the grass to grow and the flowers to blow, often, it seemed, a month ahead of time. When we had made our camp, sometimes we would go away for a day or two, and upon our return, we would find the little wild flowers blooming by our door. Often, now, when we have finished our midday dinner of porterhouse and pie, I sit on the stoop in the sunlight, my faithful dog at my feet, and as I smoke a fifty-cent cigar, my mind wanders back over memory’s trail.”

I hear the song of brooklets,
The murmurings of the winds;
I smell the smell of summer,
Hear the whispering of the pines.

I seem to see the sunset;
In fancy I behold
The hoary hills above me,
Robed in a garb of gold.

I give an extra cookie
To this dear old dog of mine;
As he shared the shadow,
So shall he share the shine.

And as I smoke and lose me,
In the days that have gone by,
Among the miles of mountains
Beneath a summer sky,

The smoke of my Havanna,
As it slowly floats away,
Is freighted with the odor
Of my long-lost pipe of clay.

And I give an extra cookie
To this poor old dog of mine;
For he has shared the shadow,
And he shall share the shine.

CHAPTER XXI.

DEVELOPMENT OF CREEDE—SAW A CITY SPRING UP ALMOST IN A DAY—AN HUNDRED GAMBLERS CAME THERE, TOO.

NOW let the weary prospector sit down and rest. His dream has been realized; his prophecy fulfilled.

The opening of the Amethyst vein called for the extension of the Denver & Rio Grande Railway Company’s track from Wagon Wheel Gap, a distance of ten miles.

About this time, President Moffat and the General Manager got into an entanglement with the directory and both resigned. Mr. George Coppell, chairman of the board, came out from New York and took charge of the property.

Mr. Moffat and others interested, urged the management to extend the rails to the new camp. Among those interested in the extension was Senator Wolcott, counsel for the company; but it is as difficult for a New York capitalist to appreciate the importance of a silver camp as it is for him to appreciate the value of a silver dollar, so Mr. Coppell refused to build the line.

Mr. Moffat then put up thirty-six thousand dollars to build the extension, agreeing to let the railroad company repay him in freight.

Soon after this Mr. E. T. Jeffrey was elected president and general manager of the road. Probably no man in America could have taken up the tools laid down by Moffat and Smith and continue the good work begun by them, with so little friction as did the present president of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company. To fill the places vacated by these popular officials was no light task. The grand stand was packed and the voters held the bleachers, when President Jeffrey went to the bat.

Colorado said “Play ball,” and in the first inning he won the respect of the other players and the applause of the people. He has been successful because he deserved success.

Three months after the completion of the line to Creede, each train brought to the camp from two hundred to three hundred people, all the side-tracks were blocked with freight and a ceaseless stream of silver was flowing into the treasury of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company. The lucky prospector built a cozy cabin in the new camp and saw a city spring up almost in a day. Just where the trains pulled in, you might see him sitting by the cottage door, smoking a cigar, while the little old dog who had just finished a remarkably good breakfast, trotted stiff-legged up and down the porch and wondered why they didn’t go out any more and hunt in the hills.

THE RISE AND FALL OF CREEDE.

A thousand burdened burros filled

The narrow, winding, wriggling trail.

An hundred settlers came to build

Each day new houses in the vale.

An hundred gamblers came to feed

On these same settlers—this was Creede.

Slanting Annie, Gambler Joe
And Robert Ford; Sapolio—
Or Soapy Smith, as he was known—
Ran games peculiarly their own;
And everything was open wide
And men drank absinth on the side.

And now the Faro bank is closed,
And Mr. Faro’s gone away
To seek new fields—it is supposed—
More verdant fields. The gamblers say
The man who worked the shell and ball
Has gone back to the Capital.

The winter winds blow bleak and chill,
The quaking, quivering aspen waves
About the summit of the hill;
Above the unrecorded graves
Where halt, abandoned burros feed
And coyotes call—and this is Creede.

Lone graves! whose head-boards bear no name,
Whose silent owners lived like brutes
And died as doggedly, but game,—
And most of them died in their boots.
We mind among the unwrit names
The man who murdered Jesse James.

We saw him murdered—saw him fall,
And saw his mad assassin gloat
Above him. Heard his moans and all,
And saw the shot holes in his throat.
And men moved on and gave no heed
To life or death—and this is Creede.

Slanting Annie, Gambler Joe
And Missouri Bob are sleeping there;
But slippery, sly Sapolio,
Who seems to shun the Golden Stair,
Has turned his time to loftier tricks—
He’s doing Denver politics.

CHAPTER XXII.

WEARING HIS WEALTH—ATTRACTS THE ATTENTION OF ADVENTURESSES—LOS ANGELES.

TO one who has lived almost alone and unknown for a half hundred years, the change from obscurity to notoriety and fame is swift and novel. Mr. Creede realized that he was attracting the attention of the world, especially the fair ones in search of husbands, in a very short time.

In his little den up the Gulch he had a collection of letters that were interesting reading. They came from the four corners of the earth; from women of every tongue, and almost every walk of life.

The first one I saw was from a St. Louis play actress, who sent photos in which her left foot stands at six o’clock, her right five fifty-five. Her hair was short and cut curly. She said she was “dead weary of the stage,” and that with the prospector’s money and her experience, they could double up and do the world in a way that would make the swells of “Parie” take to the woods, and there was nothing the matter with his coming on and she would meet him on the Q. T., and if she failed to stack up, he could cash in and quit.

July 11, 1892. A Rhode Island preacher writes to ask for help.

“Doubtless,” he began, “you have many letters from people upon whom the cares of life press heavily, and it must be a source of great annoyance.”

After dwelling at some length upon his deplorable condition, there was a—

“P. S.—If you can’t send money, please send me a suit of cast-off clothes, and greatly oblige,

Yours truly,
——.

“N. B.—I send measure, so that you can get an idea of what size I need. Breast 37, waist 32, leg 33.”

May 17, 1893. A woman with a nose for lucre and a cold nerve, writes from Waxahachie to ask the lucky prospector to “come down and look at her daughter.”

“She is a perfect beauty; has a good solo voice, but is a little lazy. She has not quite developed, being only thirteen years old; but if you will take a look at her you will change your mind. She’s a beauty. She wants to go to Italy or France and study music and if you will help to educate her you may have her.”

What a cold-blooded proposition is this, soliciting as a horse trader would for some one who has a fortune to take a look at her child thirteen years old!

A lady writes from Canada to borrow three thousand dollars to buy a farm, and adds that one man should not have so much money.

An ambitious young Englishman, who is in love with the “prettiest girl in Hold Hengland,” writes for a “few ’undred to bring ’er hover with.”

July 8, 1892, at Columbus, Ohio, a widow writes the best letter of them all.

“Dear Mr. Creede:—Having seen by the papers that y’s hav lots av money, an’ a good disposition I write y’s to ask a favor. No it’s not money I wants, nor do I want y’s to marry me. I was as far west as Colarado wanct, saw the Vergini Mine in Uray County an’ its Terrable in 1888. Shure it was terrable, too; for then I lost the best friend av me life—the foreman of the Terrable, he died.

“After that it seemed I had no friends at tall a tall, an’ I came back to Columbus. Nearly I forgot to say I wus married wanct—but mind, I’m not wan av thim grassy widdies—I’m bonyfied. Shure if I was as shure of another as I am that Pat is dead, shure I wo’n’t be wastin’ me time writin’ to ye. Nearly I forgot to say that what I want av ye is to find me a good thru and ’onest husband. I’ve lost all fait in these wishy-washy judes here. Gimme the rough and onest hand of the mountain, and take away your long-tinnis judes.

“Comparatively speakin’, I was born in the North of Ireland an’ am a happy disposition.

“Remembher, the man must be noble, ’onest an’ thru. Please write to me soon.

Very respectfully yours,
——.

“N. B.—After readin’ this I see I was about to leave out the most impartent part. Now if you can’t find a man with all these good qualities an’ money too, I’ll take the one wid the ’onest, thru and noble carocther. Money can niver buy happiness an’ love, an’ that I prize above everything else. I want a man not less than forty as he should begin to have some since by that time.

Wanct more I am,

Yours truly,
——.”

Up to the writing of these pages, the mails continue to bring loads of letters from all sorts of cranks. Those from women are turned over to Mrs. Creede; but only a very few, of course, are answered.

In that poet’s Paradise; that dreamy lotus-land, Southern California, Creede has bought a beautiful home. It stands just at the end of Sixth street on Pearl, surrounded by tropical trees, vines and flowers. Here the balmy breezes bring down the scent of cedar from the hills to the north, and the soft sea-winds creep across the lea from the ocean-edge. It’s a pretty place—a pleasant place for weary pilgrims to rest, beyond the waste of a sun-dried sea—

O’er which he toiled, a sea of sand before him,

Dead snakes and withered toads lay on his way;

The desert sun, red, awful, hanging o’er him

The livelong day.

And lo, at last there breaks upon his vision

A paradise with flowers and tropic trees,

Cool, crystal streams that flow throw fields elysian;

Los Angeles.

CREEDE’S RESIDENCE, LOS ANGELES, CAL.

THE
SILVER QUEEN

A ROMANCE OF THE
Early Days of Creede Camp

BY
CY WARMAN and FITZ MAC

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ZELLA NEILL.

DENVER
The Great Divide Publishing Company
1894

Copyrighted 1894, by Cy Warman,
Denver, Colorado.

THE SILVER QUEEN.

I.

Denver, March 15, 1892.

My Dear Mr. Warman:—I notice by the papers that you are getting ready to start a daily in Creede. Your courage is worthy of all astonishment. Don’t you know the gamblers there will shoot you full of holes, and perhaps spoil the only suit you’ve got fit to be buried in, before your paper reaches the tenth number? Whatever you do, wear your old clothes and keep your Sunday suit nice for emergencies. The boys will all chip in and give you a big funeral, but we haven’t any of us got a spare coat fit to bury you in; so take care of your Prince Albert and wear your corduroys till the question is settled one way or the other, for if anything should happen, it would mortify the boys to have to bury in his shirt-sleeves the only poet Colorado has produced.

Well, you are in for it, I suppose, and nothing will stop you, and being in, there is nothing for it now but to “bear thyself so thine enemy may beware thee,” or in other words, heel yourself and face the music like a man. Whatever else you do, don’t show the white feather, for the honor of the press is in your keeping, and if you will immolate yourself, we expect you to die game and not with a bullet in your back. Don’t worry one minute about the obituary notices. That will be all right. The boys will all see you through in good shape and the papers here will all turn rules and celebrate your virtues in such halting meter as can be mustered.

But, seriously, what evil genius tempted you into the project of a daily in Creede, and whose money are you blowing in?

If your ambition is to establish a reputation for courage—going into such a lair of hobos, gamblers and all-round toughs—most people will think it absurdly superfluous in a man—a western man at least—who makes no concealment of the fact, in this fin de siecle era, that he perpetrates poetry and is willing to make his living by it—if he can.

I have no wish to discourage you, Cy, in your present heroic enterprise; but I think, myself, it is wholly unnecessary as an evidence of pluck, after all the poetry you have perpetrated. Everybody knows that a poet—a western poet, especially—takes his life in his hands whenever he approaches a publisher, as recklessly as the man who runs sheep onto a cow range. Of course, no western man would feel any compunction in killing a poet, considering that whatever attention they command in the East makes against our reputation out here for practical horse-sense and energy, and tends to make the underwriters and money-lenders suspicious and raise the rates of interest and insurance.

I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, for I confess I like your poetry myself, but I think you owe the singular immunity you have enjoyed in Denver above other poets who have bit the dust or emigrated eastward, to the openly-expressed admiration and affection of Myron Reed and Jim Belford and a few other reckless cranks who have intrenched themselves against “the practical horse-sense” which is the pride of our people. As, instance: I happened into that gun-store in the Tabor Block yesterday to provide myself with a jointed fishing-rod against what time I should come down to your funeral—for they tell me the Upper Rio Grande swarms with trout, and I thought I might like to cast a fly, even so early, after seeing you planted, and being shown the spot where you fell. For I fancy some of those toughs whose hearts your inspired verses had touched, commiserating my tears, would come to me and take me gently by the hand and lead me down to the coroner’s office to show me the hole in the breast of your coat—for I never have done you the wrong to imagine the hole anywhere but in the breast where the remorseless bullet tore its way to your brave heart. And then the tender-hearted tough, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, should draw me away and lead me up the street “to see where it happened,” and that he should halt at a certain spot in front of a great flourishing saloon and gambling hall, where I should catch a glimpse through the windows, of battered and frowzy girls in dirty, trailing calico “tea-gowns” and thin slippers, drinking at the bar with the cheaper class of the gamblers or with befuddled miners they were preparing to rob, and he should say: “’Twas right here—right where I’m standin’—and poor Cy, he wuz goin’ along and he wuzn’t sayin’ nothin’ to nobody, ’n’ I was standin’ right across the street there, in the door of Minnie Monroe’s place, an’ Min she wuz leanin’ over my shoulder and we wuz both lookin’ right across at the saloon where Soapy Smith wuz standin’ in the door, readin’ a newspaper out loud to Bob Ford an’ a lot o’ them low-down girls that hangs around there after breakfast till they strike a treat; an’ at every word Soapy he was rippin’ out oaths an’ shakin’ his fist, an’ Min, she says to me: ‘Bill, there’s a row on, les’ go over and see what’s up.’ ’N’ jest at that minute along comes poor Cy—mindin’ his own business ’n’ sayin’ nothin’ to nobody—an’ that’s what I’ll swear to ’fore the grand jury, mister, if I’m called, an’ Min, she’ll swear to the same thing. Nothin’ wouldn’t a’ happened, fur everybody’s back wuz turned, only fur one o’ them low-down trollops stuck her head out o’ the door and s’ys, ‘There’s the —— —— ——, now,’ and Bob Ford he looked over his shoulder ’n’ s’ys, ‘Sure ’nough Soapy, there goes your man.’

“Min an’ me heard every word jest as plain as a pin. Cy heard it, too, and he knowed what it meant. He wuz game—I’ll say that fur him—’n’ faced about ’n’ reached fur his gun quicker ’n the jerk of a lamb’s tail in fly time, but Soapy got there first, ’cause he’d rushed out with his gun cocked, and it wuz all day with poor Cy ’fore you could say Jack Robinson.”

“Reached for his gun?” (in imagination I inquire doubtingly)—“then he was—”

“Oh, yes, he was heeled. Cy wuzn’t no chump. He knowed he was takin’ his life in his hands when he jumped that gang an’ began to roast them in his paper. He knowed they’d lay fur him an’ do him up if they ever got the drop on him ’fore he could draw. But oh, say, if poor Cy had just had a show—or even half a show—wouldn’t he shot the everlastin’ stuffin’ out o’ that crowd quicker ’n a cat could lick her ear! That’s what he would, mister, fur he was game an’ he could handle a gun beautiful. But” (in my fancy your worthy tough always draws his sleeve across his face at this juncture) “I suppose it had to be—prob’ly it was God’l Mighty’s will. There’s the pole over yander front o’ Min’s place we strung Soapy and Bob to, an’ there wuzn’t no inquest on them—not much there wuzn’t, for the coroner himself helped at the lynchin’—everybody helped ’ceptin’ that pigeon-livered cad of a preacher. He wanted to deliver a lecture to the crowd on the majesty of the law an’ that kind o’ thing, but he got left on his little game that time. Oh, he’s too slow for this camp, mister. The preacher that can’t keep up with the band wagon, ain’t got no business monkeyin’ around a live mining camp like Creede.”

But bless my stars, how my anxiety for you has drawn me into digression? I started to tell you what happened at the gun-store. You know it’s a place where some clever men drop in and lounge a bit and swap sporting stories and smoke a friendly cigar. I heard some one call me to the rear, and going back, I found Belford and their reverences, Tom Uzzell and Myron Reed—God bless their manly souls—and one or two others I did not know. And your friend, the Reverend Myron, was reading aloud to the crowd that fanciful little jingle you had in yesterday’s Times about the beautiful but willful maid who wandered down to the shore of sin and got snatched back by some compunctious Joseph before the undertow caught her, or language to that general effect;—forgive me, I haven’t been able to read it myself and cannot recall a line of it although I recognized it as a gem.

Well, you could see the little crowd was being affected, for Mr. Reed was delivering it with exquisite feeling, and when he had finished, there was a general glance of admiration all round; and Mr. Uzzell remarked that there was a fine sermon—I think, on reflection, that he said a fine, strong sermon—in the verses; and your friend Reed smiled. Then Belford, in a characteristic burst of rhetoric, declared that “The Muses must have kissed in his cradle, the fellow who wrote those lines.” And your friend, the Reverend Myron, smiled out loud, and Belford glanced around the crowd for approval.

I shouldn’t consider that fraternal magnanimity required me to repeat these flattering expressions to you, Cy, only that I feel your doom draws nigh. It is borne in upon me with all the psychic force of a prophecy that you are fated to perish by the ignominious hand of our own and only Soapy, if you persist in starting that daily. You can’t run a daily without saying something, and you can’t say anything that ought to be said without giving mortal offense to the toughs who are running that camp, and you can’t give offense to them without getting shot. It is an ancient saying that “a word to the wise is sufficient”; but it were better to say, as experience proves, that a word to the wise is generally superfluous. Be wise, Cyrus, in your day and generation. Seek fame in other fields. Open a boarding-house or an undertaker’s shop, or both. This will give you a chance to study human nature in all its phases. It is the school for a poet and philosopher. Don’t miss the opportunity. Don’t waste your promising young life writing poetry or running a daily paper to reform the morals of a mining camp. Either is sure to bring you to an ignominious grave. But if, in spite of my prayers and tears, you will persist, send me your paper. I shall have a curiosity to see what sort of a stagger you make at moulding the protoplasm of public opinion into a cellular structure of moral impulse. Send me the paper, sure. So-long. God protect you.

Always,
Fitz-Mac.

P. S.—Now, may confusion take my muddled brains, but I have overlooked the very thing I started to write you about.

The inclosed letter of introduction will make you acquainted with Miss Polly Parsons, a young girl whom I have known from childhood, and in whose welfare I take a serious interest. She is a bright and beautiful girl—and a thoroughly good girl, let me remark—and I want her to know you and feel that she has a friend in you on whom she can call for counsel and protection if need be.

She is under the necessity, not only of making her own living, but of contributing to the support of her father’s family. Her mother and little brother are here, living in two rooms, but her father is in Chicago. I knew the family there years ago when they were very rich, and surrounded by every luxury—fine home on Michigan avenue, carriages and footman and all that. But Parsons went broke a few years ago on grain speculations, and the worst of it is, he lost his courage with his money and is now a broken-spirited man, doing the leg work for brokers and leaving his family to shift for themselves, or pretty nearly so. I suppose it is really impossible for the poor fellow to help them very much or he would, for he loved his wife and children. Polly had every advantage that money could purchase till the old man failed, and she is finely educated. She is a girl of great courage and has an ambition to make a business woman of herself and help her father onto his feet again. She has some of his genius for bold, speculative action, and has taken up stenography and typewriting—not as an end but only as a means.

I am very much afraid she has made a serious misstep in going to Creede and that she will get herself hopelessly compromised before she is done with it.

She has gone down with that Sure Thing Mining Company outfit and I suspect they are a bad lot; but some of them knew her father in the past, and thus gained her confidence. She is too pretty a girl and too inexperienced to be exposed to the associations of a mining camp like Creede, where there are so few decent women, without great danger. She has got courage and an earnest purpose, and those qualities are a woman’s best safeguard; but still, she is only a girl of nineteen or twenty and she doesn’t realize what a delicate thing a woman’s reputation is. It was sheer recklessness for her to go down there; but I didn’t know it till after she was off. Her mother got anxious after she had let her go and came to see me about it. I believe—without positively knowing—that the outfit she has gone to are right-down scamps. They seem to have plenty of money and they have opened a grand office here, but they strike me as bad eggs. A very suspicious circumstance in regard to their motives toward her—to my mind at least—is that they have promised her a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. That is simply preposterous. (You know that they can get an army of competent stenographers and typewriters at one hundred dollars a month, or even less.) I don’t like the looks of it a bit. I suspect they—or one of them—have designs against the girl.

She is honest to the core, and they will never accomplish her ruin—if that is what they mean. But of course, you must understand, I am only voicing a suspicion, and a very uncharitable one at that; but the odor of the outfit is bad, and they may compromise her hopelessly before she gets her eyes open, and spoil her life.

I want you to hunt her up and keep an eye on her, and put yourself on a square footing with her, so that she will have confidence in you. Above all things, see that she has a boarding place where there is some respectable married woman, and give her a talking to about the camp that will open her eyes. She will take care of herself all right if she is once put on her guard.

I want you to understand she is no pick-up for any rake to trifle with; but a woman is a woman—you know that, Cy, as well as I do—and youth is youth.

She is a good telegrapher—unusually good, I imagine. I mention this so that you may get her employment if that job she has gone to looks at all scaly, and likely to compromise her.

She has great force of character—her father’s temperament before he broke down—and she has taken up all these things to fit herself for that business career to which she aspires. Don’t be deceived by her suave and amiable manner into thinking her a weakling, for she has got immense force of character, and she perfectly believes she is going to have a business career.

I have told her in the letter that you are engaged to the nicest girl in Denver, so as to put you on a confidential footing, and head off your falling in love with her yourself. Be a brother to her, Cy, and keep her out of trouble. God knows you are wicked enough yourself to scent wickedness from afar and see any danger in the path of an attractive girl without experience. Look her up at once—at once, mind you—and let me have a good account of yourself as soon as possible.

Affectionately,
Fitz-Mac.

II.

Creede, Colo., March 17, 1892.

To Fitz-Mac, Denver, Colo.

My Dear Fitz:—Your letter came here yesterday along with the circulars sent by those peddlers of printing presses and printer’s ink, but I have been so busy getting things in shape to start the Chronicle, that there has been little time to look after the beautiful creature of whom you write. Thousands of stenographers have gone from home to take positions where the pay was better, and no great harm has resulted, and why you have become so thoroughly alarmed over the young lady, I am unable to understand. If, as your letter would indicate, she has lived all her life in Chicago, she is perfectly safe in Creede.

I went to the station, or rather to the place where the train stops, this morning, but saw no one who would answer the description of your young lady. Of the three hundred passengers, not more than ten were women, and very ordinary looking women at that.

I know that I could find your friend if she is in the camp, by turning your letter over to Hartigan, the city editor, but he is a handsome young Irishman who quotes poetry by the mile, and the fact that he has a wife in Denver would not prevent him from opening a flirtation at the first meeting.

No, she is better off with the smooth young man than with Hartigan. Tabor, who is to be the local man, is single, but little better than the city editor. He is very susceptible and would fall in love with the young woman and, of course, neglect his work. A morning paper whose editor is threatened with matrimony should keep its working force out of the breakers.

The worst feature, so far as I can see, is the fact that I am unable to locate the Sure Thing Mining Company; but I hope when Mr. Wygant, the advertising man, comes in, he may be able to enlighten me on this point. It is my purpose, so far as possible, to carry advertisements in the Chronicle for none but good companies; and to guard against any impositions, I employed a man who is well known and well acquainted with all the fake schemes; and further, that he may have no serious temptations, he will be paid a salary instead of a commission.

However, there may be a Sure Thing Mining Company, and it may be all right; but I have failed so far to learn anything about it. The camp continues to boom. One of the fraternity shot a thumb off the hand of a fellow sport at Banigan’s last night. I have not taken in the town yet, although the temptation has been very great. Both the rival theaters have tendered me a box, and assured me that I would not be “worked.”

Until now, I never knew what an important personage the editor of a morning paper was. The city marshal called at the office yesterday with a half dozen bottles of beer, which he gave to Freckled Jimmie, the devil, with the explanation that he understood that the editor was a Democrat.

I have made a good impression on society here, I think. The first man I was introduced to when I stepped from the train, was Bob Ford, who, in connection with the Governor of Missouri, removed Jesse James some ten years ago. (He is a pale, sallow fellow with a haunted look, and he is always nervous when his back is to the door.) Fitz, there is a great deal of wickedness in this world, and in a mining camp they make no attempt at hiding it.

If I were not very busy, I should be very unhappy here. From morning till night and from night until morning, the ceaseless tramp, tramp, on wooden walks of the comers and goers is painfully monotonous. Once in a while a pistol-shot echoes in the cañon, and the saddest thing is that it is so common that the players scarcely turn from the tables to see who has fallen in the fight.

And men move on, and give no heed

To life or death,—and this is Creede.

By-and-by it will be different. When we have a city government, crime will be punished. The gambling and other disreputable resorts will be confined to their own quarter, and Creede will become the greatest silver camp on earth.

After paying one thousand dollars on our building and as much on our press and outfit, we had one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars to our credit.

This morning’s mail brought a letter from Mr. Sanders inclosing a Last Chance check for five hundred dollars. The same mail brought D. H. M.’s check for two hundred and fifty dollars with the request that I accept it with his compliments, but he would have no stock. Now these people are all Republicans, and they know that I will run a Democratic paper. In the language of the songster, “That is love.”

I want to say that you do my friend Smith a great injustice, when, in your day-dream, you make him my slayer. He is my personal body-guard. He is also a bitter enemy of Ford’s. Mark you, these men will meet some day—I say some day, for it’s never night in Creede,—and whether he do kill Sapolio or Sapolio do kill him, or both,—especially the latter,—the incident will render my position all the more secure.

When Governor Routt was here working the shells on the Smart Alecks who came to camp to buy corner lots cheap, I bought a lot on the shores of the West Willow. The selvage of my property was swept by the rushing waters of the busy little brook; and I gave it out that I wanted that particular lot to have water-power for my press. Of course, all were anxious to aid in the establishment of a morning paper, and the lot came to me at three hundred dollars, the minimum price, which is just thirty times its value. The lot next to mine was reserved by the State for the use of the little brook.

A speculative pirate, by the name of Streepy, built a house over the river and turned the stream through my lot, so now all I own is the river.

In closing, let me assure you that I will do all in my power to locate the young woman, and advise you.

Yours truly,
Cy Warman.

III.

Denver, March 20, 1892.

My Dear Warman:—Yours of the 17th, after some unaccounted-for delay, has but just reached me. Perhaps your gifted postmistress had not time to read it at once, and so held it over till leisure should serve her curiosity; or she may have found unexpected difficulty in deciphering your ingeniously atrocious writing, which I can imagine would only increase the curiosity of a gifted woman.

I once lived where the postmaster, a man of intellectual inclinations, was very slow at reading manuscript, being obliged to spell out the words laboriously, and I found the delay occasioned by the interest he took in studying my epistolary style, to improve his mind, a great annoyance. But a bright thought struck me one day, and I employed a typewriter. After that there was but little delay, for he could read print very well. I offer you the value of this experience, not at all on my account, for I can generally manage to make out what you are writing about pretty closely, but to promote expedition in mail service. It occurs to me to mention, however, en passant, that if you fail in that newspaper enterprise, you still have a bright career for your pen before you in the Orient, marking tea-chests. Do not imagine that I am complaining when I say that your friends would find more time to love you if you would employ a typewriter.

But all this is neither here nor there. I am in despair at the devil-may-care tone in which you write about Miss Parsons, and I am really alarmed about her not having arrived. She certainly could not have had much money by her to make a leisurely trip of it, stopping off to see the towns and the scenery en route.

Her mother was in a few moments ago, and not having heard from her, is naturally anxious, but I affected to consider it nothing. As a matter of fact, I regard it as very strange and alarming, considering that she left Denver with a man I strongly suspect is a scamp, and if the Sure Thing Mining Company has no office there, the worst is to be feared. It looks very bad.

My hope is, that in your indifference to my request, not appreciating the seriousness of the case, you have not looked around. I suppose it is a matter of no little trouble to find any one, unless you happen upon him, in such a mad rush as has set in for Creede. I met Whitehead of the News, who is just back from there, and he says that not only are the platforms even of the cars crowded, but men actually ride on top from Alamosa over, in the craze to get there. What insanity! How can such a rush of people be housed and fed in a camp that contained but five little cabins ninety days ago! But it is all grist for your mill, of course.

Now, can I make you understand the seriousness of this case? You certainly know how easy it is for a villain to compromise a young and pretty girl like Miss Parsons in a place like Creede, and you know that a young girl compromised is already half ruined. As I have said, Polly is a pure-minded, honest girl of great force of character. I consider her taking up and mastering shorthand and typewriting and telegraphing, sufficient evidence of that; but she is inexperienced and unsuspicious, and may find herself undone before she realizes her danger. Besides, that fellow Ketchum is a handsome, unscrupulous man, with an oily tongue in his head.

I have to go to Chicago to-night and I shall be absent two or three weeks, otherwise I would run down to Creede myself—so great is my anxiety about this girl, whom I have known from her cradle.

I must leave the matter in your hands—if I can only make you look at it seriously. Her mother’s address is No. 1796 California street—Mrs. Matilda Parsons. Communicate with her if necessary. I have told her about writing to you, etc.

Probably, while in Chicago, I shall be able to look up her father and will talk with him about the matter. Now please take up this matter seriously and oblige me forever.

Au revoir, and good luck to you with the paper.

Fitz-Mac.

IV.

Creede, Colo., March 25, ’92.

My Dear Fitz:—Since receiving your second letter, I have left nothing undone in the way of keeping a constant lookout for Miss Parsons, for I see how terribly in earnest you are. Yesterday I took dinner at a little restaurant in Upper Creede, and when the girl came to take my order she almost took my breath. There was something about her that told me that she was new at the business; and I began to be hopeful that she might be the young lady for whom I had been looking for the past week. When the rest had left the table, I asked for a second cup of coffee, and when she brought it, I made an attempt to engage the girl in conversation.

“You are very busy here,” I said.

“Yes,” she answered, with a slight raise of the eyebrows, and just a hint of a smile playing round her mouth.

“I presume you get very tired by closing time,” I ventured.

“We never close,” she said; and again I noticed the same movement of the eyes.

I knew she thought I was endeavoring to build up an acquaintance, and it annoyed me. If there is one thing I dislike, it is to be taken for a masher when I am not trying to mash.

“Haven’t I seen you in Denver?”

“Perhaps.”

“Haven’t I seen you with Mr. Ketchum?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you know Mr. Ketchum?” I asked with some embarrassment.

“Do you?”

“Well, not very intimately,” was my somewhat uncertain reply. “Is he in town?”

The girl laughed in real earnest. When she did compose herself, she asked, “Are you a reporter for the new paper?”

I told her I was not, and then I asked her if she could tell me where Mr. Ketchum’s office was.

It was down the street near the Holy Moses saloon, she said; and I congratulated myself upon having gotten a straight and lucid reply from her.

“Is he in town?” was my next question.

“He was at this table when you came in. Don’t you know him?”

“Not very well,” said I.

“Then how do you know you saw me with Mr. Ketchum?”

I said he must have changed.

“No,” said the girl, showing some spunk. “You don’t know him. You never saw him; but you are trying to be funny. Your name is Lon Hartigan, and I am dead onto you.”

“O, break!—break away!” said a chemical blonde, as she swept in from the kitchen, coming to the rescue of her “partner,” as she called her. “The girls from the Beebee put us onto you and that fellow from New York. You can’t come none of your monkey doodle business here. Mr. Ketchum is the nicest man ’at eats here and he always leaves a dollar under his plate.” And the drug-store blonde snapped her fingers under my nose, whirled on her heel, and banging a soiled towel into a barrel that stood by the door leading to the kitchen, she swept from the room.

“Will you bring me some hot coffee?” I said, softly, to the girl with her own hair.

“You misjudge me,” I began, as she set it down.

“I am sorry,” she replied with a hemi-smile that hinted of sympathy, but is worse than no sympathy.

“Now, see here,” I began, “I’ll tell you my name if you’ll tell me yours. My name is Warman.”

“My name is Boyd—Inez Boyd,” said the girl, “and I am sorry to have talked as I have, to you.”

“Don’t mention it,” said I, as I left the room.

Outside I saw a sign which read: “The Sure Thing Mining and Milling Company, Capital Stock, $1,000,000.”

The next moment I stood in the outer office, saw a sign on a closed door: “F. I. Ketchum—Private.”

I opened a little wooden gate, stepped to the private entrance and knocked. A tall, good-looking man of thirty-five to forty, with soft gray hair, came out and closed the door quickly.

“Is this Mr. Ketchum?” I asked.

“Yes sir, what can I do for you?”

Now that was a sticker. It had not occurred to me that to call a man out of his private office one ought to have some business.

“I’m the editor of the Chronicle and I just dropped in to get acquainted. I have heard of your company.”

The man looked black. “We are not looking for newspaper notoriety,” he said, without offering me a seat. In short, he didn’t rave over me, as some of the real estate men did, and after asking how the property of the company was looking, I went away. Poor as I am, I would have given twenty to have seen into the “Private” room.

I write all this in detail, that you may know how hard I have tried to do my duty to you as a friend, and to the poor unfortunate girl, as a man. I shall have more time from now on, as I have for my superintendent and general master mechanic, Mr. J. D. Vaughan, who can make a newspaper, from the writing of the editorial page, to the mailing list. In the past, as now, he has always been with distinguished men. He was with Artemus Ward at Cleveland, Wallace Gruelle, at Louisville, Bartley Campbell, at New Orleans, Will L. Visscher when he ran the “Headlight,” on board the steamer Richmond running between Louisville and New Orleans, and with Field and Rothaker on the Denver Tribune.

We got out our first issue Monday, and I feel a great deal better. It has been the dream of my life to have a daily paper, and we have got one now that is all wool and as wide as the press will print. I have this line under the heading:

“Polities: Free Coinage; Religion: Creede.”

I think that line will last. It is what we must live for and hope for. Of course, we expect to lose money for a few months; but if the camp continues to grow, the Chronicle Publishing Company will be a good venture. There are many hardships to be endured in a mining camp. The printers had to stand in an uncovered house and set type while the snow drifted around their collars. They held a meeting in the rear office Sunday, organized a printers’ union, fixed a schedule to suit themselves—fifty cents a thousand; and, in order that I might not feel lonely, I was made an honorary member of the union.

Mr. George W. Childs was taken in at the same time. My salary is to be fifty dollars a week; but I don’t intend to draw my salary until the paper is on a paying basis.

We have not got our motor in place yet, and I had to pay two Mexicans twelve dollars for turning the press the first night. Coal is ten dollars a ton; coal oil sixty cents a gallon. We use a ton of coal every twenty-four hours and five gallons of oil every night. It was a novel sight to see the newsboys running here and there through the willows, climbing up the steep sides of the gulch to the tents and cabins crying “Morning Chronicle!” where the mountain lion and the grizzly bear had their homes but six months ago. The interesting feature in the first issue is a three-column account of Gambler Joe Simmons’ funeral. It tells how the gang stood at the grave and drank “To Joe’s soul over there—if there is any over there.”

Yours always,
Cy Warman.

IV.

Creede, Colo., March 28, 1892.

Dear Fitz:—Three days ago I wrote you that I had located Mr. Ketchum but failed to find the girl. Yesterday being Sunday, I went down to the hot springs at Wagon Wheel Gap to spend the day. At the hotel I met Mrs. McCleland, of Alamosa, and while we were conversing, a lady commenced to sing in the parlor. The soft notes that came from the piano mingled with a voice so full of soulful melody, that I stopped talking and listened. “Do you like music?” asked the good lady from the San Luis. “There is but one thing sweeter,” I said, “and that is poetry—the music of the soul. Take me in, won’t you?”

We entered so softly that the young woman at the piano failed to notice our coming, and sang on to the end of the piece.

“La Paloma!” How different from the strains I had heard during the past week, from the Umpah band in front of the Olympic Theater.

When she had finished, the singer turned, blushed, and rising, advanced toward my friend, holding out her hand; and I was surprised and pleased to hear Mrs. Mc. say: “Well, I want to know—are you here?”

The young lady acknowledged that she was, and went into a long explanation that she had concluded to stop at the springs until matters were in a little better shape at Creede.

“Where is Mr. ——, Mr. ——,” stammered Mrs. Mc.

“Oh, he’s in Creede,” said the young lady, as she shot a glance at me which was followed by a becoming blush. “He is so busy at the mines; they work a great many men, you know.”

All this time I had been looking over Mrs. McCleland’s shoulder into an exceedingly bright and interesting face.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the good lady, “this is Mr. Warman, Miss Parsons.”

I don’t know for the life of me, whether I said “Howdy,” or “Good-by,” I was dazed. I had forgotten the while I looked into that beautiful face, that such a person lived as Polly Parsons, and when it came to me all at once like the firing of a blast, it took the wind out of my sails and left me helpless in mid-ocean.

“Where did you meet Miss Parsons?” I asked, when the young lady had left the room.

“At Alamosa, some two weeks ago, she stopped at our hotel, and I didn’t like the looks of the man she was with; so I asked her to sleep in a spare room just off from my own.

“I heard him trying to persuade her to go to Creede with him the next day, but could not understand what her argument was, except that she would not go to Creede until there was something for her to do.”

“Who was this man?” I asked.

“His name is Ketchum; he is connected with the Sure Thing Mining Company.”

“At last!” I said with a sigh that was really a relief to me.

After luncheon, I gave the letter you sent, to Miss Parsons, and I watched her face while she read it.

Of one of two things I am convinced; either she loves you and was glad to see that letter, or she hates you and will do as much for me. That is as near as you can guess a pretty woman.

“If there’s anything I can do for you, Miss Parsons—” “O, I am quite capable of getting along alone,” she said. “I thank you, of course, but there is nothing; I am promised a good position in Mr. Ketchum’s office as soon as they get things in shape. I have some ready money with me, enough to pay my expenses at the hotel.”

“You will not find so pleasant a hotel in Creede as this, Miss Parsons. The Pattons are nice people, and it would be better, I think, for you to remain here until a position is open for you,” I ventured by way of advice.

“Mr. Ketchum has engaged a room for me over the Albany Restaurant,” she said, “and he is to call here for me to-morrow.”

“But, Miss Parsons,” said I, “do you know what sort of a place that is?”

“I know, sir, that Mr. Ketchum would not take me to an improper place,” and she gave her head a twist that told me that my advice was not wanted.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Parsons,” said I, by way of explanation; “I was thinking of the Albany Theater building; the restaurant may be all right. But I was thinking only of your welfare.”

“Thank you,” she said, but she meant “Don’t trouble yourself.”

“Good-by, Miss Parsons,” I said, extending my hand. “Hope I may have the pleasure of meeting you in Creede.”

“I go to Creede to-morrow,” she said as she gave me a warm, plump hand and said “Good-by.”

Fitz, forgive me for being so slow; but you forgot to tell me how beautiful she was; the Poet of the Kansas City Star would say: “Her carriage, face and figure are perfection; and her smile is a shimmer-tangled day-dream, as she drifts adown the aisle.” Such eyes! like miniature seas, set about with weeping willows, and hair like ripening grain, with the sunlight sifting through it.

Good-by,
Cy Warman.

V.

Grand Pacific Hotel,
Chicago, April 8.

Dear Cy:—Your two letters of the 25th and 28th ult., forwarded from Denver, were received here only this morning on my return from Milwaukee, where I have been for the past week negotiating the sale of that Eagle Gulch mining property, in which I am interested. I think it will be a go, and if so, I shall be heeled—otherwise busted.

It was very good of you, old boy, to take so much trouble to look Miss Parsons up and to “locate” that scamp Ketchum. I shall not be anxious, now that I know you will keep an eye on her. But you are clear off, Cy, as to her loving or hating me.

No doubt she likes me a little bit, for I have long been a friend of the family; and they were always kind to me when they were rich, and I have carried pretty Polly around in my arms when she was a baby. I knew her father back in Virginia before they were married.

Pretty? I should think she is pretty. That is why I felt so particularly anxious about her going to Creede. If she had been a ewe-necked old scrub of a typewriter, with a peaked nose and a pair of gooseberry eyes in her head, do you fancy I could have been solicitous about her not being able to take care of herself or have dreamt of interesting you in her?

Cyrus, my princely buck, if there was any “peculiar light” in pretty Polly’s eyes, it was admiration for your manly figure. You are too modest to ever do yourself justice.

I am glad you found Ketchum and the Sure Thing Mining Company. I had to laugh at the mystery you make of that back room into which you were not permitted to peep. No doubt he was working some pilgrim in there to whom he expected to sell stock, and did not want to be interrupted.

I met a broker the other day who knew him well here. He is a scamp, as I thought; but not exactly the kind of scamp I thought. He has had a career on the Exchange here and was once a heavy operator and made big money, but his reputation was never first-class and it has become decidedly odorous of late years through his connection with snide stock schemes of one kind and another. But he has kept out of jail and isn’t a person a man can exactly refuse to speak to.

He worked a Napoleonic confidence deal in grain here, some five or six years back, and came within an ace of cleaning up a million or more on it; but the fraud was discovered and the bubble exploded, leaving him beggared both in fortune and reputation. He had tangled a lot of respectable operators up in the scheme, so that it did not look so very bad for him personally, and he escaped prosecution. Since then he has figured as a promoter, keeping himself in the shade.

Parsons, Polly’s father, was the man who discovered and defeated his fraud; and the story goes here, that in revenge, he set the trap into which Parsons fell and lost all except his honor. Parsons has a good name here still, I find, among the brokers, because he made an honest settlement, although it left him penniless and broken-spirited. It is strange that he hasn’t come to see me. I tried to find him when I first came; but he was always somewhere else, and when I went to Milwaukee, I left a note for him, but have heard nothing. I shall try to see him before I leave.

I find Ketchum has a wife and some children here, and that he doesn’t figure as a Lothario at all as I suspected. On the contrary, he is quite a model in his domestic relations—takes his family to church and all that, and is a shining light in the Sunday-school and the Y. M. C. A. So I fancy our pretty Polly is in no great danger from him. It is singular though, why he should have engaged the daughter of a man whom he must hate, as his confidential clerk—and at such a preposterous salary, too. It is suspicious; but after all, it may be a freak of kindness, finding the man whose ruin he has planned so destitute. It is just as safe to take the charitable view as any, even of a scamp. Human motives are always mixed.

I cannot say when I will be at home; but write often, directing to Denver, and keep a brotherly eye on our pretty Polly.

Yours,
Fitz-Mac.

VI.

Grand Pacific Hotel,
Chicago, April 9, 9 o’clock P. M.

Dear Warman:—I must write in great haste, for in an hour I leave for New York. It is quite unexpected. I expect the Milwaukee party here in a quarter of an hour to go with me.

In all probability I shall not be back to Denver before the first of May, if then,—for, being in New York, I shall probably stop and attend to some other matters.

I wrote you last night, and now I want to correct the impressions of that letter.

When does one ever hear the last word of a bad story. That fellow Ketchum is even more of an all-round scoundrel than I thought. I have heard a lot about him to-day; ran upon a man who was his head book-keeper and confidential man here in his heyday, and whom he robbed, as he has everybody else who has had anything to do with him. I was out looking up Parsons among the brokers’ offices. He has been a sort of fly-about these last years, into this, that, and every little pitiful scheme, to turn a dollar, and having a desk always in the office of the latest man he could interest in his projects, so he is about as hard to find as the proverbial needle in the hay-mow.

Nobody is specially interested in keeping track of him, now that he is down.

Well, in my hunt, I ran upon a Mr. Filmore who told me where he boards—a cheap and shabby place, poor fellow. He was not there; hasn’t been for two weeks or more. Landlady surmised he had gone to join his family somewhere out West—in California, she guessed—didn’t know when he would be back; didn’t know that he would ever be back. Oh, yes, she supposed he would be back some time,—no, he hadn’t left any address to have his mail forwarded. The purveyor of hash supposed Mr. Parsons received his mail at his office—he certainly did not receive any there. Was I a detective? Had Mr. Parsons been getting into trouble? Oh, Cy, the misery of being very poor after having been very rich! The Lord deliver me from it! Poor Parsons, one of the finest and proudest of gentlemen, to be spoken of in such a tenor at the street door of a cheap boarding-house!

Is it any wonder his brave, good little girl is frantic to do something to help him onto his feet again and out of such an atmosphere?

He may be in Colorado; and if he is, you may be called upon to record the sudden death of that scamp Ketchum, any day.

I returned to Mr. Filmore’s office to leave a note with him for Parsons, and he told me all about K. The fellow is a thorough scamp and all his faults are aggravated by his smooth and oily hypocrisy. It is true he has a family here, as I mentioned yesterday, and that he maintains them in a show of comfort and respectability; but his wife is a broken-hearted, dispirited creature, whom he married at the muzzle of a frantic father’s gun. He drags her to church to keep up appearances; but that is all the respect or civility he shows her. When he was rich here, he kept a blonde angel of the demi-monde in swell style, with her carriage and all that, while his wife was left to stump around on foot, with an occasional excursion in company with the hired girl and the baby on the street-cars of a Sunday afternoon. Filmore says the wretch has ruined four or five poor girls in succession, who came to work in his office, and started them out on a sea of sin.

I hope Parsons has gone to Colorado, so that he may know just where his daughter is. I intended to give him my opinion of the matter very plainly, if I had found him.

You must keep a kindly eye on the poor child, Cy, and help her if you can. Roast that scoundrel and show up his rotten record and his swindling scheme, if he gives you half a chance to open on him. Jump him anyway, and don’t wait for a special provocation.

Filmore’s address—Stanley R. Filmore—is room 199 Marine Building, Chicago, and he will willingly supply you with facts enough from the man’s nefarious record to drive him out of Colorado with his swindling mining schemes. It ought to be done—of course only if the mine is a fake—for that sort of scamps and swindlers are the ones who are bringing mining propositions into disrepute in the East and making it almost impossible to raise money for legitimate enterprises. But I must close. Can you read this wild scrawl?

Yours,
Fitz-Mac.

VII.

Creede, Colo., April 13, ’93.

Dear Fitz:—Your letter of the 9th, in which you hasten to undo what you did for Ketchum in the preceding letter, if it had no other purpose, was unnecessary. You can never make me believe that a man who eats mashed potatoes with a knife, dips his soup toward him and lets his trousers trail in the mud, has been brought up in respectable society. If anything more was needed to convince me that Ketchum was a shark, it was supplied by him when he told Wygant that he regarded “advertising as unprofessional and unnecessary.” The newspapers, he said, did more harm than good. Now, when you hear a man talk that way, you can gamble that he is working the shells and that his game won’t stand airing.

In speaking of the embarrassment of becoming very poor after having been very rich, you amuse me, by praying to be delivered from that awful condition. Rest easy, my good fellow. If you follow your chosen path, that of mixing literature with mining, you will doubtless be independently poor the balance of your days.

Well, Miss Parsons is here. She is boarding at the Albany. The Albany is all right. It is the best place in the gulch; but, of course, you never know who is going to occupy the next seat. Last night, at dinner, the Rev. Tom Uzzell, the city editor and Soapy sat at one table; a murderer, a gambler, a hand-painted skirt-dancer and a Catholic priest held another, while Miss Parsons, Billy Woods, the prize-fighter, English Harry and I, ate wild duck at a large table near the stove. I introduced Harry, who is an estimable young man, belonging to one of the best families in Denver, with the hope that Miss Parsons might have an opportunity to see the difference between a real gentleman and that social leper, Ketchum. After dinner I told Harry that I wanted him to make love to Miss Parsons.

“But, I don’t love her,” says he.

“No matter,” says I.

“It’s wicked,” says he.

“It’s right,” says I. “It will save her from a life of misery.”

“What’s the matter with you?” says he. “If it’s the proper thing to make love to a sweet young woman whom you don’t love, why don’t you do it?”

I told him that I was too busy—that I hadn’t any love that I was not using—that I had done my share in that line. Still he was serious; but finally promised to be a near relative, if he could not love her.

I think I shall open an agency for the protection of unprotected girls. I had luncheon at Upper Creede yesterday, and was shocked when Inez Boyd came in with fresh drug-store hair. Fitz, she is not so beautiful as Miss Parsons; but she is in greater danger, because she is not so strong, and has not had the advantage of early training as Miss Parsons has.

“Jimmie,” said I to the little devil this morning, “I want you to take a bundle of papers; go up the gulch until you come to the office of the Sure Thing Mining Company; go in and try to sell a paper. You may take an hour each day for this and loaf as long as you care to in the office, unless they kick you out.”

“Sure thing they’ll do that,” said Jimmie.

“Stop! Keep an eye on Mr. Ketchum, and tell me how many people are working in the office.”

Two hours later Jimmie came in with his pockets filled with silver. “Sold all my papers,” said he, as he fell over the coal scuttle. “Ketchum bought ’em all to get rid of me. Guess he wanted to talk to that girl he had in the office. Say, she’s a bute. Must got ’er in Denver; they don’t grow like that in dis gulch. They was a scrappin’ like married people when I went in, and he wanted to throw me out. Not on your life, I told him; I’m the devil on the Chronicle and dat gang’ll burn you up if ye monkey wid me.”

“What were they quarreling about, Jimmie?”

“O, ’bout where she was to room, an’ he told her she could sleep in de private office; an’ you ort to see her then! Mama! but she did lock up his forms for him in short order. Then she said she’d go home; but she’d like to see the mine ’fore she worked fur stock. She’s no chump. Say, he aint got no mine.”

“You think not, Jimmie?” I said to encourage him.

“Naw. I went over to the Candle office and Lute Johnson’s goin’ to cremate ’em nex’ issue.”

I learned to-day that Ketchum had been accepting money from tenderfeet, promising to issue stock, as soon as the stock-books can be printed. I learn also that the Sure Thing Mining Company has no legal existence; that the Sure Thing claim belongs to Ketchum personally.

The camp continues to produce sorrow and silver at the regular ratio of sixteen to one. Old Hank Phelan, of St. Joe, died on the sidewalk in front of the Orleans Club last night. I showed my ignorance by asking a gang who stood round the dead man, at the coroner’s inquest, who the distinguished dead might be.

“Say, pardner,” said one of the sporty boys, “I reckon you don’t ever look in a paper. Don’t know Hank Phelan, as licked big Ed. Brown, terror of Oklahoma?” And they all went inside and left me to grope my way out of the dense ignorance that had settled about me.

Bob Ford and Joe Palmer, with a pair of forty-five’s, closed all the business houses and put the camp to bed at 9:30, one night last week. In an excited effort to escape, the New York Sun man and the city editor broke into the dormitory of the Hotel Beebee, where the help slept, and two of the table girls who had been protecting against them, jumped out of a window into the river.

A man was killed by a woman in Upper Creede the other night.

The City Marshal, Captain Light, concluded that Red McCann was a menace to good government and so removed him. His funeral, which occurred last Sunday, was well attended. There was some talk next day by McCann’s friends. They even went so far as to hold an inquest; but Cap was well connected, being a brother-in-law to Sapolio, and he was spirited away.

The Chronicle is not on a paying basis yet. The twelve hundred dollars has disappeared; and I have transferred my personal savings here to pay the printers. The schedule is the same and I am working for nothing. We have had a strike. Yesterday was a pay day and Freckled Jimmie, the devil, went out at 6 P. M. Jimmie had been with us through all these days of doubt and danger, and when he failed to show up this morning, I confess to a feeling of loneliness. Another boy dropped in to take Jimmie’s place; but he was not freckled and I doubted him. About 10 the new boy went to the post-office. He never came back. I remarked that it was not becoming in the editor of a great daily to sit and pine for a boy; and yet, I could not shake off that feeling of neglect that came to me in the early morning and stayed all day. We expected the devil to call upon us, looking to a compromise; but he failed to call. Along in the P. M.-ness, we sent a committee to wait upon Jimmie and ask him to visit the office. He came in, chewing a willow bough.

“Well, Jimmie,” I began, “How would it suit you to come back to work at a raise of a dollar a week?”

“Well,” said the striker, “I don’t kere ef I do or not; but ef you’ll let it lap back, over last week, I’ll go you. But mind, you don’t call me ‘Freck’ no more. My name’s Jimmie from now on, see?” Jimmie is working.

Hope I may be able to give you some good news in my next.

So-long,
Cy Warman.

VIII.
TELEGRAM.

New York, April 13, 1892.

The young person’s paternal is here and in great luck again. He will wire funds to-day in your care, to make sure of not falling into wrong hands. Deliver message to person yourself, to avoid mistake. Look sharp. Letter by first mail explains all. Address Hoffman House.

Fitz-Mac.

IX.

Hoffman House,
New York, April 13.

Dear Warman:—The most surprising thing in life is the number of surprises one encounters. Whom should I meet at breakfast here this morning, but Tom Parsons—no longer the broken and rejected man I have pictured to you, but flushed with success and swimming on top of Hope’s effulgent tide.

Some New York brokers who had known him in better days and who had confidence in his sagacity and nerve desiring to inaugurate a big grain deal in Chicago, sent for him to come and steer the game. He was as cool to their propositions as if he had had a million to put in, and demanded a good percentage of the profits. They agreed to his terms. He has stood behind the curtain here for three weeks, and in the name of a dealer here not supposed to be strong, has engineered the corner and led the Chicago fellows into the net. There was a great deal of money up, and the weak firm which the Chicago operators expected to cinch proved to be only a stool-pigeon, for a very strong syndicate.

They settled yesterday, and Tom’s share of the profits is a little over a hundred thousand. What a freak of fortune! Though outwardly perfectly cool, I could see that Parsons is deeply affected by this turn of the tide, which puts him on his feet again. It is nothing but gambling after all, and his mind is flushed and warped by the sudden success. He is full of great projects to capture millions again. No doubt the success of this deal gives him a big pull here, and he is such a bold and experienced operator that no one can say what may not happen. But this insatiate passion for high and reckless play has injured him, mentally and morally. He confessed to me after we went to his room, that he had not once thought of his family during the three weeks he has been here,—that is, not of their condition and their needs. Think of that, in the most tender of husbands, the most careful of fathers! I put his daughter’s position at him flat-footed; but it didn’t alarm him a bit. “I’ll trust that girl,” he said, “to take care of herself anywhere on top of earth or in the mines under the earth.”

“Would you trust her to work, live and lodge in the slums of Chicago or down here about Five Points in New York? Would you want to expose her to such an existence? Especially if she was likely to encounter in these places a few refined men of reckless habits, who would be sure to misunderstand her position and whose very sympathy would be her greatest danger? Well, that’s what Creede is, Tom,” said I, “if you just add the physical exposure of a mountain climate in a camp where the best house is no better than a shanty built of wet, unseasoned lumber.”

He promised me he would telegraph money to her to-day and advise her to go to her mother. He laughed at my fears about Ketchum’s designs, and said he would trust his girl against a dozen Ketchums; but he was not insensible to the danger that the scamp might bring scandal on her, and I worked him on that line till he promised to go right away and telegraph money to her. I gave him your address and he will send in your care, to prevent the possibility of his message falling into K’s hands. That is why I have just wired you. I can realize that, even in Creede, it will compromise the girl to have any connection with that Sure Thing outfit, and expose her character to suspicion. Before this reaches you, no doubt, she will have gone home, and I shall have no further occasion to write you about her; but still, if you have an idle hour, you may write me here and tell me how Ketchum is working his game. While I have no further anxiety about Miss P., I confess to a curiosity to know if the anxiety I did have was well grounded.

How are you getting on with the paper? Every one wants to hear about Creede here, and I believe you could get up a big subscription list in Wall street if you had a canvasser in the field. Everybody has the most exaggerated notions of the extent and richness of the camp, and the newspaper people are as wild as the rest. They have the most childish notions—I mean the common run of men only, of course—as to the condition of silver mining. Their idea of a bonanza is a place where pure silver is quarried out like building stone. You couldn’t possibly tell them any fake story of the richness of mines they wouldn’t believe. In fact, you can make them believe anything else easier than the truth. This fact hurts our business dreadfully, too, in the East and creates a prejudice against the use of silver as money. It also helps the mining sharps who are working frauds. I shall have a curiosity to see how you roast that snide scheme of Ketchum & Co. Don’t fail to send me the paper.

You may address me here for two weeks.

Affectionately yours,
Fitz-Mac.

X.

Creede, Colo., April 20, ’92.

Dear Fitz:—Yes, the surprises in this life are surprising. We opened a couple of surprise packages here last night.

I was surprised the other day when Miss P. came into the office and asked my advice. Until lately she has endeavored to avoid me.

I think Harry has been watering my stock with the lady, and I am pleased to note that these young people occupy a table at the Albany that seats two. Last Sunday, I drifted into the tent where they hold sacred services; it is called the Tabernacle. Miss Parsons was performing on a little cottage organ, while Harry stood near her and sang, “There’s a Land that is Fairer than Day.”

Ah, yes, in the sweet by-and-by! Is there anything that holds so much for the trusting soul? In the sun-kissed over-yonder, there is rest for the weary. Always full and running over, there is no false bottom in the sweet by-and-by.

Hope springs eternal
In the human breast,
Faith to push the button—
God will do the rest.

I have begun to hope that Harry will love Miss Parsons. What he has done for her already has had a good effect. His society is better for her, just as the sunshine is better for the flowers than the atmosphere of a damp, dark cellar, where lizards creep o’er the sweating stones.

Plenty of fellows here would love her, but for their own amusement. Not so with Harry. He is as serious as though he were in reality an Englishman. Yesterday the young lady was very much worried over a note she had received, and she showed it to me. It ended thus:

Go, leave me in my misery,
And when thou art alone,
God grant that thou may’st pine for me,
As I for thee have pone.

It was signed “Harry,” and that’s what hurt her heart. I told her it was Tabor’s writing; that his first name was Harry, and she was glad.

As I write this, I look across the street to the barber-shop where Inez Boyd is having her hair cut short. Ye Gods! faded and then amputated! So will be her pure young life. Already the frost of sin has settled around her soul. Youth’s bloom has been blighted; her cheeks are hollow; her eyes have a vacant, far-away look. Her mind, mayhap, goes back to her happy home in Denver, where she used to kneel at night and say, “Now I lay me.”

She has left her place at the restaurant, and with her partner, that “break away” creature with the yellow hair, is living in a cottage, taking their meals at the Albany.

I must tell you now what Miss Parsons wanted advice about. She had very little to do in the office, and if she would act as cashier in the restaurant at meal time, two hours morning, noon and night, Mr. Sears would allow her ten dollars a week, and her board, or twenty dollars a week, in all. From 9 to 11, and 2 to 4, she could attend to Mr. Ketchum’s correspondence. There was still another job open. They wanted an operator across the street at the Western Union from 8 P. M. until 12, when the regular night man came on to take the Chronicle press report. If she could take that, it would make her cash income twenty dollars above her board.

I asked her what she intended to do from midnight till morning. She smiled, good-naturedly, and said she thought she would have to sleep some, otherwise she would have asked for a job, folding papers.

I told her that it was all very proper if she could stand the long hours. She said she could always get an hour’s sleep after her midday meal, and in that way she would be able to hold it down for a while. I ventured to ask why she failed to reckon her “Sure Thing” salary when counting her cash income. “Oh,” she had forgotten. “Mr. Ketchum told her she would have to take her pay in stock.” I did not tell her how worthless that stock was, but I determined to have Mr. Ketchum attended to.

Yesterday a quiet caucus was held in the rear of Banigan’s saloon, at which a committee of seven was appointed to wait upon Mr. Ketchum and inquire into the affairs of the Sure Thing Mining and Milling Company, the statement having been made in the morning Chronicle that the company had no legal existence.

Here come the surprises. In accordance with the arrangements made by the caucus at Banigan’s, the committee called last night at the office of the Sure Thing Mining Company and asked for Mr. Ketchum. That gentleman showed how little he knew of camp life, by ordering them from the room. The spokesman told him to sit down and be quiet. He would not be commanded to sit down in his own house, he said, as he jumped upon a table and began to orate on the freedom of America. At that moment one of the party, who is called “Mex” because he came from New Mexico, shied a rope across the room. It hovered around near the canvas ceiling for a second, then settled around the neck of the orator. “Come off the perch,” said Mex, as he gave the rope a pull and yanked the speculator from the table.

That did the business. After that the operator only begged that his life be spared.

“Now sir,” said the leader, “you will oblige us by answering every question put to you. If you tell the truth you may come out all right, if you lie you will be taking chances.”

“We are the executive committee of the Gamblers’ Protective Association and we are here to investigate your game. We recognize the right of the dealer to a liberal percentage, but we are opposed to sure thing men and sandbaggers.”

“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated under the laws of Colorado?”

“Well—it’s—un—”

“Stop sir,” said the leader. “These questions will be put to you so that you can answer yes or no. I will say further that the committee will know when you tell the truth, so there’s a hunch for you an’ you better play it, see?”

“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated?”

“No.”

“Is it true that you have taken money on account of stock to be issued?”

“Well,—I have.”

“Stop!”

“Yes sir, it is true.”

“Have you paid your stenographer?”

“Yes sir.”

“What in?”

“Stock.”

“How many claims do you own and what are they called, where located?”

“One—Sure Thing. Bachelor Mountain.”

“Shipped any ore?”

“No.”

“Any in sight?”

“No.”

“Ever have any assay?”

“No.”

“That’ll do.”

“Gentlemen,” said the leader, “You have heard the questions and answers, all in favor of hangin’ this fellow say ‘aye.’”

“Contrary ‘no.’”

Three to three; the vote is a tie. I will vote with the ‘noes’ we will not hang him.

“All in favor of turning him loose at the lower end of the Bad Lands say ‘aye.’”

“Carried, unanimously.”

“Mr. Ketchum, I congratulate you.”

All this took place in Upper Creede, and about the time the committee were escorting Ketchum down through the gulch, Kadish Bula, the superintendent of the Bachelor, rushed into the Western Union office and handed a dispatch to Miss Parsons, asking her to rush it.

After sending the message, Miss Parsons came to my office where Harry and I were enjoying a quiet chat, in which the two young women in whom I have become so interested, played an important part.

“I beg your pardon,” she said with a pretty blush when she opened the door. “I thought you were alone.”

Harry was about to leave when she asked him to remain.

With a graceful little jump she landed on the desk in front of me, and looking me straight in the face she said:

“I want to ask you a few questions and I want you to answer me truthfully.”

“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company any good?”

“No,” said I, and she never flinched.

“Is Ketchum’s location of the Sure Thing claim a valid one?”

“That I cannot answer, for I don’t know,” said I.

“Do you think Mr. Bula of the Bachelor would know?” was her next question.

We both agreed that he ought to be excellent authority on locations in general, and especially good in this case, as theirs was an adjoining property.

“How, and when, can a claim be relocated?” she asked with a steady look in my face.

I asked her to wait a moment, and I called Mr. Vaughan. I go to him for everything that I fail to find in the dictionary.

In a very few moments the expert explained to the young lady that a claim located in ’90 upon which no assessment work was done in ’91, was open for relocation in ’92.

That was exactly what she wanted to know, she said, as she shot out of the door and across the street to the telegraph office.

Before we had time to ask each other what she meant, a half dozen citizens walked through the open door.

“We have just returned from Wason, where we went with Ketchum,” said the leader.

“His game is dead crooked, and we told him to duck, and we want to ask about his typewriter, an’ see ’f she’s got any dough.”

I explained that Miss Parsons was across the street, working in the telegraph office.

“Miss Parsons,” said the leader as he entered the office, “we have just escorted your employer out of camp, and I reckon we put you out of a job; we want to square ourselves with you.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, glad to know that they hadn’t hanged the poor devil. “I am working half time at the restaurant and until midnight here.”

Without saying a word, the leader held out his hand to one of the men who dropped a yellow coin into it, another did the same, and before she knew what it meant, the spokesman stacked seven tens upon her table, said good-night, and they left the room.

“Will you work for me for an hour or so,” said the girl as the night man entered the office. Of course he would, but he was disappointed. His life in the camp had been a lonely one till this beautiful woman came to work in the office. He had dropped in two hours ahead of time just to live in the sunshine of her presence.

“There’s a tip for you,” she said as she flipped the top ten from the stack of yellows in front of the operator, dropped the other six into her hand-bag and jumped out into the night.

“Here I am again,” she laughed as she opened my door. “I want you to put that in your safe till morning;” and she planked sixty dollars in gold, down on my desk.

“Bless you, Miss Parsons,” said I, “we don’t keep such a thing. We always owe the other fellow, but I’ll give it to Vaughan, he doesn’t drink.”

“I want you and Harry to go with me,” she said, “and ask no questions. Put on your overcoats, there are three good horses waiting at the door.”

In thirty minutes from that time, our horses were toiling up the Last Chance trail, and in an hour, we stood on the summit of Bachelor, eleven thousand feet above the sea.

The scene was wondrously beautiful. Below, adown the steep mountain-side, lay the long, dark trail leading to the gulch where the arc lights gleamed on the trachyte cliffs. Around a bend, in the valley, came a silvery stream—the broad and beautiful Rio Grande, its crystal ripples gleaming in the soft light of a midnight moon. Away to the east, above, beyond the smaller mountains, the marble crest of the Sangre de Christo stood up above the world.

Turning from this wondrous picture I saw the horses with their riders just entering a narrow trail that lay through an aspen grove in the direction of the Bachelor mine. Harry had secured a board from the Bachelor shaft-house and was driving a stake on the Sure Thing claim when I arrived.

“So this is what you are up to Miss Parsons,” said I, taking in the situation at a glance.

“Yes, sir,” she said, “I have written my name on that stake and I propose to put men to work to-morrow.”

It was just midnight when we reached the telegraph office, and Miss Parsons showed us the telegram which Mr. Bula had sent: it read:

“John Herrick,
Denver Club, Denver:

Got Amethyst vein. Sure Thing can be bought for one thousand, or can relocate and fight them; belongs to Ketchum. Answer.”

“Well,” said Harry, “you’re all right.”

“Now,” said Miss Parsons, “I want to find Mr. Ketchum and give him a check for one thousand and get a bill of sale or something to show.”

We explained that Ketchum was at that time walking in the direction of Wagon Wheel Gap. Further, that unless she had that amount of money in the bank, she would be doing a serious thing to give a check.

“Ah, but I have,” she said with a smile, as she pulled a bank-book from her desk. “My father wired a thousand dollars to the Miners’ and Merchants’ Bank for me a few days ago; the telegram notifying me it was there, came in your care, and I must apologize for not having told you sooner, but I was afraid you might ask me to give up my place, if you learned how rich I was.”

“You are all right, Miss Parsons,” said I, “and I congratulate you—but there is no excuse for you wanting to give that scamp a thousand dollars.”

“Then I must ask another favor of you,” she said. “I want ten men to go to work on the Sure Thing to-morrow.”

At my request, Harry promised to have the men at work by nine o’clock, and as I write this I can hear the blasts and see the white smoke puffing from the Sure Thing claim. Just now I see Harry and the “Silver Queen” coming down the trail. They are riding this way; Harry is holding a piece of rock in his left hand; they are talking about it, and they both look very happy. Aye, verily, the surprises are surprising; hope springs eternal.

Good-by,
Cy Warman.

XI.

Hoffman House,
New York, April 27, ’92.

My Dear Cy:—Your last letter is a daisy. I read it with all the interest of a novel.

What a magic camp Creede must be, after all! It was manly in those vigilantes who hustled Ketchum out of camp so unceremoniously to treat our little friend, Polly, to so generously and so delicately—but it is characteristic of the West.

She is a courageous and capable girl isn’t she?—her quickness of wit in jumping that Sure Thing claim shows it.

I’m glad you like her, and I knew you would, if you got to know the quick and courageous spirit that is in her. She didn’t waste a day crying over spilt milk when her pap busted and all the ease and luxuries and adulations that surround a rich man’s daughter vanished from about her like dew before the sun, but just jumped in and went to learning how to earn her own living and help take care of the family.

Wouldn’t it be romantic, though, if that mine should really prove a bonanza!—I declare I get excited thinking about it. I suppose there is actually a chance that it may, since it is on the same vein—or is supposed to be—as the Amethyst mine. Wouldn’t that be too good! How lucky that she happened to be in the telegraph office when that dispatch was sent! And oh, say, you and Harry, ain’t you the dandy span to have such a pretty girl as Polly in your care—and put there by yours confidingly, don’t forget. No, don’t you dare forget, for you would never have known Polly but for me, and Harry wouldn’t have got acquainted with her probably, but for you. It is lucky I happened to know your heart was already anchored, or I should never have introduced you.

So Harry refused to fall in love with her, did he, when you issued your orders? Well, I’ll bet you a horse and buggy he will fall in love with her before he is a month older, unless he is in love with some other girl, for Polly is one of the most interesting girls I have ever seen.

I don’t know Harry very well, but my impressions are, he is an unusually nice fellow. If he is only half as manly and smart as he looks, I shall put in the good word for him with Polly.

I can see from what you write, she likes him already—and likes you also, or she would never treat you both with such confidence. But she will lead Harry a dance before ever he captures her—you bet she will—for she has a touch of the coquette in her nature in spite, also, of the warmest and most loyal of hearts.

I hope he will fall in love with her; it will do him good, even if nothing comes of it. A fellow whose nature is not morbid, is never any the worse off for loving a good little girl like Polly, even if she do not reciprocate. It may cost him some pain, but he will live it through, and no man’s nature ever expands to its full capacity till the fever of an honest passion gets into his blood—but you know how that is yourself, Cy.

I knew about her jumping the mine before your letter came—the bare fact only—for I have met Parsons here every day and he showed me a cipher dispatch from her telling him. It seems she knew his old cipher and used it. He translated it to me in the greatest admiration of her pluck and quickness. Probably she never would have done it if she hadn’t had you two fellows to stand by her. Bully boys! I know you are behaving all right, or she wouldn’t trust you.

You may tell Harry all I have told you about the dreadful straits in which her family have been, so that he will perfectly understand how she came to go down to Creede. I wouldn’t have him think cheaply of her for anything, for I have got it all fixed in my mind that he is to fall head over heels in love with her. I do not believe she has had a serious thought of any other fellow, for, though as a young Miss she was quite a favorite in Chicago, it is not likely she formed any serious attachments—any attachment that would stand the strain of poverty such as the Parsons have gone through in the last three years. Since she and her mother have been in Denver, I know they have refused to make acquaintances and have kept proudly to themselves. So I venture to guess the field is clear for Harry if he is lucky enough to interest her, and you are fairly safe in speaking the encouraging word to him. As I have said, it will do him good to get the fever in his blood, even if he should fail.

Like her father, Polly is very swift and decisive in her judgments of people, and very self-reliant. The girl has always been in love with her father, and Tom has always treated her more like a lover than a father. He is awfully proud of her, and he brags about her to me every time we meet. But he is anxious, nevertheless, about her being in that camp, and he is leaving to-night to join her, and I fancy he will bring her away. You may know how anxious he feels in spite of all his brag about her pluck and smartness and her ability to take care of herself, when he abandons the irons he has in the fire here, to go out and look after her. He admires the business spirit in her and upholds it, but still he is afraid that fighting her own way in such a rough place will make her coarse and unlovely.

Tell Harry to put his best foot forward and make his best impression on the old man, if you find him caring seriously for Polly, for she is likely to go a good deal according to her father’s fancy in the matter of a sweetheart. If he gets the old man’s heart, the battle for Polly is more than half won—that is, if she already likes him a little bit, which I am pretty sure from what you write she does. Of course, you will manage to let the old man know what a respectful admiration both you and Harry have had for Polly, and how, being very busy, you have rather left it to your friend, Mr. English, a young gentleman of good judgment and responsible character and all that, to keep an eye on her interests and make himself serviceable in case she needed counsel, etc., etc.

But above all, make him think—both you and Harry—that his girl hasn’t really needed the protection of either of you, but has paddled her own canoe like a veteran. That will please him more than anything else, and it would irritate his pride a little to think you had been necessary to her.

You will get this probably before he arrives, for he will stop half a day in Denver to see his wife and boy; so be on your good behavior, both of you, and don’t shock him.

What you tell me about that poor girl from Denver—Inez, is that her name?—is distressing. Her first bleaching her hair and then cutting it off, shows plainly enough the course her young footsteps are taking. That sharp-faced, wiry little blonde she chums with has no doubt led her into evil ways. There is no company so dangerous for a girl as a bad woman. Couldn’t you take her aside and give her a talking to, and advise her to go home to her family? Take her up to one of the dance-halls some night, and show her the beer-soaked, painted hags that haunt these places to pick up the means of a wretched and precarious existence, and let her know that is where she will bring up, if she keeps on. But I suppose she is past talking to—past turning back.

Write me the latest news about Polly’s mine and how it is turning out, and how Harry and Polly are making it. I am deeply interested.

Yours,
Fitz-Mac.

XII.

Creede, Colo., May 9, 1892.

Dear Fitz:—I have to tell you a sad story now.

Last Saturday I went to Denver, and as I entered the train at this place, I noticed some men bringing an invalid into the car. One of the men asked the porter to look after the sick girl in “lower two,” and I gathered from that that she was alone. I had section three, and as soon as the train pulled out I noticed that the sick person grew restless. We had been out less than thirty minutes when she began to roll and toss about, and talk as people do when sick with mountain fever.

When the Durango car, which was a buffet, was switched to our train at Alamosa, I went to the sick berth and asked the sufferer if she would like a cup of tea and some toast. She was very ill, but she seemed glad to have some one talk to her, and as she answered “yes,” almost in a whisper, she turned her poor, tired, tearful eyes to me, and with a little show of excitement that started her coughing, spoke my name. It was Inez Boyd. I should not have known her, but I had seen her after she had bleached her beautiful hair, and later when she was in the barber-shop. As the gold of sunset, that marked the end of a beautiful spring day, shone in through the car window, it fell upon her pale face, where a faint flush on her thin cheeks spoke of the fever within, and showed that the end of a life was near.

She took a swallow or two of the tea, looked at the toast and pushed it away. She had been ill for a week, she said, and had eaten nothing for two days. I did what little I could for her comfort, and when I went to say good-night, she held my hand; the tears, one after another, came from the deep, dark eyes, fell across the pale cheeks, and were lost in the ghastly yellow hair.

“Don’t think I weep because I am afraid of death,” she said. “I am so glad now, that I know that it’s all over, but I am sorry for mamma; it will kill her.”

I asked, and she gave me her address in Denver, and I promised to call.

When the train stopped at the gate of the beautiful city, she had called her home, some men came with an invalid chair, and when I saw them take her to a carriage I hurried on to my hotel.

That afternoon I called to ask after the girl. The windows were open, and I could see a few people standing about the room with bowed heads. Dr. O’Connor came down the little walk that lay from the door of a neat cottage to the street, and without recognizing me, closed the gate softly, turned his back to me and hurried away.

Inez Boyd was dead. God in His mercy, had called her away to save her from a life of sorrow, sin and shame, and He called her just in time.

In the “Two Voices,” Tennyson says:

“Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.”

I don’t believe it. There are times in life—in some lives, at least—when nothing is more desirable than death.

XIII.

Creede, Colo., May 13, 1892.

My Dear Fitz:—You ask me how the Chronicle is doing. It is doing better than the editor. I have been reducing expenses on every hand, but since the state land sale, the boom has collapsed, so that from one hundred dollars a week, we have got up to where we lose three hundred a week, with a good prospect for an increase. The responsibility has grown so great, that I begin to feel like a Kansas farm, struggling to bear up under a second mortgage.

I have been elected assistant superintendent of the Sunday-school, umpired a prize-fight, been time-keeper at a ball game, have been elected to the common council from the Bad Lands by an overwhelming vote, but I have received no salary as editor of the Chronicle.

Tabor has written another note, and perpetrated some more poetry:

“Among these rose-bejeweled hills
Where bloom the fairest flowers
Where the echo from the mines and mills
This little vale with music fills,
We spent life’s gladdest hours.

“And still within this limpid stream
Where sports the speckled trout,
Her mirrored face doth glow and gleam;
’Twas here I grappled love’s young dream—
And here my light went out.”

Isn’t that enough to drive a young woman to cigarettes? Some girls it might, but it will never disturb Polly Parsons.

If I did not know Harry as I do, I should say he was learning to love Miss Parsons very rapidly, now that she is rich, but I will not do him that injustice. He has loved her all along, but the prospect of losing her is what makes him restless now. Men who have lived as long as you and I have, know how hard it is to ride by the side of a beautiful woman over these grand mountains on a May morning, without making love to her;

When the restless hand of Nature
Reaches out to shift the scene,
And the brooks begin to warble in the dell;
When the waking fields are fluffy
And the meadow-lands are green,
And the tassels on the trees begin to swell.

Ah, these are times that try men’s hearts; but poor Harry, he is so timid; why I should have called her down a month ago, if I had his hand.

She is too honest to encourage him if she doesn’t really care for him, but she must, she can’t help it, he is almost an ideal young man. Maybe that is where he falls down; I’ve heard it said that a man who is too nice, is never popular with the ladies. Perhaps that is why you and I are pouring our own coffee to-day. Swinburne says—

“There is a bitterness in things too sweet.”

Polly’s father is here. He brought a Chicago capitalist with him, and the Sure Thing has been sold for sixty-one thousand dollars. I was sorry to learn of the sale, for it will take away from the camp one of the richest and rarest flowers that has ever adorned these hills.

Since the great fire, we have all moved to the Tortoni, on the border of the Bad Lands. The parlor is very small, and last night when Harry and the “Silver Queen,” as we call her now, were talking while I pretended to be reading a newspaper, I could not help hearing some of the things they said. Harry wanted her photograph, but she would not give it. She said she never gave her pictures to young men, under any circumstances. When she found a young man with whom she could trust her photo, she said she would give him the original. Harry said something very softly then; I did not hear what it was, but she said very plainly, very seriously, that she would let him know before she left.

“And you go to-morrow?” he asked, and it seemed to me that there were tears in his voice.

“Yes,” she said, with a sigh that hinted that she was not altogether glad to go. “Papa has bought the old place back again; we shall stop in Denver for mamma and my little brother, and then return to the dear old home where I have spent so many happy days—where I learned to lisp the prayers that I have never forgotten to say in this wicked camp; and I feel now that God has heard and answered me. It may seem almost wicked, but I am half sorry to leave this place; you have all been so kind to me; but it is best. Father will give you our address, and now, how soon may we expect you in Chicago?”

“How soon may I come?—next week—next year?”

“Not next year,” she said quickly; and although I was looking at my paper, I saw him raise her hand to his lips.

“And will you give me your photo then?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered, and I wanted to jump and yell, but I was afraid she might change her mind.

“I wish you would sing one song for me before you go,” said Harry, after they had been silent for some moments.

“What shall it be?”

“When other lips,” he answered.

“But there should be no other lips,” said the bright and charming woman.

“I know there should not, and I hope there may not, but sing it anyway and I will try to be strong and unafraid.”

As Miss Parsons went to the piano, I left the room, left them alone, and as I went out into the twilight, I heard the gentle notes as the light fingers wandered over the keys.

“When other lips and other hearts—”
Came drifting through the trees.
“In language whose excess imparts,”
Was borne upon the breeze.
Ah, hope is sweet and love is strong
And life’s a summer sea;
A woman’s soul is in her song;
“And you’ll remember me.”

Still rippling from her throbbing throat
With joy akin to pain,
There seemed a tear in every note,
A sob in every strain.
Soft as the twilight shadows creep
Across the listless lea,
The singer sang her love to sleep
With, “You’ll remember me.”

Truly yours,
Cy Warman.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

The two chapters labelled IV. here and here in The Silver Queen were published in the original publication that way.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- The Prospector and The Silver Queen

- THE PROSPECTOR.

- PREFACE.

- INTRODUCTORY.

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- CHAPTER VI.

- CHAPTER VII.

- CHAPTER VIII.

- CHAPTER IX.

- CHAPTER X.

- CHAPTER XI.

- CHAPTER XII.

- CHAPTER XIII.

- CHAPTER XIV.

- CHAPTER XV.

- CHAPTER XVI.

- CHAPTER XVII.

- CHAPTER XVIII.

- CHAPTER XIX.

- CHAPTER XX.

- CHAPTER XXI.

- THE RISE AND FALL OF CREEDE.

- CHAPTER XXII.

- THE SILVER QUEEN

- I.

- II.

- III.

- IV.

- IV.

- V.

- VI.

- VII.

- VIII. TELEGRAM.

- IX.

- X.

- XI.

- XII.

- XIII.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE