"Now-boys-I-shall-tell-you-to-get-set-and-then-fire-you-off. Any-man-breaking-off-his-mark-before-the-pistol-goes-back-ten-yards," clatters the starter, jumbling the words all together, according to the time-honored custom of starters. Jack is on the extreme edge of the track furthest from the pole. So when the command "Get set" comes, he crouches in the regulation sprint start, much to the astonishment of the Harvard milers, who are standing erect, as mile-runners usually start.
"Bang!" goes the pistol, and Jack springs from his mark as if beginning a hundred-yard dash. For nearly thirty yards he sprints, and rounds in ahead of the startled Harvard men, and secures the pole. A roar from the Yale men attests their appreciation of the neat manœuvre. But now the famed team-work of the Harvard men begins. With a tremendous spurt one of them comes up from the rear, passes Jack, and secures the pole just ahead, while at the same time another man tries to run up on the outside and complete the "pocket." But Jack avoids the attempt by suddenly swerving away from the pole. Immediately the other swerves out too, and Jack is forced to run yards wide of the pole.
He tries dropping back and trailing the others. But the two drop back with him, and continue their worrying tactics. How Jack longs for the faithful "Shorty" to protect him from threatened pockets. As it is now he must either run on the outside and cover yards more than the others, or take his chances at being cramped up in a pocket until the last lap. Neither of these alternatives is to be considered for a moment, for distance-runners learn by bitter experience that the amount of energy available for a race is a fixed quantity, and that the runner who diminishes it by the tiniest extra effort will fail in the stretch. Then it is that a plan flashes into Jack's head. Two of the Harvard runners he knows are only second-rate men. The other, plodding along placidly in the rear while his two pace-makers weaken his rival, is the Harvard record-holder, the great Cowles, and the only one of three that he need fear. And no one but a miler of the first rank can stand a fast first half-mile. So away goes Jack to the front, determined to make the first half under 2.10, which will drop all but Cowles, and take his chances of resting enough in the third quarter, undisturbed by any jockeying, to gain strength for the last sprint. For Jack's strong point is his sprinting, and a waiting race his best policy. So to the utter bewilderment of his friends, who know his methods, Jack suddenly dashes to the front, takes the pole away from the Harvard leader, and is off at a tremendous pace.
"Poor old Jack's lost his head," remarks Dickie, mournfully. "Mike's often told him never to set the pace. But, boys, how about a still small cheer?" And the energetic Richard leads his band of "Assorted Howlers," as he has appropriately christened his section of the bleachers, in a rattling, shattering "Brek-e-kek-kek" cheer that could have been heard clear to the deserted campus two miles away. Only Mike appreciates the true inwardness of Jack's action, for he has seen, with many misgivings, the trained team-work of the crimson-barred runners.
"Good boy! good boy!" he chuckles, slapping his knee ecstatically. "It's the only thing left to do. Jack runs with his head more than any man I've got."
One of the Harvard pace-makers essays his old trick, and tries to sprint up past Jack, but the latter is not to be passed this time, and the quartet swing past the first quarter-post at a tremendous gait.
"Sixty-one," shouts Mike, who has been holding his watch on the race, so as to announce the time of the different quarters to Jack.
The two Harvard pace-makers are unable to hold this gait, and as Jack begins the backstretch of the second quarter at the same pace, they begin to lag, and little by little drop back. Suddenly Cowles awakens to the fact that he must depend upon his own efforts for the rest of the race, and starts after Jack at a sprinting gait. Jack hears the rapid steps close behind him, and tries a little stratagem of his own, hardly hoping that it will succeed against a veteran runner like Cowles. By slow degrees he swings out from the pole until nearly a yard away, leaving a tempting gap. By the rules, any runner passing another on the inside may be disqualified for fouling if so he interferes with the runner ahead, for the leading runner has a right to the pole, and a runner taking the inside does so at his own risk. Cowles knows the rules well, but decides to take the chance and save the two or three yards that passing on the outside would take. But just as he is almost abreast of the crafty Jack, the latter swings back to the pole, and Cowles has to stop almost short to avoid a collision, which by the rules would be blamed to him, and while his stride is broken Jack gains nearly ten yards.
Now they are at the quarter-post again, and the first half-mile has been traversed in 2.08. Jack is still leading, and by degrees sets a slower and slower pace to save himself for the final effort in the stretch. But half-way around Cowles suddenly recognizes his tactics, and with an indignant effort takes the lead with that rapid even gait which seems to devour the ground, and which so imperceptibly draws away from a following runner if so be the latter relax his efforts in the least. Ah, the bitter third quarter! when the weakness creeps up from a runner's legs breast-high, and the laboring lungs feel as if iron bands were tight around them; when the head swims, and flashes come and go before the eyes, and every effort of body and mind is concentrated in a struggle not to let the white-jersey back just ahead draw away ever so little. Past the starting-post they go, and the others are hopelessly behind. There is a tremendous roar from the Harvard men as they begin the last quarter, and Cowles draws away ever so little from Jack. But the latter grits his teeth and calls upon his numb legs, and the gap closes up again. So they run like a tandem-team, and stride by stride the last quarter lessens and lessens.
The stretch is very near, and though the pace is terrific, Jack feels that he has an atom of spirit left somewhere down in his heels. And as they turn the last corner and the homestretch looms up before them, Jack lengthens his stride a trifle, and the blue Y with two little a's on either side, which the runner who has not won a point for Yale is condemned to wear, is almost parallel with the crimson bar. A roar of cheers fills the air as the two runners come down the stretch, fighting every yard, their heads back, their eyes fixed in an unwinking stare which sees only the red line between the finish posts but forty yards away.
And now the band of Assorted Howlers get in their deadly work. Dickie's hat and coat are off, his collar limp, and with most marvellous gyrations he is leading his orchestra in a wonderfully constructed cheer. Finally, "Nine Jack Vails!" he whoops, "and let 'em come loud." And every Yale voice on the bleachers and grand stand joins in, and "Jack Vail! Jack Vail! Jack Vail!" they thunder. But Jack, only ten yards away from the finish, hears nothing but the sobbing gasps of the runner beside him, sees nothing but the tape and the face of Mike all working and distorted with excitement as he stands back of the judges. And suddenly out of the din, which seems somehow far away and like a dream, he hears Mike's voice, hoarse in its intensity: "It's the last ten yards, me boy! Oh, come in—come in, Jack!"
And Jack comes. With a last desperate staggering plunge he throws himself forward, and feels the blessed pressure of the parting tape that tells him the race is won.
Nothing more does Jack remember until he finds himself lying in Mike's strong arms in the training-house, while the rest of the team press up to shake his hand, and the Captain, full of joyful chuckles, kneels down, and with his penknife rips off the obnoxious a's, and the great blue Y stands forth on his jersey front—won at last.
Oh, the disheartening days that followed—the constant marching to and fro, the bitter defeats, and the hopeless feeling of being overwhelmed by superior numbers! Oh, the heart-aches and the weariness!
Once more, so to speak, George was on his native heath, for the discouraged and partly shattered army of Washington was in full retreat across the northern part of New Jersey. The men marched or, better, hurried along despondently. It was more like a rabble fleeing before the invaders than a body of fighting-men. The short enlistments were running out; dissatisfaction was everywhere; and very early one morning they had been compelled to evacuate their camp, leaving behind blankets, tents, and even their breakfasts cooking at the fire, for the British had followed them across the Hudson, and were close upon their heels. Fort Washington had been taken, and Fort Lee had been abandoned with everything it contained.
And it was growing cold; the ice had formed in the meadows, and a slight fall of snow lay melting in the muddy roads. Clothing and shoes were scarce; the inhabitants of Newark and other towns came bravely to the rescue. Yet there were many Tories who were praying already for the advance of the British, and it was rumored every day that orders would be received to resume the retreat, for recruiting had almost ceased.
These were trying times for all, but for none more so than for Lieutenant George Frothingham. By sickness and desertion his company had dwindled to scarcely thirty men. All of his gold had gone to help keep the remaining few together.
And now began the weary, weary marching once more. Discouraged and foot-sore, ragged and hungry, the patriot army retreated southward, the British so close upon their rear that oftentimes they would come in full sight, and skirmishes were frequent.
New Brunswick, Princeton, and Trenton successively fell into the hands of the enemy, and at last, on the 8th of December, Washington crossed the Delaware, and, owing to every boat being in the hands of the Americans on the southern shore, the pursuit was abandoned for the time.
Soon, however, was a victory to be given to the shivering army, and Washington was to astonish the eyes of the military world. But this is casting ahead.
"George," said Carter, one snowy afternoon—for Lieutenant Hewes had recovered from his wound and hastened to the front again—"George, to-morrow's Christmas, and although we get no plum-pudding, in my opinion there's something afoot."
"Then I trust that it may be forward," replied George; "this walking backwards in order to face the enemy tires out men's souls and courage."
The two friends were standing close to a small fire, holding out their hands to the welcome glow. In the woods about them roughly built huts showed everywhere, and before each one huddled clusters of hungry-looking men, soldiers of an army that had known nothing but defeat.
"Colonel Roberts was called to attend a council at the General's headquarters, and came back with a smile on his face. That must mean cheering news of some sort, eh?" Carter warmed to his subject. "And haven't you marked the gathering and mending of the flat-boats?"
"Yes," answered George. "It means they will cross the river. I think that it is well known that the Hessians in Trenton stay much abed this weather. But the morrow will show. I'm off to my blanket."
The boys bade each other good-night, and the fire burned low.
At daybreak the next day along the American lines everything was in the bustle of preparation for some great movement. What it was no one knew. Rations were being prepared, powder and balls distributed, the strongest men were being picked out and formed into separate companies, and the weak and sickly were distributed up and down the line of earth-works.
George awoke at the sun's first rays, and was buckling on his sword when Carter Hewes hurriedly entered the hut he shared with Captain Clarkson.
"It is Trenton surely," he whispered; "but there is a chance for us to volunteer for a service that will make the army grateful. I spoke for you as well as for myself. Was I right or not?"
"Of course you were," said George, smiling.
"Here it is," was the reply. "On the way to Trenton is an English baggage-train, eight or ten big wagons filled with stores and plunder—powder, too, perhaps. A spy, a reliable man, has just brought in the news. He says that it is lightly guarded, and that a dozen men with good horses could cross the river up above, and by fast riding intercept and burn it. The General has given his permission."
Somehow as Carter spoke he reminded George of his father, Colonel Hewes.
"I will go," he said. "But how about my Captain, and how to cross the river?"
"Captain Clarkson will be told, and there is a big flat-boat five miles up-stream that we can use. We will start when it is dark this evening." He grasped George's hand.
But it was not until midnight that everything was completed; men had to be chosen, and horses that could travel fast were scarce. But at twelve o'clock ten men, mounted and armed, started west along the river. It was not until dawn that they came across the road from Trenton to the north, for they had been forced to make a wide detour. The spy was with them; objects were growing plainer, and he pointed with his finger.
"There lies Trenton, eight miles away, and the Dutchmen all asleep," he said, "and if my judgment fails me not, our wagon-train is encamped in yonder hollow."
The ten riders crossed a field and entered a forest of small pine-trees; the snow deadened the sound of the horses. Suddenly they came to a clearing, and the guide raised his hand.
"There they are," he said. Before a small frame building ten big wagons were halted in the road. The horses were blanketed and tethered to the wheels; not a guard of any kind was to be seen.
"Hark!" exclaimed one of the troopers. A loud boom sounded from the southward.
"General Washington has crossed the river," said Carter to George, who, mounted on one of Colonel Roberts's horses, was at his elbow.
Another cannon-shot, and then a roaring of them—a constant ripple and crash of sound. Heads appeared at the windows of the frame house, a few figures ran out.
"Charge!" ordered the Captain of the little party.
So sudden was the attack that not a shot was fired. Then and there twenty English soldiers and a score of teamsters surrendered to ten bold Americans. They were disarmed, and penned in the frame house again.
"Don't let us burn the wagons; let us take them in," suggested George.
"Wait and see how it goes over there," said the guide. "Here! Hurry! Harness up! If they retreat, it will be along the highway. I know a wood road we can drive them into."
In a few minutes the heavy wagons had been pulled up the hill and far into the pines. The prisoners were placed underneath and guarded.
"Here comes a man on horseback," said some one from the edge of the thicket.
A dragoon, helmetless and without a coat, tore by on the road below, lashing his horse.
"Hush! Don't cheer," said Carter, sternly. "Here comes another; we have won the day."
Breathlessly the little party watched the fugitives make up the road towards Princeton, and when the last had gone, light-hearted they took their prizes up the road towards Trenton.
"There flies our flag," said Carter, as the houses came in sight. "Three cheers now, men, and with a will!"
Once more did George Frothingham shake hands with Washington.
Five days flew by, and recruits swarmed in. But the British were not idle. George was posting the guards outside of Washington's headquarters on New-Year's night, when the Commander-in-chief accompanied by his staff came walking by. The relief saluted, and the young Lieutenant caught the words, "Retreat is now impossible."
The next day the British advanced on Trenton. They did not force a battle, for it was thought that the Americans would surrender; but the latter retreated to the further side of a little creek called the Assumpinck, and here again commenced the dreary work of digging into the frozen earth, and, strange to say, the order was, "Make all the noise you can."
As soon as the darkness had settled down at night the watch-fires along the line blazed brightly in the woods. Quickly word was passed for the army, now swelled to five thousand men, to form into line. Washington again was about to astonish military eyes.
Under cover of the darkness he slipped across the creek, and marched silently northward by a road unguarded by the British. The men, looking over their shoulders, could see their own camp-fires still burning brightly behind them, for a force of men had been left there to keep them going, and pick and shovel were ringing busily.
Again the British slept on, unconscious of what was happening, and in the early morning an empty camp confronted them. But at the same time his Majesty's forces at Princeton were astonished to see well-formed bodies of troops swinging along the road toward their encampment on the hill about the college buildings.
George's company had halted, and was waiting for the word. It was a very strange sight indeed, for the command was drawn up to the side of a little brook, just across an arched stone bridge.
As the light broadened they could see coming down the road in front of them a line of red standing out brightly against the bare meadows and patches of snow. They did not seem to be afraid of the forces gathered below them in the meadow, for they did not even form a line of battle.
Everything was quiet. A rabbit jumped from a thicket, darted out and bobbed across the field. Some snow-birds twittered in the leafless branches overhead; but soon was the stillness to be broken.
"I declare, I don't think they see what they're about!" exclaimed a soldier.
The fact was, the regiment of British soldiers had taken the Americans at first for Hessians. Soon, however, they were to be undeceived, for a volley from a company off to the right warned the officers, and the Redcoats spread out across the hill-side. A body of Americans at this moment came out of a hollow and met them face to face. It was a mutual surprise, and the fighting began at once. Some horsemen galloped back in the direction of Princeton, one and a half miles or so away. Re-enforcements of the enemy were hurried down the road on a run. The detachment with which George had been standing charged up to join the hand-to-hand fighting at the front.
The battle had opened. Most of the Americans near the stone bridge were raw militia. They could not be made to fire in volleys, but each man apparently fought for himself. They had had little drilling, not having been in the affair at Trenton, and this was their first sight of blood. George saw that exhorting was of no avail. The men were full of fight, but they were not trained to listen. He sheathed his sword, and picked up a musket from the ground.
The Redcoats, advancing in their well-dressed line, came steadily on. The ranks of the militia broke and retreated; only a few stood their ground. A man on horseback rode to the front. He stood up in his stirrups, shouted, and waved his sword about his head.
"Mark ye him there on the gray horse—'tis General Mercer," a voice shouted, as the militia once more began to rally. "Stand firm! stand firm!" the officer was crying. Suddenly his steed reared, and the rider leaped up in the saddle, and, leaning across the big gray's neck, slid to the ground. The horse stumbled and fell immediately, and the General was seen almost alone, parrying the British bayonets with his sword. At last down he went before any one could reach him.
As George, for the nonce a private, was reloading his piece, he saw two soldiers draw back their muskets and plunge the bayonets into the prostrate form. A fury seized him, and with a handful of young militiamen he rushed at the red bristling line. He swung his musket by the barrel and struck to right and left. How he kept from being killed was a miracle, for men fell and shots rang all about him.
Now was the time for help, and, luckily, it came. Washington, at the head of some hurrying troops, pushed forward from the eastward, and the tide of battle turned. The British ran across the stone bridge, and many fled toward the town.
The pursuit was now kept up in two directions. Part of the American forces chased after the retreating British across the bridge toward Trenton, another detachment swept onward toward the town, where the Redcoats had taken refuge in the college buildings. The companies were mixed together by this time—Pennsylvanians, Virginians, New Jerseymen, and New-Yorkers were fighting elbow to elbow.
A strange sight that George had seen after the re-enforcements under General Washington had been hurried up kept recurring to his mind as he pressed forward. It was one of the small events that force themselves upon the mind in moments of great excitement.
The leader upon whom the fortunes of the country then depended had been regardless of all danger, and had been mixed almost with the hand-to-hand fighters, a conspicuous object on his white horse, but as yet not a ball had touched him.
Colonel Fitzgerald, one of the Irish officers attached to the American service, had ridden up to Washington as soon as the British ranks had broken. George recalled how strange it seemed. The brave Colonel's face was contorting oddly, for he was crying like a baby, the tears rolling down his cheeks, and the sobs almost preventing him from speaking.
"Thank God! thank God!" he said, "your Excellency is safe."
Washington had extended his hand, and replied, quietly, though he was touched by the congratulation, "The day is ours, Fitzgerald."
The men about had cheered as they hurried on. The sleeve of George's coat was hanging in shreds and blackened with the stain of powder. He remembered how he had grasped the muzzle of a musket, and it had seemed to go off almost in his hand. The flint of his own gun had become dislodged during its short use as a club, and was lost. He fruitlessly searched for another as he ran.
The troops of the enemy that had retreated northward had taken refuge within the walls of the historic Nassau Hall. They had smashed in windows, cut loop-holes, and had tried to get some artillery into position.
"Have you a spare flint?" George inquired of a panting figure at his side as they climbed a fence at the back of a small farm-house. The man he addressed turned. It was his fellow-clerk at Mr. Wyeth's, the man whom he had thought a chicken-heart.
"Ah, Frothingham," he said, his pale eyes alight with excitement, "I have, and you are welcome."
George grasped the hand and the extended flint together. "Bonsall," he said, "you are a brave fellow, and I have misjudged you. I must have been a nice curmudgeon in that old counting-house."
"No, no," said the other; "we didn't understand each other, and you thought I was a coward. Mayhap I was. Have you any ball about you?"
George had still some of the King's statue mementos. He handed them to his companion, who placed two or three of them in his mouth, much as a boy might marbles. The two young soldiers advanced and caught up with the line. Some scattering shots rang from the college campus. Bonsall, who was just taking aim, whirled half around, clasped one hand to his breast, and extended the other feebly before him.
"I'm shot," he said, peering blindly into the young Lieutenant's eyes.
George leaped forward and caught the dying boy; he bent over him, and placed his head on his lap.
The pale eyes opened. "Good-by, Frothingham," came the lad's voice in a weak whisper. "In my pocket, here—here."
George thrust his hand inside the threadbare coat. There was an envelope addressed to Mrs. Lucius Bonsall, New York.
"Give it to her," the poor boy said, "with love, with love."
George laid him down on the frozen earth, and now crying himself, much as the Irish Colonel had, he leaned against an elm, and aimed at the windows of Nassau Hall. A battery of artillery was playing at the bottom of the hill, and the masonry shattered from the old brown building. It was too hot for the British, and they fled across the green, down the turnpike toward New Brunswick and Rock Hill, the Americans at their heels.
"'Tis a fox chase," said a starved-looking soldier, with a grin on his unshaven face. "I heard the General say it himself. Hurrah!" Off he dashed.
George did not join in the pursuit, but finding his old friend Thomas and another soldier, they made their way back to the frozen garden, and there dug a grave, and marked the spot where poor Luke Bonsall had fallen.
George looked into the college buildings an hour or so later. Scorched with fire and littered with the remains of a cavalry occupation, vandalism had been at work. Pictures were cut and slashed, and books destroyed, and, strange to say, a cannon-ball had carried away the head of a handsome portrait of his Majesty King George.
The stay of the Continental forces here was short, for the astonished and chagrined Cornwallis was coming up from Trenton. The next day all were on the move to the northward.
George searched for his company, and helped sift the men into something of military shape. It was in horrible confusion, and had suffered many a loss. During all this time he kept thinking of Bonsall's letter, that was in his pocket next to that of his little sister's. It was not long before it was to play quite an important part in our hero's personal history.
Elated with their victories, which had revived the flagging zeal of the citizens, the army had marched to Morristown, and there sought winter-quarters.
They had only been a few days in the shelter of the town, resting from the long marches and the consequences of freezing and fighting at the same time, when Carter Hewes met George on the street.
"Roberts told me to find you," he said. "There are important orders waiting for you."
What could it mean? George furbished up the few brass buttons left on his famous coat, and walked up to the great house where a flag was flying at the top of a rough pole.
Colonel Roberts met him and took him to one side as soon as he had entered, and an aid gave him a written order, which George read hurriedly. There was no explanation; he had been detached from his company, and the whole thing was somewhat confusing. Carter Hewes was waiting at the gate, and threw his arms about his friend's shoulder as soon as he came out on the roadway.
"Is it an order for special duty or a promotion?" he inquired, much excited.
"It is the former," answered George, "but what to do I know not."
To his intense surprise he had been ordered to report to Colonel Hewes, to whom he bore despatches. And where could one suppose? At Stanham Mills! A horse was placed at his disposal; he was to start at once.
The first cabin in any part of what is now Denver, the capital of Colorado, was that of a hunter and trader, and is thought to have been an Indian's old tepee. It stood in what is now West Denver in 1857. To that neighborhood, in the early summer of 1858, came a party of Georgia men headed by a leader named Green Russell, and hunting for gold on the east slope of the Rocky Mountains. It had been said that some white men had found gold there nine years before, and that three years later some Indians also found a little. Later still a party of traders actually carried some "pay dirt" from there to their homes in Missouri. "Pay dirt," the reader should know, is any form of rock or earth or sand that contains sufficient gold to pay for working it.
Green Russell and his men arrived in June, 1858. If we stop a moment to consider these true founders of Denver, we shall see that they add a new picture to the varied, highly colored gallery of paintings that make the true pictorial history of the growth of our country. We have seen the stolid, dignified Dutchmen sail into New York Harbor with their swords, banners, queer old flint-lock guns, and quaint long pipes. We have seen the grave Puritans assemble in Massachusetts with their sober garments, their stern faces, and their muskets and Bibles carried side by side. We have seen the gorgeously dressed servants of the kings of France and Spain at their work of founding New Orleans, having their wives sent to them in ships, to make their acquaintance and be their wives after they got there. And at St. Louis we came upon the same sort of men who built up Canada—rough, brave boatmen in furs, singing and dancing, and throwing away their money that they earned in pathless forests and in savage Indian camps. When we came to study the birth of Helena, Montana, we saw upon the canvas of history the veteran gold-miner, old at the business, leaving one camp when it ceased to pay, and roaming all over the mountains, with, sharp, ferretlike eyes that saw no beauties in nature—nothing but the dull rocks and the sand in the beds of the streams where gold might be found. Rough, long-haired, bearded, dressed in whatever they could get, these "prospectors" clambered over the mountains, leaving many cities behind them that did not exist until they started them.
And now, at the birth of Denver, we see the life of the immigrants on the plains. We see the caravans of "prairie-schooners," crossing the continent like flights of brown moths, and settling a city as winged things light on a field or on a bed of flowers that offers food. They were miners, or were led by miners, but they were not yet veterans of the far Western type. They were closely followed by absolute strangers to the business—Eastern folk who wanted to pick up gold between their feet. Therefore the newest part of the picture is the life in the caravans of "prairie-schooners."
These were strong four-wheeled wagons, drawn by horses, and covered with canvas tops drawn over a series of half-hoops. In these wagons were beds, clothing, stoves, cooking and eating and drinking utensils, and women, children, and whatever invalid men there were in the train. I could not tell you fairly, in such a short article as this, a tenth part of the general experiences of the people who built up the West by travelling in these trains before the railroads came. Peril surrounded them—peril in many shapes. They were attacked by Indians. They dodged the savages, they fought them, they whipped them or were massacred. They crossed rivers and swollen streams without bridges. They crossed the plains through fearful heat or still more fearful cold. They found no water, or water unfit to drink. They fell sick, they died; cholera overtook some of them, chasing after them all the way from Asia. Their horses were stolen or died or broke down. Their food ran out. There was enough adventure in the journey to fill a lifetime—even to fill an extraordinary lifetime.
Those who reached Denver were a ragged, dust-grimed, tired-out lot, with worn horses, battered wagons, and no immediate desire except to fling themselves on the ground beside the Platte River, in the shade of the cottonwoods, and rest. Stop a moment to think of the courage and condition of those others who went all the way to Oregon! Their courage passes belief. Well, Green Russell and his Georgia men built a hut of logs, and roofed it with mud. When the rain fell it dropped on the roof as water, but it came through the roof as mud. The hut stood by that of the trader, where West Denver stands now. A third hut was built by one Ross Hutchins, and the row or street or village was called Indian Row. Gold was found in the nearby creek, and Russell took some back to Georgia to coax more of his people out to the new camp.
Then there came a party of twenty persons from Lawrence, Kansas. All of Colorado was then Kansas. These new-comers went three miles farther up the river, and washed the sand for gold at a village of their own, which they called Montana. That was in midsummer. In September of the same year, 1858, some of the Georgia men—or perhaps some outsiders—organized a town where East Denver is now, and called it St. Charles. They drew up formal organization papers, and then, not knowing what to do with them, filed them with themselves. A month later the Georgians established at Indian Row, now West Denver, formally turned that queer little pin-point on the map into a town, which they called Auraria. A store was added to the village very quickly, and one of the merchants who opened it is alive in Denver to-day. Remember that all this was only a little more than thirty years ago, when some of my readers would have called Mr. Gladstone an old man. Prince Bismarck was fifty years old when this happened.
St. Charles village was a failure, and the founders of Montana soon moved away and joined Auraria. Then came some men, such as are called "hustlers" in the West, and they went to work in mighty earnest to make a city of St. Charles. They agreed that each should build a house, and in less than fifty days (by January, 1859) there were twenty houses standing. They named the place Denver, using the name of an ex-Governor of Kansas Territory, and they gave the town a full set of officials. Then began a great rivalry between Denver and Auraria. Auraria seemed to get the business places. The merchants went there, and there Mr. William N. Byers established the first newspaper—the Rocky Mountain News. He and the paper are both active to-day. But little Denver captured the express company when it came, and that ended the rivalry, for all communication with civilization was had through the express company. In 1860 the two towns became one, and were called Denver.
It was in 1859 that the prairie-schooners going to Denver most nearly resembled great swarms of moths. There had been a money panic in the United States, and hard times followed. This led to a rush for the new gold-fields. The truth was that there was not gold enough to pay the crowds for coming, but two remarkable events happened. In the first place, a miner named Gregory, who had been drifting about in the West, happened just then to come upon rich "diggings" not far away. The people came from the East as in a stampede. Some heard that the finding of gold was a hoax, and turned back to go home, meeting other thousands on their way to the diggings. In the East no one knew what to believe; but just then three newspaper men—Horace Greeley, the great editor, Henry Villard, and A. D. Richardson—arrived in this region, investigated the new diggings, and wrote an account of them for all the world to read. They told how a great many miners were making a great deal of money, and how a much greater number were not finding any gold at all. Then they warned the public not to come in such great numbers. I will repeat in substance what they wrote, as it makes a picture of the surroundings of Denver when it was a tiny baby city.
They said they found 5000 persons in the ravine called Gregory's Diggings. Hundreds poured in daily, and they passed tens of thousands hurrying to the place. For all of these provisions must be carted from the Missouri River, 700 miles, over mere trails, across unbridged streams that were steep banked, miry, or swollen by rains. Part of the way to the Diggings (and to Denver) was across a desert, with wood and grass very scanty and miles apart. To try to cross this desert on foot was madness, suicide, murder. To cross it with teams was only possible to those who knew the way to find grass and water. In early autumn the Diggings would be snowed under and frozen up. Then for six months there would not be work, food, or shelter within 500 miles for the army of men who were fooled into thinking that gold could be picked up like pebbles at the sea-shore. This sensible report did vast good in moderating the rush. There was great misery and hardship, nevertheless, but gold continued to be found, and many towns sprang up around Denver, which became the main city or metropolis of the region. For a time the people called the region Jefferson Territory, though the Kansas people claimed the district around Denver. The people established a territorial government in this way as early as 1859, and in February, 1861, Congress legally established the Territory, and called it Colorado. After that, with many reverses and hardships, the place grew steadily as a city, and as a capital not only of Colorado, but of the whole country between the mountains and the Eastern frontier. It is a beautiful city. It is actually on the plains, and yet at that point the plains are nearly a mile in the air—above the sea-level. This makes the city a great health resort, and brings to it so many Eastern people of wealth and refinement that they have been able to give Denver a great deal of the character of an Eastern city. It is modern, enterprising, and very beautiful. It is full of lovely homes and magnificent hotels, public buildings, theatres, stores, and office structures. It has almost 150,000 population.
I could have gone far back of the birth of Denver to show how the Spaniards explored Colorado before the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock. It was in 1541 that Vasquez Coronado entered Colorado with his little army, coming from Mexico. In the year of our Revolutionary war a Spanish priest journeyed toward California, sprinkling southern Colorado with the pretty Spanish names now borne by the rivers and mountains and valleys. The immediate neighborhood of Denver came to us in 1804 by the Louisiana Purchase, and two years later Lieutenant Zebulon Pike explored the region. In 1819 Major Stephen S. Long started upon a second exploring expedition that led him literally to the site of Denver, where he camped in July, 1820. Twenty-three years later John C. Fremont, "the Pathfinder," came that way, and found several Indian traders established along the Platte. In 1847 the hardy, enthusiastic Mormons passed over this ground on their way to establish themselves in Utah. It is said, too, that Francis Parkman, the historian, built a camp close to or on the site of Denver when he made his famous journey in 1846. And yet it seems to me that none of these events connects itself so closely with the birth of Denver as the expedition of the gold-hunters from Georgia.
Whenever there's a rainy day
They send us to the barn to play
From after lunch till supper-time.
And there they let us run and climb
And tumble in the hay and straw—
Such funny tricks you never saw!
We overhaul the piles of junk,
We open every battered trunk,
And every corner we explore
As if we'd never searched before;
We play at burglars or at thieves,
And crawl along beneath the eaves,
Or else we are a garrison
Besieged, outnumbered ten to one,
And from the windows we repel
The foe that hides beyond the well.
And sometimes, if there's no one by
(If John has gone down to the sty
Or to the pasture for the cow,
Or—if John's absent, anyhow),
We take old Dobbin from the stall—
Which we ought never do at all—
And play at circus, while the horse
Plods around a ring, of course,
With one of us upon his back;
Another makes the long whip crack;
A third—the lucky one—is clown;
And all the girls have to sit down
On seats that have been put about,
And they must clap their hands and shout.
Oh, circus is the greatest fun!
When John goes out, it's always done.
Albert Lee.
Tilly Coombs watched the sled as it went crunching and jingling up the hill, and then entered her house, with a long sigh that the party was over.
"I'm getting to have good times; they treat me 'most as if I was other folks," she said to herself, happily. She would have liked to tell her mother about the good time, but her father had come home. She heard his querulous voice, and knew that he had been drinking just enough to make it unsafe to disturb him; so she crept softly up to her room—a cold and bare nook under the eaves. She pulled off her ravelled mitten and gazed at it ruefully. "That was an awful queer thing to do!" she said to herself aloud. "And, my! wa'n't it cold in that barn? But nobody saw me—not a soul! Nobody will ever know! The worst of it is, if I had been ketched, then nobody would ever believe that Alf wasn't a thief! An awful queer thing!" For a minute or two Tilly was lost in painful and perplexing reflection. Then she suddenly shook her fist fiercely at her small, crooked reflection in the cracked piece of looking-glass upon the wall. "Tilly Coombs, don't you never darst to think, as long as you live, that anything she did was queer!" she said, in an impressive whisper that echoed from all the empty corners of the dreary little room. And then Tilly tucked a ravelled mitten under the ragged ticking of her bed, and slept in peace.
While she slept, in the great farm-house at the top of Butternut Hill they were still debating whether she should be arrested at once for the theft of the spoons, or whether Patty should try to influence her to confession and the restoration of the property.
It was Aunt Eunice who suggested the latter course. Uncle Reuben believed in stern justice. He said that the Coombs family was a disgrace to the town; the father was drunken and good for nothing, and the son— His voice broke there; he had always felt that Alf Coombs was to blame for Dave's running away.
"We never heard anything really bad about Alf Coombs until—until he ran away," Anson insisted. Aunt Eunice said she thought Mrs. Coombs seemed like a good woman; and Patty tried to defend Tilly, although it was difficult to explain her knitting up that ravelled mitten! She said Ruby Nutting wouldn't believe anything against Tilly, and you couldn't make her. But Uncle Reuben shook his head over that, and said he was afraid Ruby Nutting wasn't very sensible, and Ruby's father seemed to pity bad folks just as much as good ones, and to take just as much comfort doctoring them—without any pay.
But it was finally decided that Patty should tell Tilly of the proof of her guilt that had been discovered. If Patty failed to influence her, then Aunt Eunice would no longer object to her arrest.
Patty lay awake a long time that night, dreading her mission; she wished she might ask Ruby Nutting to help her, but Uncle Reuben thought it best that no one should be told. When she did sleep she dreamed a dreadful dream, in which Tilly Coombs was being pursued down the long hill, through the great snow-drifts, by an army of spoons with grotesque faces, their mouths made of the initial letter that marked the stolen spoons—O for Oliver, Grandma Barclay's maiden name; they were driving Tilly into the mill-pond, which was open as if it were summer, in spite of the January drifts, and Patty awoke with a start and a cry. But bad as was the fantastic dream, Patty said to herself that the reality was worse.
When Pelatiah opened the back door the next morning, a fine pair of chickens plucked and dressed hung upon the knob. That circumstance seemed mysterious. Why should a thief who would steal a dozen spoons have a weak conscience in the matter of a pair of chickens? Where could Tilly Coombs get a pair of chickens? Patty added these mysteries to the one about the ravelled mitten upon which Tilly had knit and knit and yet worn it unmended, and felt as bewildered as she did when Anson made her listen to something out of the rebus corner of the Butternut Weekly Voice. But Uncle Reuben still insisted that it was a clear case; the thief had restored the chickens in order to stifle suspicion about the spoons. As to how the thief became possessed of the chickens, he "didn't think it would trouble Coombses to rob hen-roosts."
So as Patty set out to accuse Tilly of the theft the little spark of hope which the deepened mystery had aroused in her was almost quenched.
Tilly came to the door, and Patty tried to look at her with judicial severity, as she had seen Uncle Reuben look at offenders, but she broke down suddenly at sight of Tilly's beaming, friendly face.
"Oh, Tilly," she cried, "you will give them back, won't you? It was such a dreadful thing to do! But no one shall ever know; Uncle Reuben says so, if you will only give them back."
The warmth and color faded out of Tilly's face until it looked wan and pinched in the morning light.
"It's no matter about the chickens. You needn't even have given those back. Of course it's always terrible to—to take things, but if you'll only give back the spoons."
"The spoons?" echoed Tilly, and there seemed to be such genuine bewilderment in her tone that Patty felt inclined to believe Uncle Reuben's accusation that she was sly. "I don't know anything about any spoons."
"Tilly, your mitten caught on the basket and was ravelled, and—and I saw you knitting it up in the barn." Patty's tone was rather pitiful than accusing, but Tilly's face flamed angrily.
"I didn't s'pose you was one to go peeking round and spying on folks," she cried. "I guess I've got a right to do a little knitting anywheres that I'm a mind to, and—and you can't say 'twas a mitten."
"I saw it, Tilly, a red mitten. This is the yarn that was caught on the basket." Polly drew from her pocket the red ravelling, wound upon a bit of paper.
"Yarn!" echoed Tilly, contemptuously taking a bit between her thumb and finger. "I call that worsted!"
"And are your mittens yarn?" cried Tilly, eagerly. "Because that would prove—-"
"I never said they were," said Tilly, quickly, the color deepening in her cheeks, "I never said anything about them, and I sha'n't show them to anybody. And I never saw your old spoons in all my born days—so there!" Tilly would have shut the door, but Patty prevented her.
"Oh, Tilly, I'm afraid you don't realize. Uncle Reuben will send a sheriff to arrest you. And the girls have thought so much of you—especially Ruby Nutting."
"You needn't say a word about her." Tilly swallowed a lump chokingly. "You needn't tell her, nor anything. She hasn't got anything to do with it. She's give me all the chance I've had to get good times, and her father has been awful good to us; and now I suppose they won't be any more. But—but poor folks must expect to be called thieves, and took up. The worst is, now they'll be sure Alf broke into that store, and he didn't! no more'n your cousin did! No, that isn't the worst. The worst is that Miss Farnham, the milliner, won't have me now! She was going to take me half a day to do chores and help her; 'twas an awful good chance! It chirked mother right up to think we were going to be so much like folks, and now—" Tilly kept her voice steady, but it was by a strong effort.
"Tilly, it might come right now if you would only tell all about it," said Patty, earnestly. "It seems as if there were some mystery."
"You go 'long home!" cried Tilly, fiercely, and slammed the door upon Patty. Her sharp, hard, little features were working convulsively, and Patty heard a long sob inside the door.
She went home feeling more strongly than ever that there was a mystery, and pleaded earnestly for Tilly. Aunt Eunice joined her, and promised to go and see Tilly's mother, and talk with her about the matter if Uncle Reuben would delay his sterner measures.
They might not have been able to persuade him to do so—his bitter grief for his son had served to harden him against Alf Coombs's relatives—if nature had not seemed to take Tilly's part and enforced a delay; the heavy snow-fall was followed by a pouring rain and what they called at Butternut Corner an old-fashioned January thaw. Uncle Reuben was a mill-owner, and his property was threatened by the freshet, so he had no time to think of Tilly Coombs.
Aunt Eunice had a touch of her old enemy rheumatism, and could not go down to confer with Mrs. Coombs, and so the matter remained unsettled.
On the very first day when the sun shone out Ruby Nutting came up the hill to ask Patty to take a walk. It made no difference that they would go over shoe in mud with every step. Ruby wouldn't take no for an answer; that was the way with Ruby; besides, she said that this was something very particular. When they reached the foot of the hill Patty found herself being led into the road which bordered the old mill-pond, and she shrank back.
"Yes, we're going to miser Jensen's house, but you needn't be afraid; he has gone away for the winter. There won't be any more clothes-lines or hen-roosts robbed now. And that makes me think. Oh, Patty, what did your aunt think of those chickens that were tied to her door-knob? And what did you think of losing your nice roasted ones? But I didn't mean to tell you that I took them until you had seen poor Tramp. Your aunt liked Tramp; she will forgive me when she knows I took them for him."
"You took them—for Tramp?" repeated Patty, in bewilderment. "I heard that Tramp was mad!"
Tramp was an old dog which had roamed the streets of Butternut Corner and Bymport for years, making his home for a week or two at one place or another, as the fancy seized him, generally welcome, for he was a favorite.
"He had one of his fits, convulsions, in the street at Bymport; he has often had them at our house, poor fellow! It seemed as if he came there when one was coming on, knowing that we would take care of him. Some foolish person raised a cry of mad dog, and people chased him with pistols and clubs; he ran up here, and they lost track of him. That night on your sled Alvan Sage told me that he had heard a dog whining, as if in pain, in the miser's house; he said no one dared to go near, because they thought it must be the mad dog. That was a week after they had driven poor Tramp out of Bymport, and I thought of him suffering and without food, and I seized the first basket I could lay hands on, and pulled out a pair of roast chickens. I thought I never should get there through the drifts! I borrowed a lantern at Jake Nesmith's, and it really wasn't far, but the drifts were so deep! The poor dog's leg had been hurt by a stone or a club so he could hardly move, and he was half frozen and starved. Tilly, if you could have seen him eat your chickens, I know you would have thought it better than to have them for the party! I built a fire—luckily there was wood in the cellar—and I've been there every day in all the rain to take care of him. Papa has been with me, and to-morrow we're going to send Tramp to my Uncle Rufus at Bethel, who is very fond of dogs, and will take great care of him. We couldn't take him home, because Aunt Estelle is so nervous, and she wouldn't believe he wasn't mad. I knew you would like to see old Tramp."
"But—but the ravelled mitten!" faltered Patty, who couldn't as yet "see through things."
"How did you know about that?" asked Ruby, in astonishment. "I caught my mitten on your basket in my haste to get the chickens, and the edge was all ravelled off, and—the very queerest thing that ever happened!—some one knit it on again—with yarn. The mittens are worsted; see the difference." Ruby held up the mended mitten, with an edge of coarse yarn, to Patty's gaze. "It was done at the party! I think it must have been Grandma Pitkin who did it. Perhaps it had dropped from my pocket in the dressing-room, and she saw it. Wasn't it kind of her? I must go and thank her."
Patty tried to say "it wasn't Grandma Pitkin; it was Tilly Coombs," but there was a lump in her throat that choked her. And it happened that they just then reached a turn in the road and saw a girl's figure ahead of them. She walked from side to side of the road, keeping her eyes on the ground, and occasionally prodding into it with a stick which she carried.
"It's Tilly Coombs, and she seems to be searching for something," said Ruby.
Patty darted on ahead, and seized Tilly around the neck with both arms. Even then Patty saw how pitifully worn and pale the girl had grown. What had been only a little comedy to Ruby, pleasant because she had so happily relieved the dog's sufferings, had been almost a tragedy to Tilly Coombs.