BOOK II

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Summer in the High Country

My first morning in the old Homestead without my mother was so poignant with its sense of loss, so rich with memories both sweet and sorrowful, that I shut myself in my study and began a little tribute to her, a sketch which I called The Wife of a Pioneer. Into this I poured the love I had felt but failed to express as fully as I should have done while she was alive. To make this her memorial was my definite purpose.

As I went on I found myself deep in her life on the farm in Iowa, and the cheerful heroism of her daily treadmill came back to me with such appeal that I could scarcely see the words in which I was recording her history. Visioning the long years of her drudgery, I recalled her early rising, and suffered with her the never-ending round of dish-washing, churning, sewing, and cooking, realizing more fully than ever before that in all of this slavery she was but one of a million martyrs. All our neighbors' wives walked the same round. On such as they rests the heavier part of the home and city building in the West. The wives of the farm are the unnamed, unrewarded heroines of the border.

For nearly a week I lingered upon this writing, and having completed it I was moved to print it, in order that it might remind some other son of his duty to his ageing parents sitting in the light of their lonely hearth, and in doing this I again vaguely forecast the composition of an autobiographic manuscript—one which should embody minutely and simply the homely daily toil of my father's family, although I could not, at the moment, define the precise form into which the story would fall.

The completion of the memorial to my mother eased my heart of its bitter self-accusation, and a little later I returned to my accustomed routine, realizing that in my wife now lay my present incentive and my future support. She became the center of my world. In her rested my hope of happiness. My mother was a memory.

To remain longer in the old home was painful, for to me everything suggested the one for whom it had been established. The piano I had bought for her, the chair in which she had loved to sit, her spectacles on the stand—all these mute witnesses of her absence benumbed me as I walked about her room. Only in my work-shop was I able to find even momentary relief from my sense of irreparable and eternal loss.

Father, as though bewildered by the sudden change in his life, turned to Zulime with a pathetic weakness which she met with a daughter's tender patience and a woman's intuitive understanding. He talked to her of his first meeting with "Belle" and his tone was that of a lover, one who had loved long and deeply, and this I believe was true. In spite of unavoidable occasional moments of friction, he and Isabel McClintock had lived in harmony. They had been spiritually married, and now, in looking back over the long road he and she had traveled together, he recalled only its pleasant places. His memories were all of the sunlit meadows and starry nights along the way. Prairie pinks and wild roses hid the thorns and the thistles of the wayside.

His joy in the songs she had sung came back, intensified now by tender association with her face and voice. The knowledge that she who had voiced them so often, could voice them no more, gave to some of the words an almost overpowering pathos, and when he asked me to sing them, I could not immediately comply. To him they brought grateful tears and a consoling sadness, to me they came with tragic significance.

"But that mother she is gone Calm she sleeps beneath the stone"

was not a song but a reality.

More and more he dwelt upon the time when she was young, and as the weeks went by his sorrow took on a wistful, vague longing for the past. Through the gate of memory he reëntered the world of his youth and walked once more with William and David and Luke. The mists which filled his eyes had nothing hot or withering in their touch—they comforted him. Whether he hoped to meet his love in some other world or not I do not know—but I think he did.

In the midst of these deep emotional personal experiences, I began to write (almost as if in self-defense), a novel which I called The Gray Horse Troop, a story which had been slowly forming in my mind ever since my visit to Lame Deer in 1897. This was my first actual start upon its composition and I was soon in full drive again, and just in proportion as I took on these fictional troubles did my own lose their power. To Zulime, with a feeling of confidence in myself, I now said, "You need not remain here any longer. Go down to Chicago and wait for me. I'll come as soon as father feels like letting me go. I am all right now. I am at work."

She smiled but replied with firm decision, "I shall stay right here until you can go with me. Father needs me more than he needs you."

This was true. She would have been deserting two men instead of one—and so she stayed while I worked away at my story, finding comfort in the realization of her presence.

At last my father said, "You mustn't stay here on my account; I can take care of myself."

Here spoke the stark spirit of the man. Accustomed to provide for himself in camp and on the trail, he saw no reason why he should not contrive to live here in the sheltered village, surrounded by his friends; but Zulime insisted upon his retaining our housekeeper, and to this he consented, although he argued against it. "I've been keeping house alone for six years out there in Dakota; I guess I can do as well here."

"All right, father," I said, "we'll go, but if you need me let me know."

A return to the city did not interrupt my writing. My new novel now had entire possession of me. So far as my mornings were concerned I was forgetful of everything else—and yet, often, as I put aside my work for the day, I caught myself saying, "Now I must write to mother,"—and a painful clutch came into my throat as I realized, once again, that I no longer had a mother waiting for a letter. For twenty years no matter where I had been or what I had been doing I had written to her an almost daily message and now she was no longer in my reach!—Was she near me on some other plane?

The good friendship of the Eagles' Nest Campers was of the highest value to me at this time. Without them Chicago would have been a desert. Henry Fuller's gay spirit, Lorado's swift wit and the good fraternal companionship of Charles Francis Browne were of daily comfort; but above all others I depended upon my wife whose serenely optimistic spirit carried me over many a deep slough of despond. How I leaned upon her! Her patience with me was angelic.

A writer, like an artist, is apt to be a selfish brute, tending to ignore everything which does not make for the progress of his beloved manuscript. He resents every interruption every hindering distraction, as a hellish contrivance, maliciously designed to worry or obstruct him—At least I am that way. That I was a burden, an intolerable burden to my wife, at times—many times—I must admit—but she understood and was charitable. She defended me as best she could from interruption and smoothed my daily course with deft hand. Slowly my novel began to take shape and as I drew farther away from the remorseful days which made my work seem selfish and vain, I recovered an illogical cheerfulness.

We saw very few Chicago people and in contrast with our previous "season" in New York our daily walk was uneventful, almost rural, in its quiet round. Christmas came to us without special meaning but 1900 went out with The Eagle's Heart on the market, and Her Mountain Lover going to press. Aside from my sense of bereavement, and a certain anxiety concerning my lonely old father, I was at peace and Zulime seemed happy and confident.

There was no escaping my filial responsibility, however, for in the midst of this serene season, a sudden call for help came from West Salem. "Your father is ill and needs you," wrote the doctor and I went at once to his aid.

It was a cheerless home-coming,—one that I could hardly endure the thought of, and yet I was glad that I had not followed my first impulse to delay it, for as I entered the door of the desolate lonely house I found the old soldier stretched out on a couch, piteously depressed in mind and flushed with fever. I had not arrived a minute too soon.

What a change had come over the Homestead! It was but a shell, a mansion from which the spirit for whom it had been built was fled. Its empty, dusty rooms, so cold and silent and dead—were dreadful to me, but I did my best to fill them with cheer for my father's sake.

As the day wore on I said to him, "It seems like Sunday to me. I have a feeling that mother and Zulime are away at church and that they may, at any moment, come in together."

"I wish Zuleema would come," my father said, and as if in answer to his wish, she surprised us by a telegram. "I am coming home," she wired, "meet me at the station to-morrow morning," and this message made my father so happy that it troubled me, for it revealed to me how deeply he had missed her, and made plain to me also how difficult it would be for me to take her away from him thereafter.

Her coming put such life in the house that I decided to invite a number of my father's friends and neighbors to spend the evening with us, and the thought of this party quite restored him to his natural optimism. His confidence in his new daughter's ability had become fixed. He accepted her judgments almost instantly. He bragged of her skill as a cook, as an artist and as a musician, quite shamelessly; but as this only amused her I saw no reason for interfering—I even permitted him to boast of my singing. He believed me to be one of the most remarkable ballad singers in the world, and to hear me sing "The Ninety and Nine" with all the dramatic modulations of a professional evangelist afforded him the highest satisfaction.

At his urging we made elaborate preparations for feeding our guests, and Zulime arranged a definite program of entertainment. When conversation slackened I was to sing while she played my accompaniment, and to fill out the program I volunteered to read one of my short stories.

The outcome of the evening was amusingly destructive of all our kindly plans. Before the women had fairly removed their wraps, Lottridge drew a box of dominoes from his pocket, saying, "I didn't know but you'd be a little short on 'bones,'" and Shane called out, "Well, now, Richard, what about tables?" In five minutes they were all—every mother's son and daughter of them—bent above a row of dominoes!

No entertainment on the part of host or hostess was necessary till the time came to serve supper. All our literary and musical preparations went for naught!—At ten o'clock they rose as one man, thanked us for a pleasant evening and went home!

Zulime laughed merrily over the wreck of our self-sacrificing program when we were alone. "Well, we'll know exactly what to do next time. All we need to do is to furnish dominoes and tables, our guests will do the rest."

My young wife's presence in the Homestead almost redeemed it from its gloom, and yet I was not content. The complications in the situation defied adjustment. My father needed us, but the city was essential to me. As a writer, I should have been remorselessly selfish. I should have taken my wife back to Chicago at once, but my New England conscience would not let me forget how lonely that old man would be in this empty house, silent, yet filled with voices of the moaning, swaying branches of its bleak midwinter elms.

My problem was, in fact, only another characteristic cruel phase of American family history. In a new land like ours, the rising generation finds itself, necessarily, almost cruelly, negligent of its progenitors. Youth moves on, away and up from the farm and the village. Age remains below and behind. The tragedy of this situation lies in the fact that there is no happy solution of the problem. Youth can not be shackled, age can not be transplanted.

In my case, I foresaw that the situation would inevitably become more and more difficult year by year. My father could not live in any city, and for me to give up my life in Chicago and New York in order to establish a permanent home in West Salem, involved a sacrifice which I was not willing to make,—either on my own account or Zulime's. I had no right to demand such devotion from her. Like thousands of other men of my age I was snared in circumstances—forced to do that which appeared unfilial and neglectful.

In the midst of these perplexities I was confronted by a new and surprising problem—I had money to invest! For the serial use of The Eagle's Heart and Her Mountain Lover I had received thirty-five hundred dollars, and as each of these books had also brought in an additional five hundred dollars advance royalty, I was for the moment embarrassed with cash.

In this extremity I turned, naturally, toward Oklahoma. I recalled the beautiful prairies I had crossed on my way to the Washitay. "Another visit to Darlington will not only furnish new material for my book of Indian stories, but enable me to survey and purchase a half-section of land," I explained to my father. "Like Henry George we both understand the value of unearned increment."

In this plan he agreed and two days after making this decision I was at Colony, Oklahoma, where I spent nearly the entire month of May, and when I returned I was the owner of three hundred and twenty acres of land.

My return to the Homestead found Zulime deep in the rush of the berry season. As mistress of a garden her interest in its produce was almost comical. She thought less of art, she neither modeled nor painted. She cared less and less for the Camp at Eagle's Nest, exulting more and more in the spacious rooms of her home, and in the abundance of her soil. Her love of the Homestead delighted me, but I was a little disappointed by the coolness with which she received my gift of a deed to a quarter section of Oklahoma land. She smiled and handed it back to me as if it were a make-believe deed.

It chanced that July came in unusually dry and hot, and in the midst of a dreadful week, she fell ill, so ill that she was confined to her bed for nearly three weeks, and as I watched beside her during those cloudless days and sultry nights, my mind turned with keenest longing toward the snow-lined crests of the Colorado mountains, and especially to the glorious forests of the White River Plateau. The roar of snowy Uncompagre, the rush of the deep-flowing Gunnison, and the serrate line of The Needle Peaks, called us both, and when at last, she was strong enough to travel, we packed our trunks and fled the low country, hurrying in almost desperate desire to reach the high, cool valleys of Colorado.

O, that torturing journey! As we neared Omaha the thermometer rose to 105 in the Pullman car, and remained there nearly all day. For twelve hours we steamed, sitting rigidly erect in our chairs, dreading to move, sweltering in silence, waiting with passionate intensity for the cool wind which we knew was certain to meet us somewhere on our upward course.

The sun went down in murky flame and the very shadows were hot, but deep in the night I was roused by a delicious puff of mountain air, and calling to Zulime, suffering in her berth, I said, "Worry no longer about the heat. From this hour on, every moment will be joy. You can forget the weather in Colorado."

What exquisite relief came with that change of air! What sweetness of promise! What buoyancy of expectation!—We went to sleep with the wind blowing in upon us, and when we woke the mountains were in sight.

At the station in the Springs, our good friend Louis Ehrich again met us, and in half an hour we stood in the same room which we had occupied on our wedding trip, a room whose windows faced directly upon the Rampart range, already deep purple with the shadow of the clouds. By contrast with our torrid railway car this was Paradise itself—so clean, so cool, so sweet, so tonic was the air, and when at noon a storm hid the peaks, and lightning crashed above the foot hills, the arid burning plain over which we came was forgotten—or remembered only to make our enjoyment of the mountain air more complete.

The splendor of that mighty wall, the kiss of that wind, the memory of that majestic peak looming amid the stars, comes back to me as I write, filling me with an almost intolerable longing to recover the magic of that summer, a summer which has receded with the speed of an eagle.

Each day we breakfasted and lunched and dined on a vine-clad porch in full view of the mountains. Each afternoon we drove or rode horseback or loitered on the lawn. Never in all my life had I come so near to flawless content, and Zulime, equally joyous, swiftly returned to perfect health. Her restoration was magical.

Louis Ehrich, one of the gentlest men I have ever known, rejoiced in our presence. He lived but to fill our days with pleasure. He and I had been friends for ten years, and his family now took my wife into favor—I was about to say into equal favor, but that would not be true. They very properly put her above me in the scale of their affection, and to this subordination I submitted without complaint, or even question.

It chanced that on the second day of our stay the Ehrichs were due at a garden party in "Glen Eyrie," General Palmer's palatial home in the foot hills, and kindly obtained permission to bring us with them. That drive across the mesa was like a journey into some far country—passage to a land which was neither America nor England, neither East nor West. To reach the Castle we entered a gate at the mouth of a narrow, wooded cañon and drove for nearly a mile toward the west through a most beautiful garden in which all the native shrubs and wild flowers had been assembled and planted with exquisite art.

People were streaming in over the mountain roads, some on horseback, some on bicycles, some in glittering, gayly-painted wagons, and when we reached the lawn before the great stone mansion, we found a very curious and interesting throng of guests, and in the midst of them, the General, tall, soldierly, clothed in immaculate linen and wearing a broad white western hat, was receiving his friends, assisted by his three pretty young daughters.

The house was a veritable chateau—the garden a wonderland of Colorado plants and flowers, skilfully disposed among the native ledges and scattered along the bases of the cliffs whose rugged sides enclosed the mansion grounds. The towers (of gray stone) were English, but the plants and blooms were native to the Rampart foot hills. In a very real fashion "Glen Eyrie" bodied forth the singular and powerful character of its owner, who was at once an English squire, a Pennsylvania civil war veteran, and a western railway engineer.

Food and drink and ices of various kinds were being served under the trees with lavish hospitality, and groups of young people were wandering about the spacious grounds—grounds so beautiful by reason of nature's adjustment, as well as by way of the landscape gardener's art, that they made the senses ache with a knowledge of their exquisite impermanency. It was a kind of poem expressed in green and gold and scarlet.

Zulime greatly interested the Palmer girls, and the General, who remembered me pleasantly, was most amiable to us both. "You must come again," he said, and to me he added, "You must come over some day and ride my trails with me."

As I mingled with that throng of joyous folk, I lost myself. I became an actor in a prodigious and picturesque American social comedy. For stage we had the lawn, banks of flowers, and the massive towers of the castle. For background rose the rugged hills!—Nothing could have been farther from our home in Neshonoc. Glowing with esthetic delight in the remote and singular beauty of the place, Zulime took an artist's keen interest in alien loveliness. It threw our life into commonplace drab. And yet it was factitious. It had the transient quality of a dream in which we were but masqueraders.

Two days later, at the invitation of General Palmer, we joined his party in a trip over the short-line railway to Cripple Creek, traveling in his private car, and the luxury of this novel experience made my wife's eyes shine with girlish delight.—I professed alarm, "I don't know where all this glory is going to land us," I warned, "after this Aladdin's-lamp luxury and leisure, how can I get you back into washing dishes and canning fruit in West Salem?"

She laughed at this, as she did at most of my fears. Serene acceptance of what came was her dominant characteristic. Her faith in the future was so perfect that she was willing to make the fullest use of the present.

The day was gloriously clear, with great white clouds piled high above the peaks, and as the train crept steadily upward, feeling its way across the mountain's shoulder, we were able to look back and down and far out upon the plain which was a shoreless sea of liquid opal. At ten thousand feet the foot hills (flat as a rug) were so rich in color, so alluring in their spread that we could scarcely believe them to be composed of rocks and earth.

After a day of sight-seeing we returned, at sunset, to the Springs, with all of the pomp of railway magnates en tour, and as we were about to part at the railway station, the General in curt, off-hand way, asked, "Why not join my camping party at Sierra Blanca? We're going down there for a week or two, and I shall be very glad to have you with us. Come, and stay as long as you can. We shall probably move on to Wagon Wheel Gap later. Wagon Wheel ought to interest you."

He said this with a quizzical smile, for he had been reading my novel of Colorado, and recognized in my scene the splendors of the San Juan country. "Your friend Ehrich is coming," he added, "and I expect Sterling Morton for a day or two. Why not all come down together?"

"Would you like me to bring my bed and tent?" I asked.

"As you please, although I have plenty of room in my own outfit."

It happened that Colorado Springs was holding a Quarto-Centenary, a kind of Carnival and Wild-West Pageant, to which Vice-President Roosevelt was coming as the chief guest of honor, and as soon as he arrived I called upon him at his hotel. Almost at once he asked, "Where is your wife? I want to see her. Is she here?"

"Yes, she is staying with some friends," I replied.

"I am very glad to know it. I shall call upon her tomorrow afternoon as soon as my duties at the carnival are ended."

The thought of having the Vice-President of the United States go out of his way to make a call upon my wife gave me a great deal of pleasure for I realized how much it would mean to Zulime, but I replied, "We shall be very glad to call upon you."

"No," he replied in his decisive fashion—"I shall call to-morrow at four o'clock—if that is convenient to you. Meanwhile I want you and Mr. Ehrich to breakfast with me here, at the hotel. I shall have some hunters and rough riders at my table whom you will be interested to meet."

Of course I accepted this invitation instantly, and hurried home to tell my wife that "royalty" was about to call upon her.

The Vice-President's breakfast party turned out to be a very curious collection of mutually repellent, but highly-developed individualities. There was John Goff, well known as guide and hunter in western Colorado, and Marshall Davidson, a rough-rider from New Mexico, Lieutenant Llewellyn of the Rough Riders, Sterling Morton (former Secretary of Agriculture), a big impassive Nebraska pioneer; Louis Ehrich (humanist and art lover), and myself—I cannot say that I in any way reduced the high average of singularity, but I was at least in the picture—Morton and Ehrich were not; they remained curious rather than sympathetic listeners. While no longer a hunter I was a trailer and was able to understand and keenly enjoy the spirit of these hardy men of the open.

True to his word, Roosevelt called at the Ehrich's that afternoon, and no one could have been more charming, more neighborly than he. He told of our first meeting, smilingly called me "a Henry George crank," and referred to other differences which existed between us. "Differences which do not in the least interfere with our friendship," he assured Zulime. "Your husband, for example, doesn't believe in hunting, and has always stood out against my shooting," here he became quite serious—"However, I've given up shooting deer and elk. I kill only 'varmints' now."

After half an hour of lively conversation, he rose to go and as I went with him to the gate, where his carriage was waiting, he said with earnest emphasis, "I congratulate you most heartily, my dear fellow. Your wife is fine! fine!"

As Morton and Ehrich had accepted General Palmer's invitation to camp with him, we all took train for Fort Garland, a mysterious little town in Southern Colorado, near which the General was encamped. This expedition particularly pleased me for it carried me into the shadow of Sierra Blanca, one of the noblest of Colorado's peaks, and also into the edge of the Mexican settlement. It all seemed very remote and splendid to me that day.

We were met at the station by one of the General's retainers and ten minutes later found ourselves in a mountain wagon and on our way toward Old Baldy, the mountain which stands just north of Sierra Blanca, which forms the majestic southern bastion of the Crestones.

Mexican huts lined the way, and dark-skinned farmers working in the fields and about the corrals, gave evidence of the fact that this "land grant" had been, at one time, a part of Old Mexico.

"It contains nearly seven hundred thousand acres," Ehrich explained, "and is the property of General Palmer."

This statement aroused a sense of wonder in my mind. "Think of being proprietor of one-half of Sierra Blanca?" I said to Morton. "Has any individual a right to such a privilege?"

In a lovely grove on the bank of a rushing glorious stream, we found the Lord of this Demesne and his three daughters encamped, attended by a platoon of cooks, valets, maids, and hostlers. A "camp" which highly amused Sterling Morton, although he had moments of resenting its luxury. "Now this is the kind of 'roughing it' I believe in," he declared with a smile. "It is suited to elderly old parties like Ehrich and myself, but you, Garland, a youngster, a trailer—should have no part in it. It's too corrupting."

Our luncheon, which contained five courses, came on with the plenitude and precision of a meal at Glen Eyrie. The rusticity of the function was altogether confined to the benches on which we sat and the tables from which we ate—the butlering was for the most part urban.

"Why didn't Mrs. Garland come?" asked the General.

"She had an engagement or two that prevented her."

"Oh! She must come down," commanded the General. "Telegraph her at once and ask her when she can get away. I'll send my car for her."

This he did. The private Pullman, with a maid and a steward in charge, went back that night and on the second morning Zulime came down the line in lonely state.

I met her at the station, and for ten days we lived the most idyllic, yet luxurious life beside that singing stream. We rode the trails, we fished, we gathered wild flowers. Sometimes of an afternoon we visited the ranches or mining towns round about, feasting at night on turtle soup, and steak and mushrooms, drinking champagne out of tin cups with reckless disregard of camp traditions, utterly without care or responsibility—in truth we were all under military discipline!

The General was a soldier even in his recreations. Each day's program was laid out in "orders" issued in due form by the head of the expedition—and these arrangements held! No one thought of changing them. Our duty was to obey—and enjoy.

Never before in all my life had anything like this freedom from responsibility, from expense, come to me. So carefree, so beautiful was our life, that I woke each morning with a start of surprise to find its magic a reality. It was like the hospitality of oriental kings in the fairy stories of my childhood.

For four weeks we lived this incredible life of mingled luxury and mountaineering, attended by troops of servants and squadrons of horses, threading the high forests, exploring deep mines, crossing Alpine passes, and feasting on the borders of icy lakes—always with the faithful "Nomad," the General's private Pullman car, waiting in the offing ready in case of accident—and then, at last, after riding through Slumgullion Gulch back to Wagon Wheel, Zulime and I took leave of these good friends and started toward Arizona. I had not yet displayed to her the Grand Cañon of the Colorado!

Five years before, on a stage drawn by four wild-eyed bronchos I had ridden from Flagstaff to Hance's Cabin in the glorious, exultant old-time fashion, but now a train ran from Williams to the edge of the abyss, and while I mourned over the prosaic change, I think Zulime welcomed it, and when we had set up our little tent on a point of the rim which commanded a view (toward the Southwest) of miles and miles of purple pagodas, violet towers and golden peaks we were content. Nothing could change the illimitable majesty of this view.

Day by day we watched the colorful play of sun-light and shadow along those mighty walls, and one night we camped in the deeps, a dramatic experience, for a mountain lion yowling from the cliffs gave voice to the savage grandeur of the scene. Then at last, surfeited with splendor, weary with magnificence, we turned our faces homeward. With only a stop at Laguna to watch the Indian Corn Dance, we slid down to Kansas City and at last to West Salem and home.

What a vacation it had been! Pike's Peak, Cripple Creek, Glen Eyrie, our camp beside the singing stream at Baldy, Sierra Blanca, Wagon Wheel Gap, Creede, Red Mountain, Lake City, Slumgullion, Tennessee Pass, noble dinners on the car, trail-side lunches of goose-liver and sandwiches and jam, iced watermelon and champagne in hot camps on the mesas—all these scenes and experiences came back accompanied by memories of the good talk, the cosmopolitan humor, of the Palmers and their guests.

From this royal ease, this incessant shift of scene and personality, we returned to our shabby old homestead brooding patiently beneath its maples, reflecting upon the glittering panorama which our magic lamp and flying carpet had wrought so potently to display. As I had started out to educate my wife in Western Life, it must be admitted that this summer had been singularly successful in bringing to her a knowledge of the splendors of Colorado and a perception of the varied character of its population.—Best of all she returned in perfect health and happy as a girl.

"This being married to a poor novelist isn't so bad after all," I remarked with an air of self-congratulation. "True, our rewards come without reason, but they sometimes rhyme with joy and pride."

Strange to say, I got nothing out of this summer, in a literary way, except the story which I called The Steadfast Widow Delaney, a conception which came to me on my solitary ascent of Sierra Blanca. All the beauty and drama, all the humor and contrast of the trip with the Palmers, had no direct fictional value to me. It is hard to explain why, but so it was. I did not so much as write a poem based on that gorgeous experience.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The White House Musicale

The Homestead on the day of our return, was not only a violent contrast to the castle in Glen Eyrie, but its eaves were dripping with water and its rooms damp and musty. It was sodden with loneliness. Father was in Dakota and mother was away never to return, and the situation would have been quite disheartening to me had it not been for Zulime who did not share my melancholy, or if she did she concealed it under that smiling stoicism which she derived from her deeply philosophic father. She pretended to be glad of the peace of our plain reality.

Life with her was not lacking in variety. From the splendors of Colorado and the luxury of private cars and palatial chambers, she now dropped, with a suddenness which should have been disconcerting, to the level of scouring pots and cooking her own meals. It was several days before we succeeded in finding a cook. "This is what it means to be the wife of an unpopular novelist," I said to her.

"I'm not complaining. It's fun," she replied.

The house was soon in order and when my brother arrived later in the week, she greeted him with the composure of a leisured hostess. In such wise she met every demand upon her.

It was Franklin's first night at home since mother went away, and I labored to cheer him with the fiction that she was "on a visit" to some of her old friends and would soon return.

The Junior as I called him, was in a serious mood for another reason. After more than twelve years of life as an actor, he had decided to quit the stage, something the player is traditionally supposed to be incapable of doing, and he had come to me for aid and encouragement. "I have a good opportunity to go into the management of a rubber plantation," he explained, "and I'd like to have you buy out my share in the Homestead in order to give me a little money to work on."

To this I agreed, although I had grave doubts of the rubber business. To have him give up the stage I considered a gain, for while he was a capable player of middle-aged character parts, I saw no lasting success ahead of him—on the contrary I imagined him getting into a more and more precarious condition. Nothing is more hopeless than an elderly actor out of a job and subject to the curt dismissals of contemptuous managers. Frank had always been gayly unconcerned about the future and he was not greatly troubled now; he was merely desirous of a fixed home and a place to vote. With the promise of my cash for his share of the Homestead, and my support in his Mexican venture, he cheered up markedly and went away almost as carefree as a boy.

In the quiet of the days which followed I worked each morning, sometimes on The Steadfast Widow Delaney, and sometimes on a revision of the novel which I had variously and from time to time called On Special Duty, and The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop. Having been accepted by Lorimer, this story was about to be printed under this latter title as a serial in the Post.

Each afternoon I saddled my Klondike horse who was in need of exercise, and galloped about over the hills for an hour or two. We were familiar figures by this time, and the farmers when they saw me leaping a pasture fence or climbing a hill, would smile (I assume that they smiled), and say, there goes that literary cuss, or words to that general effect. I took a boyish delight in showing that Ladrone would walk a log or leap a ditch at the mere touch of my heel.

Occasionally I went to LaCrosse with Zulime to visit our good friends the Eastons, and it was on one of these visits that I had my first long ride in an automobile. Incredible as it may seem now, there were very few motor cars in the county in 1901, and Easton's machine would excite laughter to-day. It was dumpy of form and noisy and uncertain of temper, but it made the trip to Winona and almost home again. It broke down helplessly in the last mile, a treachery which caused its owner the deepest chagrin, although it gave me the final touch for a humorous story of our outing, a sketch which I sold to Harper's Weekly. The editor had a fine illustration made for it, one which gave further force to my description of the terrific speed with which we whirled through the landscape. As I recall it we rose to nearly seventeen miles an hour!

As The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, actually began to appear in The Post, I became sharply concerned with the question of preparing it for book publication. I decided to go to New York and look the ground over very carefully before making selection of another publisher.

My life in the Homestead was comfortable, almost too comfortable. It lacked stimulus. Riding my horse, gathering hickory nuts, and playing tennis or "rummy," were all very well in their way, but they left me dissatisfied, and after the cold winds began to blow and my afternoons were confined to the house, I stagnated. Like Prudden, Grinnell and other of my trailer friends, I was disposed to pitch my winter camp somewhere on Manhattan Island. The Rocky Mountains for four months in summer and the rest of the year in New York City appeared an ideal division of my life for a western novelist.

I had some reason to think this arrangement was also satisfactory to my wife. To her the Wilderness was a strange and wonderful place in which to try her powers of endurance, but the trail had none of the charms of association which it possessed for me. She was quite ready to accompany me to the city although she professed to be content with Neshonoc. She was entirely urban whereas I was an absurd mixture of pioneer and trailer, fictionist and farmer.

We left West Salem in late October and in less than three days were settled in the little hotel in Fifteenth Street where we had lived during two previous winters. My confidence in my new novel was not sufficient to warrant me in paying more than twenty dollars per week for our little apartment, and as for Zulime—she professed to wonder how I dared to pay as much as seventeen.

One by one and two by two our faithful friends called, Burroughs, Gilder, Howells, Marion and Edward MacDowell, the Pages, Juliet Tompkins—no one appeared to think ill of us because we returned to our shabby little suite. We dined at Katherine Herne's, finding James A., "away," and with Frank Norris and his wife who were (like ourselves), just beginning to feel a little more secure of a living, while from Seton and Bacheller who were passing from glory to glory, we had kindly invitations to visit their new houses, for both of them were building, Bacheller at Sound Beach and Seton at Coscob.

Seton admitted to me that he had already acquired five times the amount he had once named as the summit of his hopes, and Bacheller awed me by the quiet ease of his way of life. In the opulent presence of these men, I sang a very meek and slender song. I hated to admit my poverty, but what was the use of making any concealment?

It remains to say that neither Bacheller nor Seton expressed in the slightest degree the sense of superiority which their larger royalties might have warranted. I am quite sure they never went so far as to feel sorry for me although they very naturally rejoiced in their own triumphant progress. In some ways I envied them, but I begrudged them nothing.

It chanced that the Setons were far enough along with their building to announce a House Warming, and on New Year's Day, Zulime and I were fortunate enough to be included in the list of their guests. On the Saturday train we found Lloyd Osbourne, Richard Le Gallienne and several others whom we knew and on arrival at the new house on its rocky ledge above the lake, we found that the party also included Mary Fanton, Carl Lumholz, Emery Pottle and Gertrude Lynch.

Seton and I spent part of the afternoon fixing up a teepee which we constructed out of an old Sibley tent, while the other guests skated on the pond. What a dinner we enjoyed that night! What youthful spirits we brought to it! Afterward we sang and danced—we all danced, even Zulime danced for the first time in her life—so she said.

No one had gray hair, no one doubted the future, no one acknowledged impending cloud. We toasted the longevity of "Wyndygoul" and the continued success of its builder. We pledged eternal allegiance to our hostess, and so without a care of the future, watched the New Year dawn.

At two in the morning when I crept away to my bed, the tom-tom and the piano were both sounding out with almost undiminished vigor. It was a night to remember and I do remember it with the pleasure an old man has in the days of his early manhood—not so very early either for I was on the hither side of forty!

Upon our return to the city I found a letter from Bok with a check for eight hundred dollars in it. This was in response to a note of mine respecting an offer of seven hundred and fifty. "Better make it eight hundred," I wrote, and so, in my triumph, I led Zulime to Vantine's and there purchased for her a carved gold ring set with three rose diamonds, the handsomest present I had ever dared to buy for her. "This is to make amends for the measly little engagement ring you were forced to accept," I remarked by way of explanation.

She protested at my reckless waste of money (as she had done with regard to the brown cloak), but to no avail, and thereafter if she occasionally brought the conversation round to Oriental jewelry, I am sure she is not to be blamed. She is still wearing that ring, though she no longer finds the same girlish pleasure in displaying it.

The actual making of my serial into book form began soon after New Years, for I find records of my contract with Harper and Bros., and the arrival of bundles of proof. By the end of February the book was substantially made and ready for distribution, and a handsome book it was—to me. Whatever it had started out to be, it had ended as a fictional study of the red man in his attempt to walk the white man's road, and as a concept of his tragic outlook I still think it worth while.

The three men in control of the reorganized firm of Harper and Bros., George Harvey, Frederick Duneka and Frank Leigh, all professed a firm belief in The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, and promised me such a boost as I had never had. This promise they set about to fulfill.

As the day of publication came on they took generous squares of space in the daily papers, and whole pages in the magazines. They astonished and somewhat daunted me by putting an almost life-size portrait on the bill boards of all the elevated roads, and then to the consternation of my wife, The Weekly published a full page reproduction of her photograph, a portrait which they had obtained from me to use, as I supposed, in the ordinary way in the literary column of the Sunday papers. I had no idea of its being a full page illustration. I was troubled and uneasy about this for a day or two, but realizing that the firm was doing its best to make my book known to the public, I could not with justice complain. In truth the use of the portrait seemed not to make any difference one way or the other. It certainly did Zulime no harm.

At my request the firm made up a very handsome special copy of the novel which I sent to President Roosevelt, with a word of explanation concerning the purpose which underlaid the writing of the tale.

Early in March the book appeared with everything in its favor. True there was opportunity for controversy in its delineation of aggressive cattlemen, but those who had so bitterly criticized my pictures of the prairie life in Main Traveled Roads, were off their guard with respect of the mountains. My reviewers quite generally accepted the novel as a truthful presentation of life on an Indian reservation in the nineties. Furthermore my sympathetic interpretation of the Army's attitude toward the red men caused the story to be quite generally commended by the officers. This surprised and delighted me, but I was especially gratified by Roosevelt's hearty praise of it. "It is your best work so far," he wrote me, "and I am in full sympathy with your position."

Requests for stories, interviews, articles and biographical notes, flowed in upon me. It really looked like a late second arrival of Hamlin Garland. Not since the excitement of putting Main Traveled Roads on the market had I been so hopeful and in the midst of my other honors came a note from the President, inviting me to visit him, and with it a card to a musicale at the White House.

Life in the East as the reader can see, was very alluring to Zulime as well as to me, and though as April came on, we both felt the call of the West, I am not sure whether we would have wrought our courage to the point of deserting our little apartment on Fifteenth Street, had it not been for the President's invitation, which was in effect a command, an honor as well as a pleasure, which we did not think of disregarding.

As I had not voted the Republican ticket and had no political standing with the Administration, this invitation was personal. It came from Roosevelt as a friend and fellow-trailer—a fact which enhanced its value to me. We began at once to plan our return to Chicago in such wise that it would include a week in Washington, which we had not visited since our wedding journey.

It must have been about this time that the Annual Meeting of the Institute took place. I recall Howells presiding with timidity and very evident embarrassment when it came to the duty of putting certain resolutions to vote. He seemed sad and old that night—indeed as I looked around the table, I was startled to find how many of the men I had considered "among the younger writers" were gray and haggard. Mabie, Page, Hopkinson Smith, Gilder and Stedman—all were older than I had remembered them. Edward MacDowell, who was sitting beside me, remarked upon the change, and I replied, "Yes, you and I are young only by contrast. To Frank Norris and Stewart White, we are already veterans."

[That was twenty years ago, and I am three score years and more, and most of those who dined with me that night are in their graves, only Page, of all the group, is left. Another generation altogether is on the stage whilst I and Stewart White are grouped together as "older men." I am seeing literary history made whether I am credited with making any of it, myself, or not. At times I have an appalling sense of the onward sweep of the years. Are they carrying us to higher grounds in fiction and in other arts, or are they descending to lower levels of motive and workmanship?]

It was glorious spring when we reached Washington, and in the glow of my momentary sense of triumph we went to one of the best hotels and enjoyed for the moment the sense of being successful and luxurious folk.

In calling on the President the following day I was a little taken aback by his frankness in speaking of my changing point of view. "You have pictured the reverse side of the pioneer," he said with a gleam of mischief in his eyes. "In your study of the Indian's case you have discovered the fact that the borderer is often the aggressor and sometimes the thief." He repeated his praise of the book and then said, "I shall make use of your knowledge of the conditions on the Western reservations. You and George Bird Grinnell know what is going on out there and I intend to use you both—unofficially."

To this I agreed, and when he gave me a card to the Secretary of the Interior and told me to take up with the Commissioner certain reforms which I had suggested, I put the card in my pocket and set about the task. It was only a small card, a visiting card, and when, in my ignorance of official life, I walked in on the Secretary with that tiny slip of pasteboard in my hand, I had no idea of its explosive power. The Secretary who was lounging at his desk like a tired and discouraged old man, did not think me important enough to warrant a rise out of his chair, until he read the card which I handed to him. After that I owned the office! That card made me the personal representative of the President—for the moment.

On the following day Roosevelt allowed me to sit in at some of the meetings in the Executive Chamber, and it was at one of these that I met for the first time the most engaging Chief of the Forestry Bureau, Gifford Pinchot. At night Zulime and I dined with William Dudley Foulke and at nine o'clock we went to the White House Musicale.

That musicale at the White House is one of the starry nights in Zulime's life, as well as in my own, for not only did we meet the President and Mrs. Roosevelt and many of the best known figures in American art, letters, politics, and statesmanship, we also heard Paderewski play as we had never heard him play before.

We were seated close to the piano and when that potent, shock-haired Pole spread his great hands above the keys I fancied something of the tiger in the lithe grace of his body, and in his face a singular and sultry solemnity was expressed. Inspired no doubt by the realization that he was playing before a mighty ruler—a ruler by the divine right of brain power,—he played with magnetic intensity. Something mysterious, something grandly moving went out from his fingers. No other living musician could, at that moment have equaled him.

For a few hours Zulime and I enjoyed the white light which beat upon two of the great personalities of that day—one the world's greatest piano player, the other the most powerful and the most popular man in all America—and when we retired to the obscurity of our hotel we were silent with satisfaction. For the moment it seemed that fortune was about to empty her golden horn at my feet. I was happily married, my latest book was a hit, and I had the friendship and the favor of the President.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Signs of Change

As a matter of record, and for the benefit of young readers who may be contemplating authorship, I here set down the fact that notwithstanding my increasing royalties, my gross income for 1901 was precisely $3,100. Out of this we saved five hundred dollars. Neither my wife nor I had any great hopes of the future. Neither of us felt justified in any unusual expenditures, and as for speculation—nothing could induce me to buy a share of stock—or even a bond (gilt-edged or otherwise), for I owned a prejudice, my father's prejudice, against all forms of intangible wealth. Evidences of wealth did not appeal to me. I wanted the real thing, I wanted the earth. Nothing but land gave me the needed sense of security.

In my most exalted moments I began to dream of using my income from The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop in the purchase of more Oklahoma land. In imagination I saw myself in a wide-rimmed hat and white linen suit sitting at ease on the porch of a broad-roofed house (built in the Mexican style with a patio) looking out over my thousand acres—I had decided to have just a thousand acres, it made such a mouth-filling announcement to one's friends.

I did not go so far as to think of a life without labor (I expected to work in the North till February, then rest and ride horse-back for three months in the South), but I did hope to relieve Zulime of some of her drudgery. Now that I think back to it, I am not at all sure that my wife rejoiced over my plan to go to Weatherford to purchase another farm. It is probable that I overcame her objections by telling her that I wanted more material for my book of Indian tales; anyhow I left her in Chicago almost as soon as we arrived there, and went again to Darlington and Colony to see Major Stouch and John Seger, and to make certain observations for President Roosevelt.

Seger, unskilled as he was with the pen, could talk with humor and pictorial quality, and some of his stories had so stimulated my imagination that I was eager to have more time with him among his wards. Without precisely following his narratives I had found myself able to reproduce the spirit of them in my own diction. His ability as a sign-talker was of especial service to me for, as he signed to his visitors, he muttered aloud, for my benefit, what he was expressing in gesture, and also what the red man signed in reply. In this way I got at the psychology of the Cheyenne to a degree which I could not possibly compass through an interpreter.

While looking for farms during the day, I drew from Seger night by night, the amazing story of his career among the Southern Cheyennes. It was a rough and disjointed narrative, but it was stirring and valuable as authentic record of the Southwest. "The Red Pioneer," "Lone Wolf's Old Guard," and many more of my tales of red people were secured on this trip. Several dealing with the Blackfeet and Northern Cheyennes, like "the Faith of His Fathers" and "White Weasel" I gained from Stouch. None of them are true in the sense of being precisely the way they were told, for I took very few notes. They are rather free transcripts of the incidents which chanced to follow my liking—but they reflect the spirit of the original narratives and are bound together by one underlying motive which is to show the Indian as a human being, a neighbor. "We have had plenty of the 'wily redskin' kind of thing," I said to Stouch. "I am going to tell of the red man as you and Seger have known him, as a man of the polished stone age trying to adapt himself to steam and electricity."

It happened that plenteous rains had made Oklahoma very green and beautiful, and as I galloped about over the wide swells of the Caddo country, I was disposed to buy all the land that joined me. Imagining myself the lord of a thousand acres, I achieved a profound joy of living. It was good to glow in the sunlight, to face the sweet southern wind, and to feel once more beneath my knees the swelling muscles of a powerful horse. In a very vivid sense I relived the days when, as a lad of twelve, I rode with Burton and my sister Harriet along the prairie swells of the Cedar Valley some thirty years before. "Washitay," at such moments was not only the land of the past but the hope of the future.

My red neighbors interested me. The whole problem of their future was being worked out almost within sight of my door. Here the men of the Polished Stone Age and the men of gasoline engines and electrical telephones met and mingled in a daily adjustment which offered material of surpassing value to the novelist who could use it. Humor and pathos, tragic bitterness and religious exaltation were all within reach of my hand.

The spring nights which came to me there at Colony were of a quality quite new to me. The breeze, amiable and moist, was Southern, and the moonlight falling from the sky like a silent, all-enveloping cataract of silver, lay along the ground so mystically real that I could feel it with my hand. The air was at once tropic and Western, and this subtle blending of the North and the South, the strange and the familiar, appealed to me with such power that I wrote Zulime a statement of my belief that in becoming a part-owner in this land, I had assured for us both a happy and prosperous future. "I shall come here every spring," I declared, and in the glow of this enthusiasm, I purchased another farm of two hundred and forty acres and arranged with Seger for its management.

Alas, for my piece of mind! On my way homeward, at Reno, I encountered a simoon of most appalling power. An equatorial wind which pressed against the car and screamed at the window—a hot, unending pitiless blast withering the grain and tearing the heart out of young gardens—a storm which brought back to me the dreadful blizzard of dust which swept over our Iowa farm in the spring of '72. There was something grand as well as sorrowful in this unexpected display of desert ferocity.

My dream of a thousand-acre ranch shriveled with the plants. The prairie abandoning its youthful, buoyant air, took on a sinister and savage grandeur. To escape from the ashes of these ruined fields was now a passionate desire. The value of my land in Washitay fell almost to the vanishing point. Illinois became a green and pleasant pasture toward which I drove with gratitude and relief.

[I insert a line to say that this was only a mood. I went on with my purchase of lands till I had my thousand acres, but these acres were in scattered plots and the house with the patio and the porch was never built.]

At the Agency just before I left for the North I had hired some Cheyenne women to make for me a large council teepee which I had in mind to set up as my dwelling at Eagle's Nest Camp, where Zulime and I had agreed to spend the summer. Boyishly eager to reproduce as well as I could a Cheyenne house, I assembled all my blankets, parfleches, willow beds and other furnishings and raised my lodge on poles on the edge of the wood just inside the Camp's entrance.

It made a singularly appropriate addition to the reservation, to my thinking, at least, and I took inordinate pride in its ownership. Trim and white and graceful it stood against the forest wall, its crossed poles sprangling from its top with poetic suggestion of aboriginal life, and when, with elaborate ceremony, I laid the fuel for its first fire, calling upon our patron, Wallace Heckman, to touch a match to the tinder, I experienced a sense of satisfaction.

To my artist friends it was a "picturesque accessory"—to me it was a talisman of things passing. The smoke of the hickory faggots filling that conical roof-tree brought back to me a cloud of memories of the prairies of the Sioux, the lakes of the Chippewa, and the hills of the Cheyenne. Thin as were its walls, they shut out (for me) the commonplace present, helping me to reconstruct the world of Blackhawk and the Sitting Bull, and when I walked past it, especially at night, my mind took joy in its form, and a pleasant stir within my blood made manifest of its power.

Browne acknowledged its charm and painted a moonlight sketch of it, and Seton, who came by one day, helped me dedicate its firehole. In the light of its embers, he and I renewed our youth while smoking the beautiful Pipe of Meditation, which a young Cheyenne chief had given me in token of his friendship.

It happened that I was scheduled to give a series of lectures at the University of Chicago on The Outdoor Literature of America, and with a delightful feeling of propriety in the fact I set to work to write these addresses in my canvas lodge, surrounded by all its primitive furnishings. It made an admirable study, but at night as I lay on my willow couch, I found the moonlight so intense and the converging lines of the lodge poles so suggestive of other folk and other times that slumber was fitful. The wistful ghosts of Blackhawk and his kind seemed all about me. Not till the moon set or the shadows of the forest covered me, was I able to compose myself to sleep.

For several weeks I wrote at ease upon my theme and then, into the carefree atmosphere of my Lodge of Dreams came the melancholy news that William McClintock, my giant uncle, had been stricken by the same mysterious malady which had broken my mother's heart, and that he was lying motionless on his bed in the narrow space of his chamber. The "stroke" (so my aunt wrote) had come upon him (as upon my mother) without the slightest warning, and with no discoverable cause.

On my return to the Homestead I went at once to see him. He was sitting in my mother's wheeled chair, quite helpless, yet cheerful and confident of ultimate recovery. He had always been a man of dignity, and singularly abstemious of habit, and these qualities were strongly accentuated by his sudden helplessness. He was very gentle, very patient, and the sight of him lying there made speaking very difficult for me.

When the doctor would permit, he loved to lie in his chair on the porch of his little cottage where he could look out upon the hills, his eyes reflecting his beloved landscape like those of a dreaming cage-weary lion. Inarticulate, like my mother, he was nevertheless the poet, and never failed to respond—at least with a meaning glance—to any imaginative word in my discourse.

How much he had meant to me in all the days of my boyhood! As the master of the threshing machine forty years agone, he had filled my childish heart with worship. As the swift-footed deer trailer, the patient bee-hunter, the silent lover of the forest, he had held my regard and though he had never quite risen to the high place which my Uncle David occupied in my boyhood's worship, he had always been to me a picturesque and kindly figure. Year by year I had watched his giant form stoop, and his black beard wax thin and white, and now, here he sat almost at the end of his trail, unable to move, yet expressing a kind of elemental bravery, a philosophic patience which moved me as no words of lamentation could have done.

Strange malady! He who had never met his match in stark strength could not now by the exercise of all his will, lift that limp arm from his side and as I sat beside him I recalled my last sad meeting with Major Powell, the man who first guided a canoe through the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, and in my mind arose a conception of what these two men, each in his kind represented in the story of American pioneering. One the far-famed explorer, the other the unknown rifleman behind the plow. With William McClintock—with my father, with Major Powell, a whole world, a splendid and heroic world was passing never to return, and when I took my uncle's hand in parting I was almost certain that I should never see him again.

Once he was king of forest men. To him a snow-capped mountain range Was but a line, a place of mark, A view-point on the trail. Then He had no dread of dark, No fear of change. Now an uprolled rug upon the floor Appalls his feet. His withered arm Shakes at the menace of a door, And every wind-waft does him harm. God! 'Tis a piteous thing to see This ranger of the hills confined To the small compass of his room Like a chained eagle on a tree, Lax-winged and gray and blind. Only in dreams he sees the bloom On far hills where the red deer run. Only in memory guides the light canoe Or stalks the bear with dog and polished gun. In him behold the story of the West, The chronicle of rifleman behind the plow, Typing the life of those who knew No barrier but the sunset in their quest. On his bent head and grizzled hair Is set the crown of those who shew New cunning to the wolf, new courage to the bear.

Another evidence of melancholy change came to me in the failing powers of Ladrone, my mountain horse, who had come through the winter very badly. I found him standing in the pasture, weak and inactive, taking no interest in the rich grasses under his feet. In the belief that exercise would do him good, I saddled him and started to ride about the square, but soon drew rein. He had not the strength to carry me!

Sadly dismounting I led him back to the stable. It was evident that he would never again career with me across the hills. Bowed and dejected he resumed his place in the paddock. Standing thus, with hanging head, he appeared to be dreaming of the days when as a part of the round-up, in the far Northwest, he had carried his master over the range and through the herd with joyous zeal. Each time I looked at him I felt a twinge of pain.

Everything I could do for him was done, every remedial measure was tried, but he grew steadily worse, and at last, I called a neighbor to my aid and said, "Oliver, my horse is very sick. I fear his days are numbered. Study him, do what you can for him, and if you find he cannot be cured, put him away. Don't tell me when it is done or how it is done—I don't want to know. You understand?"

He understood, and one morning, a few days later, as I looked in the pasture for the gray pony, he was nowhere to be seen. In the dust of the driveway, I detected the marks of his small feet. The toes of his shoes pointed toward the gate, and there were no returning foot-prints. He had gone away on the long trail which leads to the River of Darkness and The Wide Lands Beyond It.

His bridle and saddle were hanging in the barn (they are still there), silent memorials of the explorations in which he and I had played a resolute part.

Something grips me by the throat as I remember his eyes,

"Brown, clear and calm, with color down deep, Where his brave, proud soul seemed to lie."

I recall the first days we spent together, beautiful days in the Frazer Valley, when jubilant cranes bugled from the skies, and humming birds moved in myriads along the river's banks—memories of those desperate days in the Skeena forests, amid dank and poisonous plants—of marches on the tundra along the high Stickeen Divide—all these come back. I see him crowding close to my fire, thin and weak.

I relive once more that bitter night on the wharf in Glenora when (chilled by the cold wind), he first began to cough. I am thinking of his journey on the boat with me to Wrangell; of the day when I left him there (the only horse on the coast); of my return; of our long trip to Seattle; of his trust in me as he faced the strange monsters of the city; of his long dark ride to St. Paul; of the joyous day when I opened his prison door and finding him safe and well, rode him forth to the admiration of my uncles at the county fair. A vast section of my life faded with the passing of that small gray horse. "Lost my Ladrone, gone the wild living. I dream, but my dreaming is vain."

My sense of uneasiness was deepened by another warning, a third sign of decay. One morning my father while apparently in his usual health, suddenly grew dizzy and fell and as I bent above him he gazed up at me with an expression which I had never before seen in his face, a humble, helpless, appealing look. It seemed that he was going as William had gone.

Happily I was mistaken. His indomitable soul reasserted itself. He refused to surrender. He rallied. "I'm all right," he said at last, a grim line coming back into his mouth. "It's passing off. I can move," and lifting his arm he opened and shut his hand in proof of it. "I'm better than a dozen dead men yet."

He was distinctly stronger next day, and when, looking from my window I saw him going about his work in the garden, bareheaded as was his habit, resolute and unsubdued, I was reassured, but never again did he move with the same vigor as before. For the first time he acknowledged his age.

During all these melancholy experiences so significant of the dying border, I had the comfort of my undaunted wife whose happy spirit refused to be clouded by what she recognized as merely the natural decay of the preceding generation. Her mind was set on the future, our future. She refused to yield her youthful right to happiness, and under the influence of her serene philosophy I went back to my writing, or at least to the serious consideration of another mountain theme, which was taking shape in my brain.

With a mere love-story I had never been content. For me a sociological background was necessary in order to make fiction worth while, and I was minded to base my next novel on a study of the "war" which had just taken place, at Cripple Creek, between the Free Miner, the Union Miner and the Operator or Capitalist.

The suggestion for this theme had come to me during a call on some friends in New York City, where I had been amused and somewhat embarrassed, by the ecstatic and outspoken admiration of a boy of fourteen, who was (as his mother put it) "quite crazy over miners, Indians and cowboys. His dream is to go West and illustrate your books," she had said to me.

This lad's enthusiasm for the West and his ambition to be an illustrator of western stories had started me on a tale in which a fine but rather spoiled New York girl was to be carried to Colorado by the enthusiasm of her youthful brother, and there plunged (against her will) into the warfare of mountaineers and miners, a turbulence which her beloved brother would insist on sharing. Such a girl might conceivably find herself in the storm center of a contest such as that which had taken place on Bull Hill in the late nineties.

I called this study Hesper, or the Cowboy Patrol for the reason that in "the Cripple Creek War," cattlemen had acted as outposts for the union miners, and in this fact I perceived something picturesque and new and telling, something which would give me just the imaginative impulse I required.

Some of my friendly critics were still occasionally writing to me to ask, "Why don't you give us more Main Traveled Roads stories," and it was not easy to make plain to them that I had moved away from that mood, and that my life and farm life had both greatly altered in thirty years. To repeat the tone of that book would have been false not only to my art, but to the country as well.

Furthermore, I had done that work. I had put together in Main Traveled Roads and its companion volumes a group of thirty short stories (written between 1887 and 1891), in which I had expressed all I had to say on that especial phase of western life. To attempt to recover the spirit of my youth would not only have been a failure but a bore—even to those who were urging me to the task. It was my business to keep moving—to accompany my characters as they migrated into the happier, more hopeful West. Like them I was "Campin' through, podner, just a campin' through."

As in The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, I had dealt with the three-cornered fight of the cattlemen, the Indian, and the soldier, so now, in 1902, I returned to the mountain West, to picture another conflict, equally stirring and possessing a still finer setting and back-ground. In Hesper I was concerned with a war, in which most of the action had taken place among the clouds, on the hilltops nearly two miles above sea-level. There was something grandly pictorial in this drama; but, after writing a few chapters of it, I felt the need of revisiting the scene.

Zulime again accompanied me and as our train slid down the familiar road leading to Colorado Springs and we could see the lightning flashing among the high summits on which I had laid the scenes of my story, Zulime glowed with joy and I took on a renewed sense of power. For an hour I felt equal to my task, to be historian of the free miner seemed to me a worthy office.

The Ehrichs were again our hosts and they (as well as Russell Wray, the Editor of the Gazette) took the keenest interest in my design. From Wray and his friends I began at once to derive an understanding of the part which "Little London" (as the miners called the Springs) had taken in the war. I relied on a visit to Bull Hill and Victor to furnish the Sky-town or "Red-neck" point of view.

Wray was especially valuable to me, for he had taken part in the famous expedition of the "Yaller Legs" and his experiences as a reporter and his sense of humor had enabled him to report both sides of the controversy. He had many friends in the camp, to whom he gave me letters.

The character which interested me most, in all the warring factions, was the free miner, the prospector, the man of the trail. Him I clearly understood. He had been companion in most of my trips into the wild. He was blood brother to my father, and cousin to my heroic uncles. He represented the finest phases of pioneering. "Matt Kelley," "Rob Raymond" and "Jack Munroe," I knew and loved, and their presence in this labor war redeemed it from the sordid, uninspired struggle which such contests usually turn out to be. In my design these three characters filled heroic place.

Zulime (with no literary problems to distract her) had another easeful, idyllic summer. The Ehrichs, the Wrays and the Palmers welcomed her as an old friend, and in their companionship she rode and camped and dined in easeful leisure, but I was on the move. I visited a ranch on the plains of Eastern Colorado, joined a round-up in the Sierra Blanca country, explored the gambling-houses and mines of Cripple Creek and Victor, and spent two weeks reëxploring the White River Plateau, this time with Walter Wykoff, of Princeton. For a week or two, Wykoff, Miss Ehrich and Zulime and I camped high on the shoulder of Pike's Peak. Vast and splendid scenes of storm and sun were printed on my mind, and, while the actual writing of my novel halted, I felt certain that I was doing just the right thing. I felt sure of finishing it in the proper spirit of enthusiasm.

The trip not only enabled me to finish Hesper—it suggested several of the stories which went into They of the High Trails and gave me the plan of The Forester's Daughter. I returned to West Salem, brown as an Indian and bursting with energy, and for several weeks toiled with desperate haste to put my impressions, imaginings in form.

Each morning of those peaceful days I took to mother's room, on the sunward side of the old Homestead, and there wrought into final shape the materials I had gathered. I had only to shut my eyes to see again the clouds circling the walls of Shavano. In imagination I rode once more with Matt Kelley up Bull Hill, or, sitting opposite the chief of the Miners' Union, reënjoyed his graphic account of the coming of the Federal troops. The bawling roar of the round-up on the meadow came back to fill my eyes with pictures of the Sierra Blanca foothills. In truth I had no need of notes. I was embarrassed with material. I threw my note-books into a drawer and forgot them.

Letters from my publishers informed me that The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop was marching on, but that they hoped I was at work on something to follow it. To this I replied:

"Yes, I am in the midst of a story which I hope will be as good as The Captain, but don't hurry me!"

Whilst I, busied with my fiction, kept to my study, Zulime was ecstatically rearranging furniture. During our absence in Colorado, father had moved to another house, relinquishing all claim on the Homestead, and for the first time in our lives my wife and I were authentic householders in full possession of every room. We had a door-bell, and our clock was our own. Our meal-times conformed to our will, and not to another's. We went to bed when we pleased, and rose when we got ready.

Zulime's joy of ownership was almost comical. Leading me from room to room she repeated, "This is our house. Don't you like our house? Isn't it fun to have it all to ourselves?"

Her rapture instructed me. I perceived that the old Homestead had not yet served its purpose. So far as my father was concerned it was a story told, a drama almost ended, but as the undivided home of my young wife it developed new meaning. Another soul was coming into being; another tenant was about to take its place beneath our roof. Small feet would soon be dancing through those silent rooms, careless of the men and women whose gray heads and gaunt limbs had been carried out over their thresholds to a final resting-place beneath the sod.

A new interest, a new phase of life, was coming to Zulime, and to me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Old Pioneer Takes the Back Trail

In the midst of this period of hard work on Hesper, news of the death of Frank Norris came to me. Frank Norris the most valiant, the happiest, the handsomest of all my fellow craftsmen. Nothing more shocking, more insensate than the destruction of this glorious young fictionist had come to my literary circle, for he was aglow with a husband's happiness, gay with the pride of paternity, and in the full spring-tide of his powers. His going left us all poorer and took from American literature one of its strongest young writers.

The papers at once wired me for tributes, and these I gave, gladly, and later when one of the magazines paid me for an article, I used the money in the purchase of a tall clock to serve as a memorial. This time-piece stands in the hall of my city home and every time I pass it I am reminded of the fine free spirit of Frank Norris. In my small corner of the world he remains a vital memory.

All through October I wrote on my novel, but as the dark days of autumn came on, I began as usual to dwell upon my interests in the city and not even Zulime's companionship could keep me from a feeling of restlessness. I longed for literary comradeship. Theoretically my native village was an ideal place in which to write, actually it sapped me and after a few weeks depressed me. With no literary "atmosphere," damnable word, I looked away to New York for stimulus. I did not go so far as one of my friends who declined to have anything to do with his relatives simply because he did not like them, but I clearly recognized that my friends in the city meant more to me than any of my Wisconsin neighbors and it became more and more evident that to make and keep an arbitrary residence in a region which did not in itself stimulate or satisfy me, was a mistake. There was nothing to do in West Salem but write.

Above all other considerations, however, I had a feeling, perhaps it was a mistaken one,—that my powers grew in proportion as I went Eastward. In West Salem I was merely an amateur gardener, living a life which approached the vegetable,—so far as external action went. In Chicago I was a perversity, a man of mis-directed energy. In New York I was, at least respected as a writer.

In short New York allured me as London allures the writers of England, and as Paris attracts the artists of Europe. It was my literary capital. Theoretically I belonged to Wisconsin, as Hardy belonged to Wessex or Barrie to Scotland, actually my happiest home was adjacent to Madison Square. Only as I neared the publishing centers did I feel the slightest confidence in the future. This increased sense of importance may have been based upon an illusion but it was a very real emotion nevertheless.

Why should I not feel this? From my village home, from digging potatoes and doing carpenter work, I went (almost directly) to a luncheon at the White House, and the following night I attended a dinner given to Mark Twain on his sixty-seventh birthday with William Dean Howells, Thomas B. Reed, Wayne McVeagh, Brander Matthews, H. H. Rogers, George Harvey, Pierpont Morgan, Hamilton Wright Mabie and a dozen others who were leaders in their chosen work, as my table mates. Perhaps I was not deserving of these honors—I'm not urging that point—I am merely stating the facts which made my home in West Salem seem remote and lonely to me. Acknowledging myself a weak mortal I could not entirely forego the honors which the East seemed willing to bestow, and as father was in good health with a household of his own, I felt free to spend the entire winter in New York. For the first time in many years, I felt relieved of anxiety for those left behind.

New York was in the worst of its subway upheaval when we landed there, but having secured a small furnished apartment in a new but obscure hotel on Forty-seventh street, Zulime and I settled down for the winter. Our tiny three-room suite (a lovely nest for a woman) was not in the least like a home for an old trailer and corn-husker like myself. Its gas log and gimcrack mantel, its "Mission" furniture and its "new art" rugs were all of hopeless artificiality, but our sitting-room (on the quiet side of the building) received the sun, and there on the lid of a small desk I took up and carried forward the story of Hesper which my publishers had asked me to prepare for the spring trade.

Before we had time to unpack, a note came from President Roosevelt asking me to return to Washington to confer on a phase of the Indian service with which I was familiar, and I went at once—glad to be of any service—especially an unofficial service.

It was always a pleasure as well as an honor to meet Roosevelt. He was our first literary president. His esthetic interests were not only keen, but discriminating. He knew what each of us had published, and valued each of us for the particular contributions we were making to American literature. Each of us gave him something—in my case it was a knowledge of the West. Notwithstanding the multiple duties of his office, he put aside a part of each day for reading and when he read, he concentrated upon his page with such intensity that he remembered all that was important in the writing.

He knew the masters in the other arts also. If he had a problem in architecture or medaling or painting to decide, he went to Mead or St. Gaudens, or Blashfield. Under his administration the White House had resumed its fine colonial character. At his direction Mead and McKim had restored it to the noble simplicity of Madison's time. They had cleared out the business offices and removed the absurd mixture of political machinery and household furniture which had accumulated under the rule of his predecessors, most of whom (coming from small inland towns) knew nothing of any art but government, and in some cases not too much of that. On this particular visit I recall the fact that repairs were going on, for the President invited me to take luncheon with his family, and we ate in a small room on the front of the house for the reason that the dining-room was in process of being restored and the howl of the floor polisher was resounding through the hall.

It may interest the reader to know that while my wife and I occasionally lunched or dined with "the choice ones of the earth," we prudently practiced "light housekeeping" between our splendid feasts. Like a brown-bearded Santa Claus I often ran the gauntlet of the elevator boy with pockets bulging bottles of milk, hunks of cheese, hot muffins, and pats of butter, and frequently, when the weather was bad, or when some one had neglected to invite us out, we supped in our room.

Once when I entered laden in this fashion I was sharply taken aback by the presence of several belated callers, very grand ladies, and only the most skilful manœuvering enabled me to slide into the closet and out of my overcoat without betraying my cargo. My predicament highly amused Zulime, while at the same time she inwardly trembled for fear of a smash. I mention this incident in order to reveal the reverse side of our splendid social progress. We were in no danger of becoming "spoiled" with feasting, so long as we kept to our Latin Quarter methods of lunching.

We had many notable dinners that winter, but our long anticipated visit to Mark Twain's house in Riverdale stands out above them all. We reached the house about seven o'clock, by way of an ancient hack which met us at the depot and carried us up the hill, into the yard of an old-fashioned mansion sheltered by great trees.

Mark came running lightly down the broad stairs to meet us in the hall, seemingly in excellent health, although his spirits were not at all as boyish as his step. "I'm glad to see you," he said cordially, "but you'll find the house a hospital. The girls have both been miserable and Mrs. Clemens, I'm sorry to say, is still too ill to see you. I bring her greetings to you and her apology."

Thereupon he related with invincible humor and vivid phraseology, the elaborate scheme of deception to which they had been forced during Jean's illness. Mrs. Clemens was very weak, so low that the slightest excitement—so the doctor warned us—might prove fatal; hence we were obliged to pretend that Jean was well but busy doing this or doing that, in order that her mother might not suspect the truth of the situation.

"I was protected by the doctor's orders, which forbade me from spending more than two minutes in Mrs. Clemens' room, but Clara, who was allowed to nurse her mother, was forced to enter upon a season of unveracity which taxed her imagination to the uttermost. She had to pretend that Jean was away on a visit, or that she was in town shopping or away at a dinner. Together we invented all kinds of social engagements for her and that involved the description of new gowns and a list of the guests of each entertainment. Oh, it was dreadful. Fortunately Clara had a good reputation with her mother, and was able to carry conviction, whereas I had a very hard time. I kept getting into shoal water."

He was very funny—I can only report the substance of his tale—and yet there was a tone in his voice which enabled me to understand the tragic situation. Mrs. Clemens' illness was hopeless.

All through the dinner he talked on in the same enthralling fashion, picturesque, humorous, tragic. He dealt with June bugs, alcohol, Christian Science, the Philippine outrage and a dozen other apparently unrelated subjects. He imitated a horse-fly. He swore. He quoted poetry. We laughed till our sides ached—and yet, all the while, beneath it all, he had in mind (as we had in mind)—that sweetly-patient invalid waiting upstairs for his good-night caress.

As a bitter agnostic as well as a tender humorist Mark Twain loomed larger in my horizon after that night. The warmly human side of him was revealed to me as never before, and thereafter I knew him and I felt that he knew me. That remote glance from beneath those shaggy eyebrows no longer deceived me. He was a tender and loyal husband. Later when I came to read the marvelous story of his life as related by Albert Bigelow Paine, I found a part of my intuitions recorded as facts. He was an elemental western American—with many of the faults and all of the excellencies of the border.

Meanwhile I was at work. In my diary of this date I find these words, "This is living! The sunlight floods our tiny sitting-room whose windows look out on a blue-and-white mountainous 'scape of city roofs. We have dined and the steam is singing in our gilded radiator. The noise and bustle of the city is far away.—I foresee that I shall be able to do a great deal of work on my novel."

In that last sentence I was reckoning without the effect of my wife's popularity. Invitations to luncheons, dinners, and theater parties began to pile up, and I could not ask Zulime to deny herself these pleasures, although I tried to keep my forenoons sacred to my pen. I returned to the manuscript of Hesper and succeeded in writing at least a thousand words each day; on fortunate mornings I was able to turn off a full chapter.

It was a gay and satisfying season. We met all our old friends and made many new ones, finding ourselves more and more at home in the city. We rode to grand receptions in the street cars—as usual—and while we ate our luncheons at inexpensive cafés, we often dined with our more prosperous fellow-craftsmen. In spite of many interruptions I managed to complete my novel. By the first of March Hesper was ready for the printer and I turned it over to Duneka.

On Zulime's birthday as I was putting the last chapter in final shape, I received a letter from father which said, "I am coming East. Meet me in Washington on the 21st." To this request there was but one answer: "I'll be there."

It was the first time that the old pioneer had taken "the back trail" since leaving Boston, nearly fifty years before, and I rejoiced in his decision. The thought of leading him into the halls of Congress and pointing out for him the orators whose doings had been so long his chief concern, was pleasureable to me. From my earliest childhood I had heard him comment on the weekly record of Congressional debates. He loved oratory. He was a hero-worshiper. With him the Capitol meant Lincoln and Grant and Blaine and Sherman. It was not a city, it was a shrine.

When he stepped from the train in Washington the following week, I was there to meet him, and for several days I led him from splendor to splendor. With me he saw Mount Vernon, the White House, Congress, the library, and his patriotism intensified as the glories of his country's capital unrolled before his eyes. He said little, only looked, and when he had harvested as much of Washington as he could carry I took him to Philadelphia, in order that he might breathe the air of Continental Hall and gaze upon its sacred Liberty Bell. His patriotism had few reservations. All these relics were of high solemnity to him.

At last as a climax we approached New York, whose glittering bays, innumerable ships and monstrous buildings awed him and saddened him. It was a picture at once incredible and familiar, resembling illustrations he had seen in the magazines, only mightier more magnificent than he had imagined any of it to be. It overwhelmed him, wearied him, disheartened him, and so it came about that the quiet dinners he took with me at my club were his most enduring pleasures, for there he rested, there he saw me at home. He acquired an understanding of my endurance of the vast and terrible town.