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With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters
Lewis B. France
With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters
MANY YEARS AGO
Forty years ago – a big slice off the long end of one’s life! A broad river with its low-lying south shore heavily timbered and rich in early summer verdure; a long bridge with a multitude of low stone piers and trestle-work at top; in midstream, two miles away, the black hull and tall masts of a man-o’-war, lying idly; between and beyond, the smooth bosom of the blue expanse dotted with fishing sloops under weather-beaten wings, moving lazily hither and yon; to the north, but invisible save a straggling outer edge of tumble-down houses – a possibility then – now, “they tell me,” a magnificent city; a decayed wharf with no signs of life, and draped in tangled sea-weed that came in with the last tide, the jagged and blackened piles stand brooding over the solemn stillness like melancholy sentinels sorrowing over a dead ambition. The ripple of the waves is a melody and the air is fragrant with a brackish sweetness.
It has been a bright day, and the afternoon shadows are beginning to lengthen. They suggest to some another day’s work nearly finished, another week drawing to a close; Saturday night, home and rest. To others they suggest – well, let that pass. To a little fellow, barefoot, coatless and with a ragged straw hat, who crawls out from one of the center piers of the old bridge, these shadows of the closing May day are ominous, yet his forebodings are not unmixed with the rose-hued pleasure of a day well spent. He did think of that river below him, twenty-five feet deep, but that was an attraction. He did think of the very near future and – but no matter; his thoughts were bright enough as he hauled up after him a string of perch as long as his precious body, and as a fit climax to his magnificent catch, an eel at least two and a half feet long and thick as his captor’s arm. What a struggle he had enjoyed with that eel before he got it to the top of the pier. His hand-line was a hopeless snarl; twice he had come within a hair’s-breadth of going overboard, but the unfortunate eel had succumbed to juvenile activity and zeal. What ten-year-old could boast comparison, as with the day’s trophies over his shoulder he plodded his way home? He felt himself an object of interest and envy to his fellows, and told with condescension, not arrogance, his experience with that eel.
Success will often take an old boy, let alone a young one, off his feet; it sometimes leads to indiscretion and results in worse than failure, and again is the cornerstone of a noble monument. That boy had fished with success off that pier more than once, but had kept his fishpole and had left the evidences of his disobedience at a friendly neighbor’s. This day he marched straight home, fishpole and all. The sable ruler of the kitchen confirmed, upon sight, the lurking apprehension that would not down in spite of triumph.
“Ah, honey! Whar’s you bin dis livelong day? Miss Mary’s gwine to give it to you. We’s been ahuntin’ an’ trapsin’ all ober dis here town, an’ yo’ pa – he was jes’ gwine – .”
But the “ambiguous givings out” of the sable goddess were cut short by the appearance of Miss Mary in person. She was a stately dame in those days, with a wealth of dark hair and with brown eyes that had in them, ah, such a world of love for that barefoot, white-haired urchin. And she had, too, a quiet way of talking that went right into the little fellow’s ears and down about his heart and lingered there. No need to ask him where he had been; she only looked at him and the fish, a serious, yet a loving look withal, took his hand and led him in to the head of the family. Court was at once convened.
“What shall we do with this boy?”
He to whom this inquiry was addressed took in the situation at a glance. The glance was a dark one, but it quickly showed the silver lining.
“Wash him, and give him some clean clothes.”
“But,” she remonstrated, “this will never do; he will be drowned some day. How often must I forbid you going near the river?”
“I dun’no, mother.”
“What is that round your leg?”
“An eel skin.”
“Why did you tie it there?”
“To keep off cramp.”
“Keep off cramp! What does the boy mean?” There was a look of wonderment in the brown eyes, and of merriment in the grey. The colored member of the court volunteered an explanation, and wound up with the prophecy:
“Dat chile’ll neber be drownded, Miss Mary; I tell you so long as he wear dat eel skin he’ll nebber hab de cramp, an’ he kin swim; you ha’ar me, Miss Mary. Why, bless yo’ stars, honey, dat chile done swim dat ribber las’ Saturday, he did; I heerd ’em tellin’ it.”
“Heard who telling it?” broke in the president.
“Why, de chillun, ob cose. Dat Buckingham boy he bantered the chile an’ took his close ober in de skiff, and Mar’s Lou, he done follered, he did, an’ dat ribber a mile wide.”
The animated and confident manner of Jane did not lessen the anxious, even horrified, expression in the brown eyes, but the grey were a study as the owner drew the abashed urchin to him, with the inquiry:
“Is it true, my boy?”
“Yes, father.”
“Go bring me your fishing tackle.”
It was a sorry looking outfit – a fraction of a cane pole, about ten feet of a common line, and an indifferent hook looped on the end. The hand line was of better material, but a wreck – a very Gordian knot. They were dubiously but promptly passed over for inspection.
“Throw these into the stove – and, Jane, you make kindling wood of this pole.”
“Oh, father!” The boy’s lips quivered, the eyes filled, but the owner of the grey eyes gently held back the appealing hand that would have rescued the precious treasures.
“Hold on, my boy; do not misunderstand; papa will trust you; you shall have the best tackle in town.”
“Why do you deal with the boy in this way?” remonstrated the mother.
“Why? Because I myself was a boy once, and I don’t want to forget it.”
The grey eyes were the first to close – it is many a long year since – and the old boy’s fill a little now, as he reverently thinks of that day.
But the boy drifted with the tide, over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, and twenty odd years ago he anchored in the wilderness, where Denver now stands, to surprise you folks from down East.
Do we have fishing in the Rocky Mountains? Aye, that we do, and right royal sport it is.
One day, nineteen years ago this summer, a neighbor came into my cabin and wanted to know of a young married woman there if she could not spare her Benedict for, say three days. He was fish hungry, this neighbor; was going off into the mountains, and wanted company. Of course she could; was glad to be rid of him. And so early next morning old Charlie was hitched to the buckboard. At five o’clock that same day there was a tent pitched in a little valley upon Bear creek, thirty-five miles from home, with two pairs of blankets, a coffee pot, two tin cups and a frying pan; not a soul or a habitation within twenty miles of us; a beautiful mountain stream, clear as crystal, cold as ice, and teeming with trout. What would you have, money? Why, bless your soul, money was at a discount; there were acres of it a little way off, only for the digging.
In those days fishing tackle was scarce, and a plum-bush pole and linen line were the best in the land. Flies were a novelty to me, but my friend had a dozen or so, some that he had saved over from more civilized times, and that had got out here by mistake. He divided with me, told me to fasten one upon the end of my line and “skitter it over the water.” This was my first and only instruction in trout fishing. “Skittering” was as novel to me as the fish, but my Professor was a Cambridge man with glasses, and I did not want him to feel that my education had been entirely neglected. I took my pole and instruction in silence, and walked a quarter of a mile up the creek. Pure instinct? Yes, I walked up stream for the single purpose of fishing down; it came just as naturally as swimming in deep water. I found a place clear of bushes for a few rods, where the current swept directly into my shore and out again, forming an eddy. I thought it a “likely place.” I gave that plum sapling a swing and landed the fly, in which I had no confidence whatever, just at the edge of the swirl. It had no sooner touched the water than I saw a salmon-colored mouth, felt a tug, and the following second my first trout was flying over my head. I deliberately put down that pole and walked out to investigate. There was no doubt about it; there he lay, kicking and gasping his life out on the green grass, his bright colors more beautiful by the contrast. He was near a foot long, and I put my hand upon him as gently as though he had been an immortal first born. It was not a dream. When he was dead I strung him upon a forked stick, went back to the eddy and caught three others, and wondered if all the trout in that stream were twins. I had already become gentler, too, even with the unwieldy plum sapling. I found their mouths were not made of cast iron nor copper lined. By the time I had fished down to camp, and with my ten trout, I felt equal to the business of the morrow. My friend, of course, had better luck, having passed his novitiate, but he complimented me in saying that I “took to it naturally.”
Camping out was no novelty, but fresh trout was a revelation, and that night we had no bad dreams under our canvas. The next evening found us preparing nearly, what a Yankee would call, two patent pails, of trout to take home to our friends and neighbors.
And here I am moved to say that ours is a noble fellowship; it is a gentle craft we cultivate, one that should beget brotherly love and all things charitable; and if any of you have, as I hope you have, a little white-haired tot who seems inclined to follow you down stream upon summer days, do not say nay, but let your prayer be: “Lord, keep my memory green.”
OVER THE RANGE
Of course it is never agreeable to go camping; it is not convenient to carry about with one bedsteads, chairs, bureaus, wash-stands, bath-tubs, and such like plunder deemed essential to comfort. And then again it is not comfortable to live out doors like a tramp. It is either too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet, – that is for a certain large class of human beings. They wonder why one will forego the comforts of our civilized ways for those of the Ute. But perhaps we may get to the solution of the problem further on.
It was dusty when our party left Idaho for a fifty-mile drive to Hot Sulphur Springs. Of course it was dusty; the dust was in the road, in our eyes and mouths, throats and lungs, just for our discomfort, and the toll-road companies were never known to keep sprinklers. So we traveled in a cloud for half an hour, then it began to rain. Of course it did; the first rain-storm for three weeks; we got damp, then we forgot the dust, and were doggedly satisfied that if pleasure had not been one of our objects in going camping it would not have rained. We got to Empire; it rained till dark, and everybody said the rainy season had begun in earnest; that it was liable to keep on raining for three weeks to get even with the “dry spell,” and we went to bed feeling very much encouraged. There is an exasperating sententiousness about the mountain weather prophet that prevails nowhere else on the globe, I verily believe; when he tells you what the weather is, or is going to be, you must believe him. You dare not even express a hope that he may be mistaken. But even this gentry, one soon begins to believe, is essential to comfort; the weather prophet is the means of agreeable disappointment. Our weather prophet was the most entertaining old liar that ever contributed to the misery of a tenderfoot or the mortification of a moss-back. The sun never broke over the eastern hills more gloriously than on the eventful next morning; he seemed to come up in a spirit of exultation, as if aware that the prophet at Empire had been maligning him. But the prophet was not overcome; far from it; the appearance of the sun was a “weather breeder,” and the cheerful old atmospheric vaticinator swore that before we could reach the summit of the range it would and must rain, and snow and hail and freeze and thaw and blow and the – . We bade him good morning sadly, and took the road with a determination to wrest comfort, if necessary, from the worst “spell of weather” the range could boast.
The rain of the day before was the first element to lend its influence to the day’s enjoyment; it had sweetened the air, if Colorado mountain air is ever otherwise; it had laid the dust, and the road was a marvel of excellence – for a toll road; it had sharpened the fragrance of the pines, and the wild flowers, lacking in perfume, made amends by such a wealth of beauty that one became lost in the multitude of bright colors.
We were a happy party that rode up through the Devil’s Gate to encounter punishment. Leaving the magnificent mass of granite cliffs reaching a thousand feet high, and wondering if he who should follow next would experience the same degree of veneration for the mighty pile, we began the ascent of Berthoud Pass. We did not climb; there is no climbing to be done, except one escapes over a precipice, and has an ambition to get back. Strolling leisurely along, the white-capped range would, from time to time, reveal itself through the green of the pines, while to the left of us plunged down from the snowy heights the beautiful mountain stream, here not degraded and a satire on its name. Its banks are fringed with rich-colored mosses and decked with flowers, and the beautiful firs, waved by the gentle breeze, seem to be bowing an accompaniment to the music of the crystal waters at their feet. As we go on, the sharp ridge of Red Mountain comes into view, guarded on the east by a monster hill, which none of our ingenious explorers, so generous in giving names, have condescended to dignify with a title. Its broad base washed by the rushing torrent, its sides clothed in a mantle of living green away up to the sharp line which marks the limit of the timber growth, and yet on and up the eye glances over the granite, with its azure background, until the vast pile is diademed with a fleecy cloud. It is a noble mountain, and involuntarily I took off my hat to it, wondering if the civil engineers, explorers, and the like, had really the monopoly of the love and veneration for the beautiful. Red Mountain! a carmine-colored excrescence dignified with a name, and this overtopping evidence of God’s handiwork, like a giant overlooking a pigmy, without anything to distinguish it from its surroundings, except its own magnificence. Well, that is enough.
But at this rate we will never get into that “infernal spell of weather” we are seeking. Up the gorge on the right, toward the summit, an ominous cloud begins to creep upon the blue, and we begin to think the prophet will, after all, command respect, but are doomed to disappointment. As the black mass rises over the summit we notice a rift in its center, soon it widens, goes to the right and left, the blue expands, and we are not deprived of a minute’s sunshine. We look down into the gorge and see the beautiful stream dancing through the firs, so far below its breadth is shrunk to a hand-span, looking now like an emerald ribbon flecked with white, and its rude noise dies into a gentle murmur as a turn in the road shuts it out from sight. On and up; disappointed about the storm nearing the summit, reaching out for the snow and the Alpine primrose, gorgeous in crimson and royal purple; finding the flowers, but the snow, alas that has been gone this three weeks, except a dirt-begrimed bushel or so a few rods from the station.
It is high noon, and, for the first time, I stand upon the “backbone of the continent,” and a good deal of a backbone it is, here only eleven thousand four hundred and odd feet high. There must have been trouble in the neighborhood when the continent got its back up to this extent; the agitation experienced in the framing and signing of the Declaration of Independence was evidently trifling in comparison. I did not look down into the Pacific, but saw where the waters start that go that way. Never having seen any of them before, I took a mouthful, and from my recollection of those on the Atlantic side I thought I detected a resemblance. The mercury stood at 55° and we had lunch, taken with a healthy appetite sharpened by a three miles walk in the pure light air. Among the grand mountains of the snowy range to the north, I thought I recognized at least one familiar peak, but there was considerable difference of opinion in the party, including Gaskill, the only resident on the summit. This lack of absolute certainty struck me as a little extraordinary, because everybody is usually filled with correct information, and a mountaineer by instinct; I sighed for a tenderfoot.
Lunch concluded, we continued on our way. About three miles by the road, down the western slope, a pretty mountain brook comes tumbling down from the range, and on the bank, surrounded by wild flowers, I noticed an oblong heap of stones – the rude monument of an unfortunate Swede who perished near by early in the spring of the previous year. Frank, our driver, told us how the ill-fated Norseman had started with a companion from Billy Cozzens’ at the head of the Park. They carried nothing save their blankets slung over their shoulders. It was afternoon, and they, had “struck out” for the summit, but were met by a blinding storm; how they succeeded in making their way to within a couple of miles of their destination and safety, when the unfortunate, exhausted and discouraged, sank down into the huge drifts and to sleep; how the other, stronger and more resolute, yet powerless to arouse his dying friend, floundered back to a deserted cabin, built a fire and kept himself from freezing, unable to procure assistance till the following day. But when the news reached Cozzens’ there was no lack of quick and experienced effort, though they felt, those strong hearts, as they labored on and up through the great masses of snow, that they were going not to the rescue of a life. They hoped he might have been wise and strong enough to burrow into the drifts, but they found him with one arm clasping a small dead pine, just where his companion had left him, covered partly by the white mantle that had proved his death and his winding sheet. They who loved him best would not have selected a more inviting spot for his sepulture than did those strangers.
From this Frank drifted off to an adventure of his own and his cousin Glenn, on this same range, a few winters before. They were both mere boys, of sixteen and eighteen, “shoeing it,” each with a light pack, and determined to make the head of the Park before sundown. With the mercury rapidly going down with the sun, the lads started cheerfully over the crust and had got near the spot where the cabin was built, when, by some accident, one of Frank’s shoes snapped in two, and he plunged into the drift. The loss of a snow shoe at such a time and place was a mishap that was by no means trivial. It was simply impossible to go on; to remain, of course, was almost certain death. The boys set their wits to work, without shedding any tears. Fortunately, one of them had several balls of sacking twine, which he had bought and was carrying into the Park. Upon that slender thread hung the safety of one at least. Frank laid down on the snow, to get as much surface as possible upon the treacherous crust, and held on to the end of the string while his cousin went on till it was all paid out. Then the cousin slipped off the shoes, tied them to his end, Frank drew them up to himself, get on them, went on down past his cousin, leaving him an end of the line. When he reached his limit, he slipped off the shoes in turn, the cousin hauled them up, and so alternating, they worked their way down to the foot of the range, where the trail was partly broken.
“You bet, I was glad to see that trail,” he concluded, with a smile that had something serious in it.
On down the glorious mountain road we make our way at a lively trot, marking the increase in the volume of the Frazier as the range is left behind. After descending some four thousand feet or more, we enter upon an avenue over a mile in length, straight as an engineer can run a line, and adorned on either side with stately pines, that keep off the heat. At the other end we discern the comfortable cabin of Cozzens, and as we emerge from the shelter of the trees the head of the Park is spread out into a broad valley before us, guarded by low-lying hills, while here and there against the clear blue sky looms up an occasional snow-capped peak. Bright colors everywhere – the green of the meadow and the darker shade of the pine, the silver-lined leaf of the white-trunked aspen, and flowers countless as the stars, reposing tranquilly under the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. A picture to defy the skill of the artist, but to fill him with admiration.
We must remain over night; of course; because the team needs a rest, and the twenty odd miles to our destination will be an easy day’s drive for the morrow. And to stop means fresh trout for supper and breakfast, with nice cream in the coffee, helped out with light bread and sweet butter; perhaps an elk steak, or a tit-bit from a mule deer cooked to a turn – “a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.” Besides the fortieth parallel is to be crossed, before we reach the Springs, and the magnificence of that must be reserved for daylight inspection.
FISHERMAN’S LUCK
The distance between Cozzens’ and Hot Sulphur Springs was accomplished without accident, and in time for dinner. Camp made, the Springs, in which my comrade, the Doctor, took much interest, were inspected. The curative properties of the waters have been much talked of and written about, but not overestimated; they are helpful and invigorating for the invalid, and a source of gratification, if not a novelty, to the pleasure seeker. The Indians hold them in great veneration; this of itself is a recommendation, for, as a rule, the Ute has no liking for water. The Doctor labored under the impression that I needed a bath; a hot bath, and said so unequivocally; besides, not to take a bath, even if the bath took your hide, would be a violation of the sacred rule of the place, and subject one to the charge of eccentricity. I do not fancy eccentric people nor enthusiastic folk; beside, every acquaintance I might meet would be sure to exclaim with marked astonishment: “What! didn’t take a bath!” The thing would become monotonous. I consented to take the bath.
The Doctor went ahead like one accustomed to the treatment. It was night; the place was provided with a single lamp that made the darkness unearthly; the fumes of the sulphur were strong and suggestive; I looked down into the steaming pool with the trepidation that must come over a sinner in the heat of an orthodox revival. The Doctor waded out like a minister at the ordinance of baptism, and called to me to “come down.” I said I was coming. I went. The steps were very firm, clean and provided with a strong rail, but I didn’t hurry. I put one foot in and took it out right away; when I found it was not raw I put it back, and concluded as the Doctor was not yet parboiled I might put in the other foot; but I did not go in a foot at a time, only about an inch. Then I asked the Doctor what church he belonged to, and started to go out when he said he was a Methodist. I sat down on the steps, inhaled the sulphur and looked at him floundering round in that pool like a school of porpoises out at sea. He told me to try it again. I said I was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. Then he said it would make my hair grow, and I told him I didn’t want any hair, that I had had it pulled out on purpose before I was married. Then he said it would make me fat; I told him I was dieting to take off superfluous flesh. Then he said he would tell what he insinuated was generally suspected, that I was afraid of water; I told him I didn’t care. Finally he swore that if I did not get off that perch and come down into the bath, he’d destroy the commissaries and refuse to show me any of the trout-pools in the Park. I was inspired to say I’d try it again; he had been there five minutes at least and was not cooked, and if he could stand it that long with his religious training, I thought I might venture on as many seconds. But I made haste slowly, got in by degrees and laid down. Then the Doctor got under the “shower bath,” where the water tumbles, six feet or more in a great stream, into the pool; he wanted me to try that. But I told him I was very well satisfied where I was, and that I did not approve of shower baths, any way; then I went on to explain to him the deleterious effects of too much bathing, and of shower baths in particular. I talked to him as well as I could for ten minutes, sitting the while upon the bottom of the pool with the water up to my chin; but he would not be convinced. I think the situation and the noise of the water-fall may have detracted somewhat from the force of my argument. The Doctor said it was time to get out, but having become warmed up on the subject, I deemed this a mere evasion, and told him not to hurry; that I could convince him of the correctness of my theory inside a half hour. He said he had no doubt of it if I remained where I was for that length of time. He had, to some extent, won my confidence; by his combined advice and threats he had enabled me to realize an ideal, and at the same time be in the fashion, and this not in the days of miracles. When I got out of that bath I felt as I have heard men say they felt after a hard day’s work. I took my blankets, laid on the ground and slept the sleep of godliness. Some of those fellows whose consciences are demoralized had better try this medicine instead of opium; it is at least a safer narcotic. One can go to bed with better assurance that in a day or so a servant will not be peering over the transom and finding a subject for the coroner. It is more satisfactory, too, in such emergencies, in that it removes the doubts of friends, if one has any, as well as of the public, as to “the cause,” and entitles one to Christian burial.
