In Border Lands [pp. 291-298]

I iz Border Lands.
with their varied freight, and there was taken
to hear Governor Gilpin unfold ideas that
then seemed the wildest fancies, but are
now the most prosaic facts; after which she
fell asleep to dream that the snowy cordil leras were lost, and she was sent to find them
without any provisions. For she went every
where that her father could take her, holding
his hand, and being taught if struck by a
loosened bough when plucking flowers in the
hills that it was cowardly to cry.
To this day the child of the mountains is
thus educated, watching the tasks and man ners of its elders, old-fashioned, quaint, but
to my taste interesting as the elves in the
fairy tales. Nature is so close and dear to
children, revealing knowledge to them in a
thousand pleasant ways, that she presents
herself to me under the form of one of those
old women whose delight is in folk-lore,
whose birds talk with the wandering prince,
and whose flowers guard the maiden's en chanted slumbers.
Her first reader was a history of the
Bible, and the stories she spelled out of it
were repeated by her with delight to any
who would listen. It was during an hour of
rain and thunder that she read of the wandering of the tribes, and thenceforth Table
Mountain served to her imagination as a
type of Sinai. The moral lesson she drew
from it was what it may have produced upon those children who heard the story told
years after their people's journey, among the
conquered vineyards of old Canaan — the
sense of an exceeding great and holy Power,
with whom no man might trifle, but whose
hand succored the poor, the weak, and the
despised. All this dimly, not to be put in
words, but needing words for explanation.
ILater, in Denver, the more important
events of her childhood occurred. She listened there, breathless, to tales of Indian
ravages, and heard of bodies brought in
hacked out of all recognition. She burned
with the same indignation that broke forth
on men's lips in curses when they discussed
the government and the Eastern press. For
the routes were then unsafe between Denver
and Pueblo, the talk in the shops was of a
possible alliance of the Utes with other tribes,
and rumor ran mad, as it always does during
Indian troubles. The continual wearing
anxieties and fears with which it oppresses
women and children are not the slightest bur dens of Indian war. "They should not be
in such places "? All very well, but men
alone don't make a country, and that was the
work in hand just then.
Nevertheless, men did not spend all their
time in watching for hasty riders, who dashed
in with information of a generally unreliable
description, in organizing new companies, nor
mourning over the situation. Droves of cat tle were brought in from the great ranges, the
stages with their white horses pulled out
regularly for Santa F6, Breckenridge, and
Central. Jeannette, on her way to school, was
often delayed at the crossing of F street by
the Mexican ox-trains bringing from the south
bad Spanish, hides, lumber, wood, and occa sionally the light wines of the Rio Grande.
Business activity succeeded visionary alarms,
and there were some persons rash enough
to think Denver might become a city of
consequence.
It was then little more in size than a country town. To ramble on what is now Capitol Hill, or in the Cherry Creek bottoms on
a Sunday in June, an amusement in vogue,
was to enjoy a pleasure impossible now. The
wild flowers, tangled knee-deep over the prairie, were of innumerable tints and varieties,
not like a carpet, a mosaic, nor anything but
their own boundless fleece of divine and living color. The star-lily, the abl)ronia, the moss
phlox, and the lupines all blossomed in perfection, and the evening wind brought their
perfumes to casements and verandas, around
which the more hopeful citizens began to set
trees and plant gardens.
At the convent school she met girls who
had foreign names, and who taught her to
pronounce Spanish words, taking pains to
impress her young mind with all the difference between a Mexican and a Castilian,
which they said was important. She took
instinctively to these dark-eyed friends and
to the soft tongues of Southern Europe, without knowing much of either.
1888.]
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