Abroad At Home Part 35

One night, several weeks after we had left Denver, we were at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, and fell to talking of Denver and her clubs.

"It was in a club in Denver," one man said, "that I witnessed the most remarkable thing I saw in Colorado."

"What was that?" we asked.

"I met a former governor of the State there one night," he said. "We sat around the fire. Every now and then he would hit the very center of a cuspidor which stood fifteen feet away. The remarkable thing about it was that he didn't look more than forty-five years old. I have always wondered how a man of that age could have carried his responsibility as governor, yet have found time to learn to spit so superbly."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

HITTING A HIGH SPOT

An enthusiastic young millionaire, the son of a pioneer, determined that my companion and I ought to see the mountain parks.

It was winter, and for reasons all too plainly visible from Denver, no automobiles had attempted the ascent since fall, for the mountain barrier, rearing itself majestically to the westward, glittered appallingly with ice and snow.

"We can have a try at it, anyway," said our friend.

So, presently, in furs, and surrounded by lunch baskets and thermos bottles, we set out for the mountains in his large six-cylinder machine.

Emerging from the city, and taking the macadamized road which leads to Golden, we had our first uninterrupted view of the full sweep of that serrated mountain wall, visible for almost a hundred miles north of Denver, and a hundred south; a solid, stupendous line, flashing as though the precious minerals had been coaxed out to coruscate in the warm surface sunshine.

There was something operatic in that vast and splendid spectacle. I felt that the mountains and the sky formed the back drop in a continental theater, the stage of which is made up of thousands of square miles of plains.

Striking a pleasant pace we sped toward the barrier as though meaning to dash ourselves against it; for it seemed very near, and our car was like some great moth fascinated by the flash of ice and snow. However, as is usual where the air is clear and the alt.i.tude great, the eye is deceived as to distances in Colorado, and the foothills, which appear to be not more than three or four miles distant from Denver, are in reality a dozen miles away.

Denver has many stock stories to ill.u.s.trate that point. It is related that strangers sometimes start to walk to the mountains before breakfast, and the tale is told of one man who, having walked for hours, and thus discovered the illusory effect of the clear mountain air, was found undressing by a four-foot irrigation ditch, preparatory to swimming it, having concluded that, though it looked narrow, it was, nevertheless in reality a river.

Nor is optical illusion regarding distances the only quality contained in Denver air. Denver and Colorado Springs are of course famous resorts for persons with weak lungs, but one need not have weak lungs to feel the tonic effect of the climate. Denver has little rain and much sunshine. Her winter air seems actually to hold in solution Colorado gold. My companion and I found it difficult to get to sleep at night because of the exhilarating effect of the air, but we would awaken in the morning after five or six hours' slumber, feeling abnormally lively.

I spoke about that to a gentleman who was a member of our automobile mountain party.

"There's no doubt," he replied, as we bowled along, "that this alt.i.tude affects the nerves. Even animals feel it. I have bought a number of eastern show horses and brought them out here, and I have found that horses which were entirely tractable in their habitual surroundings, would become unmanageable in our climate. Even a pair of Percherons which were perfectly placid in St. Louis, where I got them, stepped up like hackneys when they reached Denver.

"I think a lot of the agitation we have out here comes from the same thing. Take our pa.s.sionate political quarreling, or our newspapers and the way they abuse each other. Or look at Judge Lindsey. I think the alt.i.tude is partly accountable for him, as well as for a lot of things the rest of us do. Of course it's a good thing in one way: it makes us energetic; but on the other hand, we are likely to have less balance than people who don't live a mile up in the air."

As we talked, our car breezed toward the foothills. Presently we entered the mouth of a narrow canon and, after winding along rocky slopes, emerged upon the town of Golden.

Golden, now known princ.i.p.ally as the seat of the State School of Mines, used to be the capital of Colorado. Spread out upon a prairie the place might a.s.sume an air of some importance, but stationed as it is upon a slope, surrounded by gigantic peaks, it seems a trifling town clinging to the mountainside as a fly clings to a horse's back.

The slope upon which Golden is situated is a comparatively gentle one, but directly back of the city the angle changes and the surface of the world mounts abruptly toward the heavens, which seem to rest like a great coverlet upon the upland snows.

Rivulets from the melting white above, were running through the streets of Golden, turning them to a sea of mud, through which we plowed powerfully on "third." As we pa.s.sed into the backyard of Golden, the mountain seemed to lean out over us.

"That's our road, up there," remarked the Denver gentleman who sat in the tonneau, between my companion and myself. He pointed upward, zig-zagging with his finger.

We gazed at the mountainside.

"You don't mean that little dark slanting streak like a wire running back and forth, do you?" asked my companion.

"Yes, that's it. You see they've cut a little nick into the slope all the way up and made a shelf for the road to run on."

"Is there any wall at the edge?" I asked.

"No," he said. "There's no wall yet. We may have that later, but you see we have just built this road."

"Isn't there even a fence?"

"No. But it's all right. The road is wide enough."

Presently we reached the bottom of the road, and began the actual ascent.

"Is this it?" asked my companion.

"Yes, this is it. You see the pavement is good."

"But I thought you said the road was wide?"

"Well, it is wide--that is, for a mountain road. You can't expect a mountain road to be as wide as a city boulevard, you know."

"But suppose we should meet somebody," I put in. "How would we pa.s.s?"

"There's room enough to pa.s.s," said the Denver gentleman. "You've only got to be a little careful. But there is no chance of our meeting any one. Most people wouldn't think of trying this road in winter because of the snow."

"Do you mean that the snow makes it dangerous?" asked my companion.

"Some people seem to think so," said the Denver gentleman.

Meanwhile the gears had been singing their shrill, incessant song as we mounted, swiftly. My seat was at the outside of the road. I turned my head in the direction of the plains. From where I sat the edge of the road was invisible. I had a sense of being wafted along through the air with nothing but a cushion between me and an abyss. I leaned out a little, and looked down at the wheel beneath me. Then I saw that several feet of pavement, lightly coated with snow, intervened between the tire, and the awful edge. Beyond the edge was several hundred feet of sparkling air, and beyond the air I saw the roofs of Golden.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Ain't Nature wonderful!"]

One of these roofs annoyed me. I do not know the nature of the building it adorned. It may have been a church, or a school, or a town hall. I only know that the building had a tower, rising to an acute point from which a lightning rod protruded like a skewer. When I first caught sight of it I shuddered and turned my eyes upward toward the mountain. I did not like to gaze up at the heights which we had yet to climb, but I liked it better on the whole than looking down into the depths below.

"What mountain do you call this?" I asked, trying to make diverting conversation.

"Which one?" asked the Denver gentleman.

"The one we are climbing."

"This is just one of the foothills," he declared.

"Oh," I said.

"If this is a foothill," remarked my companion, "I suppose the Adirondacks are children's sand piles."