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Show 166 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS. " A few months afterward I passed over the same road. An enormous boulder had fallen from the mountain top and torn out the logs on one side of the cabin. I searched carefully among the ruins, thinking he might have been crushed beneath them, but he was not there; the hut was deserted and a wreck; strangely typical of the life of its occupant." CHAPTER XXXVIII. PLATTE CANON. The varied beauties of this canon form a constant succession of surprises. From beginning to end it is a prodigious art gallery, hung with the works of the Greal? Master. After reaching the parks the mountains were beautiful and verdure-clad, but not on so grand a scale as at the entrance of the canon. Twenty odd years ago a brave woman, one of the first families of Denver, mounted a creaky wagon to accompany her husband to the mountains. On the way the wagon broke down and they were in despair. There was neither blacksmith shop nor settlement within twenty miles; so the lady gathered her mantle around her child, which she carried in her arms, and toiled wearily over unbroken roads, through pelting snow. Tired and bedraggled she came at nightfall to the "dug-out" in the mountain side, which was to be her home. The child sickened and died, and with her own hands she performed the last sad rites. Her heart was torn and bleeding, for the maternal ties are as strong in the hovel as the palace. Indians would often stop and ask for something to eat, and one day, when they were on the war-path, they came |
