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Show 28 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS. Mr. Oakes has not yet crossed the range, but still lives to tell of being buried in effigy, and says he felt rather shaky, for " let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly;" and they are certainly convinced by this time that they were, to put it mildly, egregiously mistaken. One of these returning pilgrims, a wag in his way, informed his friends at home that nothing but unpardonable ignorance stood in the way of his making a fortune in those days. If he had only given the subject a thought he would have known, of course, that domestic animals are always scarce in new countries; but he did not think, and it was another and a wiser man who was foresighted enough to bring hither a cat which he had taught to follow him. The cat easily sold for five dollars, and then it followed its master and was sold again and again, as the story goes. The returned pilgrim always insisted that if he had brought out a load of cats in his emigrant wagon, he would have made his fortune. He also told a story of one of their party who turned back. He was a man of family, and what is commonly termed a "great homebody," but he had a thirst for wealth, and he, too, started for the new Eldorado. It was not long before he became very homesick, and one day when they arrived in their wagon at a town on the outskirts of civilization, where it was hoped letters from home would be found awaiting them, finding none, the poor man withdrew to a secluded spot and "lifted up his voice and wept," so loudly that his companions at a distance heard, and hearing, were filled with great alarm. It sounded to them like the voice of some terrible monster of the plains. One- of the party, gifted with more bravery than the rest, sug- |