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An' a pardner of mine down in Middle Park came back from the Gunnison with the dog-gondest story I ever heerd. Thet was five years ago this summer. Of course I knowed your name long before, but this time I heerd it powerful strong. You got in thet mix-up to your neck.... Wal, what consarns me now is this. Is there any sense in the talk thet wherever you land there's hell to pay?"
"I guess you are sorry, now, that you didn't heed our warning and go back to Gunnison." "I'm not particularly sorry. I have as much right out here as anybody." "Oh, you needn't put on airs to me. I know you are trembling in your boots." "Thanks, but if you'll bring your chin out of the air, Baxter, you'll see that I am wearing shoes." "Don't you put on airs with me, Tom Rover.
Her face was very pale and there were lines of pain about the sensitive mouth. Her whole attitude betokened a great nervous tension and the eyes were luminous with dread. Mechanically she took up the letters and reread them for at least the hundredth time that morning. They were the two written by Douglass the night before his departure to Gunnison.
"Shake hands with Bridges an' Lindsay," said Burley, indicating his two comrades. "Stockmen from Grand Lake.... Boys, you've heerd me talk about him. Wade an' I was both in the old fight at Blair's ranch on the Gunnison. An' I've shore reason to recollect him!... Wade, what're you doin' up in these diggin's?"
In the relaxation of sleep the stern face was gentle and almost handsome. Was he justified in taking this comely young fellow into the grim uncertainty that lay ahead, into the jaws of the specter grinning waitingly behind the red lights of Bart Coogan's gambling hell at Gunnison?
At Gunnison the entire party procured horses from a dealer Jack Wumble knew, beasts that were strong and used to mountain traveling. "We might go on for twenty miles or so by rail, but this is the best place for fitting out," said the old miner. "We can strike a putty fair trail from here, leading directly, to Larkspur Creek." "And how far is that mining district from here?" asked Tom.
There are several Lives by other biographers. Limited space prohibits my recounting the exploits of even the smaller part of the trappers of this period, but with what follows I believe the reader will possess a sufficient picture of the life of the Rocky Mountain Trapper at this time.* A trail from Santa Fe to California was opened by way of what is now Gunnison Valley on Green River, and thence west by about the same route that Jedediah Smith followed, that is, down the Virgen River, by William Wolfskill who went out by this route to Los Angeles, in 1830.
It is a river of rivers the Du Chesne, San Rafael, Yampa, Dolores, Gunnison, Cotchetopa, Uncompahgre, Eagle, and Roaring rivers, the Green and the Grand, and scores of others with branches innumerable, as mad and glad a band as ever sang on mountains, descending in glory of foam and spray from snow-banks and glaciers through their rocky moraine-dammed, beaver-dammed channels.
"There was some great work in the Gunnison canyon, was there not?" queried Wilbur. The old man made no reply, and the son answered the question. "When they had to lower a man from the top into the canyon, seven hundred feet below," he said, "Dad was the first to volunteer. I reckon, son, there's no greater story worth the tellin' than the Uncompahgre tunnel.
The most noted instances were the slaughter of Captain Gunnison and his exploring party, near Lake Sevier, in October, 1853; and the horrible massacre of more than a hundred emigrants on their way to California, at the Mountain Meadows, still farther south, in September, 1857, from which only those children were spared who were too young to speak.
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