Don't speak to me of repentance
and reformation. I can't reform. Your voice reminded me of
- - -." Then in feverish tones, "How dare you ride with me? You
won't speak to me again, will you?" He made me promise to keep
one or two things secret whether he were living or dead, and I
promised, for I had no choice; but they come between me and the
sunshine sometimes, and I wake at night to think of them. I wish
I had been spared the regret and excitement of that afternoon. A
less ungovernable nature would never have spoken as he did, nor
told me what he did; but his proud, fierce soul all poured itself
out then, with hatred and self-loathing, blood on his hands and
murder in his heart, though even then he could not be altogether
other than a gentleman, or altogether divest himself of
fascination, even when so tempestuously revealing the darkest
points of his character. My soul dissolved in pity for his dark,
lost, self-ruined life, as he left me and turned away in the
blinding storm to the Snowy Range, where he said he was going to
camp out for a fortnight; a man of great abilities, real genius,
singular gifts, and with all the chances in life which other men
have had. How far more terrible than the "Actum est: periisti"
of Cowper is his exclamation, "Lost! Lost! Lost!"
The storm was very severe, and the landmarks being blotted out, I
lost my way in the snow, and when I reached the cabin after dark
I found it still empty, for the two hunters, on returning,
finding that I had gone out, had gone in search of me. The snow
cleared off late, and intense frost set in. My room is nearly
the open air, being built of unchinked logs, and, as in the open
air, one requires to sleep with the head buried in blankets, or
the eyelids and breath freeze. The sunshine has been brilliant
to-day. I took a most beautiful ride to Black Canyon to look for
the horses. Every day some new beauty, or effect of snow and
light, is to be seen. Nothing that I have seen in Colorado
compares with Estes Park; and now that the weather is
magnificent, and the mountain tops above the pine woods are pure
white, there is nothing of beauty or grandeur for which the heart
can wish that is not here; and it is health giving, with pure
air, pure water, and absolute dryness. But there is something
very solemn, at times almost overwhelming, in the winter
solitude. I have never experienced anything like it even when I
lived on the slopes of Hualalai. When the men are out hunting
I know not where, or at night, when storms sweep down from Long's
Peak, and the air is full of stinging, tempest-driven snow, and
there is barely a probability of any one coming, or of my
communication with the world at all, then the stupendous mountain
ranges which lie between us and the Plains grow in height till
they become impassable barriers, and the bridgeless rivers grow
in depth, and I wonder if all my life is to be spent here in
washing and sweeping and baking.
To-day has been one of manual labor.
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