The Wagon Horses Were In Denver, And When We
Tried To Get The Others To Pull The Dead Beast Away,
They only
kicked and plunged, so we managed to get it outside the shed,
and according to Mr. Kavan's prediction,
A pack of wolves came
down, and before daylight nothing was left but the bones. They
were so close to the cabin that their noise was most disturbing,
and on looking out several times I could see them all in a heap
wrangling and tumbling over each other. They are much larger
than the prairie wolf, but equally cowardly, I believe. This
morning was black with clouds, and a snowstorm was threatened,
and about 700 cattle and a number of horses came in long files
from the valleys and canyons where they maraud, their instinct
teaching them to seek the open and the protection of man.
I was alone in the cabin this afternoon when Mr. Nugent, whom we
believed to be on the Snowy Range, walked in very pale and
haggard looking, and coughing severely. He offered to show me
the trail up one of the grandest of the canyons, and I could not
refuse to go. The Fall River has had its source completely
altered by the operations of the beavers. Their engineering
skill is wonderful. In one place they have made a lake by
damming up the stream; in another their works have created an
island, and they have made several falls. Their storehouses, of
course, are carefully concealed. By this time they are about
full for the winter. We saw quantities of young cotton-wood and
aspen trees, with stems about as thick as my arm, lying where
these industrious creatures have felled them ready for their use.
They always work at night and in concert. Their long, sharp
teeth are used for gnawing down the trees, but their mason-work
is done entirely with their flat, trowel-like tails. In its
natural state the fur is very durable, and is as full of long
black hairs as that of the sable, but as sold, all these hairs
have been plucked out of it.
The canyon was glorious, ah! glorious beyond any other, but it
was a dismal and depressing ride. The dead past buried its dead.
Not an allusion was made to the conversation previously. "Jim's"
manner was courteous, but freezing, and when I left home on my
return he said he hardly thought he should be back from the
Snowy Range before I left. Essentially an actor, was he, I
wonder, posing on the previous day in the attitude of desperate
remorse, to impose on my credulity or frighten me; or was it a
genuine and unpremeditated outburst of passionate regret for the
life which he had thrown away? I cannot tell, but I think it was
the last. As I cautiously rode back, the sunset glories were
reddening the mountain tops, and the park lay in violet gloom.
It was wonderfully magnificent, but oh, so solemn, so lonely!
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