Show ag d AIM X W by will irwin in vrna service y ty by will artela will 11 irwin chasn t written a novel in a great many years when he choset chose the he subject for youth rides west he returned to his early love and elected to write about a locale he knows best he was born at onelda oneida N Y in 1873 and as a boy was taken to leadville colo in the mining rush of 1879 he passed his boyhood among the scenes of that most loud and vivid of all old camps camp 6 and the reader will realize as a he goes along that irwins childhood experiences have been impressed indelibly on his mind here Is the cottonwood camp in the heart of the during the rush of the seventies while he insists that this cottonwood is not leadville adville Lc alone but a composite picture of several camps in colorado montana and idaho yet leadville supplied the inspiration youth rides west is more than a 2 bare story of adventure in these wild days it offers a vivid picture of one of the most colorful periods in american history it Is sprinkled with anecdotes both humorous and tragic and the reader comes to believe that he Is reading a melodramatic history rather than fiction for all life in this time and place was melodramatic men die with their boo boots 3 on not for the storytellers story tellers purpose but because that was the way they died any one who reads this novel will agree readily that will irwin deserves a front ranking with american writers CHAPTER I 1 I 1 drop nod and crawl whispered buck hayden and when he turned I 1 saw mw that his complexion bull ban turned from mahogany tan to a bronzed yellow and dont show yourself out of klyer kiver but for a wrong turn that morning buck would not have flown tills this first symptom of anything like craven emotion that I 1 ever witnessed in him and the story I 1 have set myself to te tell might never have happened I 1 say this last without being exactly sure As I 1 review in my age that episode which crowned and finished my youth I 1 have a feeling that an iron thread of destiny ran through it all had it not begun dramatically there on the hogback above ludlow gulch it would have begun just the some same perhaps but just as certainly at some other turning in the path of my fate buck when we threw our outfit and fortunes together down at 8 had bad boasted that he knew these mountains about as well as anyone this may haie hai e been true but in those days of the rush to the tar far high camps I 1 think that no one not even the trappers had bad gone much bey beyond ad tl the outskirts of ignorance the there was simply too much to know it was like having acquaintance with every soul in new york A road such as it was ran from to the new camp of 0 cottonwood more than a hundred perpendicular miles to accomplish a distance which the eagle covers in fifty on the first day of our journey for we had followed that highway it proved less a road than a bog two hours out of we found it necessary to unload our feeblest burro because he could not both pull ills his slender fret feet out of the clinging mud below und and struggle with the haystack which was pucks bucks P idea of a proper pack all that morning our more agile outfit was tile the edge of the rund rond to pass immigrant wagons stalled hub bub depp deep in the mire A light buckboard buch board extricated from the mud presently caught up with us w seemed to be distancing he rest thon toward noon boon we struck an obstacle which equalized the race our way had fallen in with the course of a tumbling roaring tast fast fallin creek in whose pools I 1 could see the native mountain trout jumping the roll road began to climb we were thread lna the edge of a low cliff above a little canyon we rounded a corner of rock and buck palled up short at the very tal linard board of a ponderous open freh trel glit lit wagon carrying it a heavy load of winches and mine buckets bucke tg busted ahead buck called cave in hitch bitell and help I 1 came between puffs of labored breath from the seat of the freight wagon when I 1 had dismounted and crawled perilously along the toot foot wide strip of rock between the giddy atmosphere and the ponderous wagon wheel I 1 saw that a ton or of rock and oozy earth dislodged by one of the miniature brooks now running from the melting snows news lay piled along the road five years before during one of the abortive rushes to a camp now dead gone and forgotten this section of roadway had been blasted from tile bill hillside side at tile the top of tile the cliff on one side was a sheer drop on the other an eight foot wall we could 11 t round the obstacle on either cither side the only alter alternative nathe to waiting walting was to KO go back half a mile try to traverse tra verte the hie hillside and chance getting mired while I 1 contemplated this quandary exit was as barred in that direction by tile itie jaunty arrival of a stage coach cottonwood Cult onwood was now reaching such with dally departures ran from Ples li it rounded tile the corner the arher ex cx velly pulling up lila ids leaders a foot from where my bronco stood tethered tellier cd at the rear ot of our conr train my bly feet on the edge of the chasm my hands against the wagon wheel I 1 was contemplating tem plating thia party when ahen A hen buck poked me in the side fide with such force as nearly to make me lose ray my balance unship them tools tool sl 1 said bald buck gotto die I 1 we crawled bud and slopped back to our pack train whre where wh ere re buck expertly untying and knotting again took out our two new miners shovels I 1 had estimated that there were two tons ton of if earth in the cave in when 1 I with cuck buck and some nome of the passengers rell fell to 10 wort work it looked more like ten arid and presently as we heaved the loose earth over into the bunjon we began scratching the surface of a rod ock which in itself must have weighed a ton long after a dozen hands had bad heaved over the last of the dirt we were working on that inert obstacle it resisted the efforts of a dozen strong backs and the three crowbars which we could commandeer frona from the freight wagon the stage and our pack at one moment buck the stage driver and the freighter experts all were of the opinion that we should have to take to dynamite put there stood the freight wagon unable to move either forward or back which rendered blasting impossible buck ventured charily that a cradle might do the stage driver and I 1 took axes from the freighters tool chest cut and heaved down trunks and brush from the dwarf firs on the ledge above that device finally worked with stout green poles reinforcing our crowbars with everyone putting his back into the work we managed to roll it to the edge of the canyon where with a terrible but satisfying rush and roar it dropped to the bed of the creel creek but the episode was not entirely over when the freighter laid his weight to the jerk line and yelled gid cid daal his scrambling tugging mules though urged with a seven foot blacksnake could not budge the on the wheels had been settling all this time he was obliged to uncouple the trailer to haul the leader a half mile farther along the road to return with his mules for the trailer while we waited every one had luncheon euch buck and I 1 from camp bread and frizzled bacon put up before we broke camp that morning we fed our horses their rations from our carefully calculated store of oats had bad our smoke soon the six mule team had hauled out the trailer and we blit bitted blitter ted tightened cinches mounted and stirred up our burros which had been standing patiently on three legs asleep with their eyes open where the road widened we turned into the mesa the stagecoach the drivers whip cracking briskly surged round the stalled wagons and was gone smartly up the road I 1 have said enough about the state of the cottonwood road and will only sketch the main trouble of the afternoon on that stretch of corduroy two gifun I 1 t lit we could not roid rod the obstacle on either side miles dilles or so after will w left the freighter we came to a piet e of low country which might have aten ix cn orm farm enough in midsummer but was now a bog the stage company had made it passable by cutting teri ten foot poles and laying them edge to edge that turned out to be practicable enough tor for the wide hoots hoofs of our bones but treacherous footing for the little feet of our burros sure of step though they were tile the logs would roll under them now and then and theli legs would now go scraping down into the morass by the time we reached the end of this stretch the little beasts were fairly staggering less from the weight of their pack aag LA arau vaa ul keart breaking labor of pulling out their hoofs which cut into mud like bod bed klas king by now too they had reached the limit of endurance e eien een en tor for the patient ass breed even though I 1 was the junior of the partnership and had resigned reigned all direction into the hands of the expert buck I 1 was wag about to protest when he spoke cant kill our live stock lie ho said keep em coln till I 1 ride ahead and look for a place to camp lie found it a mile or so farther along we camped unsaddled unpacked staked out our horses to graze turned loose the weary lucks jacks to roam find feed at will and slept an hour after wt we swung into the lie plain open entrance of the old ute trail next morning it became apparent to me that a little of the confidence will which buck had started was wearing away now and then lie leaned his horses neck his big hand folded on oil the saddle arm peering uneasily downward or ahead at tills or that patch of nf snow lie he held up tip his hand bond for a halt dismounted and tried to trace the trail by the creal creases aes twice we went ti birong rong once trouble was signaled when the fore forequarters quarters of bucks horse disappeared under tile the crust leaving ills his hind legs struggling and scratching grotesquely the leading burro which I 1 had already noted as a grizzled pessimistic veteran of the hie trails inclined to trouble when trouble might vary the monotony of life took a plunge forward in turn his 1119 forequarters forc fore quarters were lost he lurched sidewise with a metallic clang as he rolled on to our cooking outfit dutch oven even and all buck was strangely silent ns as lie he swung from the saddle jerked his horse backward on to a patch of the snow which covered some kind of firm footing and set out with my help to extricate him elicit buck as he reproved the delinquent burro with a heavy boot heaved the pack back into place and threw a new diamond hitch here and there had a sinister gleam in his big gray eye and worked in a strange silence quite contrary to his usual profane habit in face of trouble after a long inspection of the surface varied with squints at the sun the atmosphere and the peaks above he silently beckoned me to follow we rounded a clump of 0 dwarf pines perched on a little knoll and came out in face of a cliff the train halted automatically I 1 saw buck cock ills his eye upward then turn it on me die and 1 I abandoning the rear of the train rode forward for a conference bucks head was wagging and now I 1 could hear his roll of low complicated and picturesque language lan no mortal sense in tills this lie he concluded well waller here all day gotto strike west an see it if we kin connect with the d 0 13 muddy cottonwood rond road oetting netting lost in this manner with the whole day ahead of us with nn an intact train of live stock and with ample provisions in our pucks struck me at the moment nn fin a minor slid and kalher enjoyable Ild adventure venture there was the joke on ruck luck who in our brier brief partnership had been rather patronizing toward my youth and east ersness our way after we crossed the patch of snow revealed no troll trail but a passable surface half a mile beyond rose a rather sharp hogback bigback dotted here and there with that species of dwarf L which seems to choose rocks in preference to soil I 1 conjectured that buck expected to reach the cottonwood road below the further slope of this hogback and would be perplexed to find a trail I 1 was not surprised then when he pulled up just short of the obstacle threw himself out of the saddle tossed the reins over his AyT v yay horses head anti went forward on foot buck had halted near the crest of tile the hogback and I 1 was close behind him when I 1 was stopped short by the sound of two shots rifle shots I 1 noted mentally as they reverberated like a diminishing volley among the rocks the sound did not dot strike me as especially ally aily significant some one I 1 thought ht was shooting at a deer it was then that buck whispered abrou through il his beard drop and crawl and dont show yourself out of alver across a very uncomfortable carpet of rock I 1 wriggled to bucks side he lay peering front from under a low hung branch of dwarf fir I 1 ranged myself beside him looked and caught my breath some seventy five yards away stood a stagecoach in build and color twin to the one which we had seen yesterday three of its horses were struggling ng and milling with the driver throwing all power on to the reins the fourth a little white leader lay on his side feebly kicking as 1 lo looked ked I 1 saw a pool of blood by his big head lic id I 1 was aware of a man posed like a latue statue before the horses his feet wide apart a repeating rifle ride held at ready I 1 was wag aware that a black music dropped from the lower edge of his sombrero another man dion he very tall stool stood just by the edge of the road ills back was toward me but I 1 could see the band of a music mask cutting ills black hair he was holding close in by his chest two heavy revolvers trained upon an outside passenger who stood with his big hands in air balanced dizzily on a sent seat other details swam in upon me the passengers coming out through the door their hands up two women among them the bandit with the rifle exchanging that weapon for a revolver and stepping forward finally two other men masked also lying sprawled on a shelf of rock their repeating rifles trained on the group about the stage I 1 remember now with some pride that in my whirl of emotions astonishment ish ment righteous rage pure fear the manlier for a moment prevailed we at least could fight I 1 sly my hand went to my hip buck had apparently seen the motion for he be whispered no chance kid an so methin might lilt the ladles the bandit whom I 1 had bad noticed first he who had josf exchanged his rifle for a revolver was saying something now to the man who stood balanced at the top of the stage ilage the express messenger I 1 learned afterward ill the messenger leaped from the seat to the ground and landed in a heap ns as lie he scrambled to his feet lie he showed a comic eagerness to get ills his hands up again agnin I 1 could hear buck chuckling lightly in his beard then lie he spoke in a whisper which scarcely carried to me were all right it if they dont come out fi a way why arent we all right eved even then I 1 asked in my innocence they dont want witnesses replied buck shoot a witness quick ern they would a passenger ile he paused a moment guess id better get them long guns lie he whispered you tou stay an watch signal if they start this way we had bad two long pins gung that pride of our lives a newfangled new winchester repeating r rifle e anti a shotgun for small game providing against trouble buck had bad slipped in among our shotgun ammunition fifty shells loaded with buckshot buck tiptoed away his heavy boots making only a gentle rustling I 1 was wag tree free to fit fil my attention on the drama below the two inactive bandits still lay like great evil lizards across th rock their rifles gently swinging over the field of 0 action I 1 fr from 0 in above could see their figures as a whole to the passengers they must have appeared simply as lints |