CHAPTER XI.
A GLIMPSE OF THE ROCKIES—THE PATH OF THE PROSPECTOR, LIKE THAT OF THE POET, LIES IN A STONY WAY.
MR. CREEDE’S success is due largely to his lasting love for the mountains, which was love at first sight. It was in 1862 that the scouts were ordered to Dakota; and it was then he saw for the first time the grand old Rockies. They were nearing the Big Horn Range, and the sight of snow in August was something the Indians of the plains could not understand. In fact, they insisted that it was not snow, but white earth, and offered to stake their savings on the proposition. Some of them were foolish enough to bet their ponies that there was no snow on the ground in summer time. Late that evening they camped at the foot of the range, and on the following morning, four men were sent up to investigate and decide the bets. The result was a change of horses, in which the Indians got the worst of the bargain. For nearly a week they lingered in the shadows of the cooling mountains and were loth to leave them.
When, some years later, the scouts were mustered out of service, Creede returned to his old home in Iowa. But he soon tired of the dull, prosy life they led there; and, remembering the scent of wild flowers and the balmy breeze that blew down the cool cañons of the Big Horn Mountains, he determined to return to the region of the Rockies. Already he had seen his share of service, it would seem. For more than a dozen years he had slept where night had found him, with no place he could call his home; and yet there are still a dozen years of doubt and danger through which he must pass. For him the trail that leads to fortune and fame, is a long one; and many camps must be made between his pallet on the plains and his mansion by the sea. The path of the prospector, like that of the poet, lies in a stony way, and nothing is truer than the declaration that: