less than 8,000 or 10,000, because the young men of the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail people could easily be got to join the Sioux ; and if they are to die, why should they not do some splendid thing?" "Well, Sir," said our friend, patting the neck of one of his horses, as the ladies were getting into the carriage, "that would be fine -that would be striking in a book or a play. But you don't know the Indians. The Indians are cowards, Sir, take my word for it; and they don't fight except for plunder. They are revengeful-oh yes-and malicious as snakes; but they won't kill a man unless they could get his rifle, or his oxen or some thing. The young men are different sometimes; they want scalps to make them big in the eyes of the gals; but you wouldn't find a whole tribe of Indians flinging their lives away just to make a fuss in the New York papers." At this point we started off again across the plains; and the discussion was adjourned, as the Irish magistrate said, sine die until the evening. Only Bell was anxious to be assured that if Sitting Bull and his merry men should meditate one grand and final act of revenge, they would not make their way down to the plains of Colorado and take up their abode there; and she was greatly comforted when she heard that the chief trouble of the government was that it could not get the Indians to forsake their native hills in the north and go down to the Indian Territory in the south. "I think, Mrs. Von Rosen," said Lady Sylvia, "that you will have some romantic stories to tell your children when you return to England. You would feel very proud if you compelled the Indians to address you as 'brave squaw! brave squaw!'" "I can assure you I am not at all anxious to become a heroine," our Bell said, seriously; no doubt remembering that romantic incidents have sometimes a knack of leaving children motherless. And now "the Rockies" had grown quite dramatic in their intensity of plum-colour, and there were flashing shots of crimson fire high over the dusky peaks. But as we were driving eastward, we saw even more beautiful colours on the other horizon; for there were huge soft masses of colour that had their high ridges of snow touched with a pale saffron as the light went down. And then, when the sun had really sunk, we found that strange phenomenon again appear along the eastern horizon-a band of dull dead blue lying close to the land, where no clouds were, and fading into a warm crimson above. Had this belt of coloured shadow been a belt of mountains, we should have estimated them to be about 5,000 feet above the level of these plains, which are themselves 5,000 or 6,000 feet above the level of the sea; and a strange thing was that this dusky blue and the crimson above remained well into the twilight, when all the world around us was growing dark. It was in this wan twilight that we drove out to a lake which will, no doubt, form an ornamental feature in a big park when the Black Hills miners, gorged with wealth, come back to make Cheyenne a great city. The chief attraction of the lake, as we saw it, was the presence of a considerable number of wildduck on the surface; but we did not stay long to look at them, for the reason that there were several boats out after them; and the tiny jets of pink fire that were from time to time visible in the silvery twilight showed that the occupants of the boats were firing pretty much at random. As we did not wish to have a charge of No. 5 shot for supper, we drove off, and eventually were landed at the railway inn at Cheyenne. We were quite conscious of having done an injustice to "Hell on Wheels" in taking only this cursory glance at so famous a place; but then we knew that all our letters-and perhaps telegrams-were now at Idaho, and we wished to get on as soon as possible. But as the present writer was unanimously requested by the party to pay a tribute of gratitude to the clean and comfortable little inn at the station, he must now do so; only he must also confess that he was bribed, for the good-natured landlord was pleased, as we sat at supper, to send in to us, with his compliments, a bottle of real French Champagne, Good actions should never go unrewarded; and so the gentle reader is most earnestly entreated, the first time he goes to Cheyenne in fact, he is entreated to go to Cheyenne anyhow--to stay at this inn and give large orders. Moreover, the present writer, not wishing to have his conduct in this particular regarded as being too mercenary, would wish to explain that the bottle of Champagne in question was, as we subsequently discovered, charged for in the bill, and honestly paid for too; but he can not allow the F1 CHAPTER XLIX. IN SOCIETY. landlord to be deprived of all credit for his hospitable intentions merely on account of an error on the part of the clerk. We drank to his health then, and we will do so now. Here is to your health, Mr.—; and to IVE in the morning-pitch-darkness all yours, you kind friend, who showed us the around the station-a clear starlit sky non-fortified Fort Russell; and to yours, you the flashing belt and sword of Orion alyoung Canadian gentleman, who told us most right overhead. We had our breakfast those sad stories about Denver; and we of bread and apples in the great empty sahereby invoke a malison on the Grand Cen- loon; then we went out on to the platform, tral Hotel of that city, on account of its cock- wondering when the Cyclops eye of the train roaches, and its vinous decoctions, and its would come flaring through the dark. For incivility; but all this is highly improper, now we were within a few hours' journey of and premature, and a breach of confidence. the point to which those messages were to be We did indeed spend a pleasant evening directed which would finally set at rest one that night at Cheyenne; for we had ordered or two grave problems; and there was a for our banquet all the strangest dishes on good deal of nervousness visible among our the bill of fare, just to give our friends a no-women-folk when we touched on these protion of the sort of food they would have to encounter during their stay in the West. And then these steaks of antelope and mountain sheep and black-tailed deer derived a certain romance from the presence, on the walls of the room, of splendid heads and antlers, until it appeared to us that we must be mighty hunters just sitting down to supper, with the trophies won by our own sword and spear hung up around us. And then our Prussian strategist-who had acquired such a vast and intimate acquaintance with the Indians from his conversation with the Omaha idiot-proceeded to explain to us his plan of an Indian campaign; which showed that he was quite fitted to take the command of all the red men in Dakota. We were treated to a dose of history, too; to show that, in desperation, the Indians have often risen to commit a general massacre, apparently with no ulterior motive whatever. And of course, when Sitting Bull had swept down on Cheyenne and drunk its taverns dry, and when he had swept down on Denver and filled his pockets--if any--with sham French jewelry, surely he would come up to Idaho to pay a certain young lady a friendly call? "Bell," said her husband, "you shall have a laurel wreath ready, and you will have all the neighbours trained and ready, and when the great chief approaches, you will all burst out with Heil dir im Siegerkranz !'" "In the mean time," said Bell, sedately, "if we are to catch the train for Denver at five in the morning, we had better get to bed." babilities. But Lady Sylvia showed no nervousness at all. She was eager, buoyant, confident. She was clearly not afraid of any telegram or letter that might be awaiting her at Denver. Nay, when her friends, shivering in the cold and darkness of the early morning, were complaining of the railway arrangements that compelled us to get up at such an hour, she made light of the matter, and showed how, as we went south, we should have the beautiful spectacle of the sunrise breaking on the Rocky Mountains. At length the train came along, and we got into the warm carriage, in which the conductor was engaged in cramming a blazing stove with still further blocks of wood. Very soon we were away from the scattered shanties of Cheyenne, out on the lone prairieland that was to be our Bell's future home. And as we sat and silently looked out of the windows, watching a pale glow arise in the east, and trying to make out something on the dark plains below, suddenly we caught sight of some flashing lights of red and yellow. These were the breakfast fires of some trav ellers camping out-probably miners or traders making for the Black Hills with a train of waggons and oxen. The light in the east increased; and then we saw all along the western horizon the great wall of the Rocky Mountains become visible in a stream of colour-the peaks the faintest rose, the shadowy bulk below a light, transparent, beautiful blue. The morning came on apace; the silvery grays of the east yielding to a glowing saffron. There seemed to be no mists lying on these high plains, for, as the sun rose, we could see an immense distance over the yellow prairie-land. And the first objects we perceived in this lonely desert of grass were a number of antelope quietly graz. ing within rifle range of the railway line, taking no heed whatever, though occasionally one of the more timid would trot off on its spider-like legs to a safer distance. Bell began to laugh. She saw the misery of her husband's face. "Ah, well," said he, with a sigh, "I suppose if the train were to stop, and you went down with a gun, they would be away like lightning. But a time will come; and your husband, Lady Sylvia, will be with me to help me, I hope." There was certainly no misery on Lady Sylvia's face, now that the brilliant light of the new day filled the carriage. Was this the pale sad soul who had come away from England with us, out of sorts with the world, and almost aweary of her life? There was a colour in her cheeks that nearly rivaled Bell's apple-blossom tints. There was an unusual gladness in her eyes this morning that we could not at first account for; but she let the secret out: she had been making elaborate calculations. The telegram she received at Omaha from Queenstown had been waiting for her two days before she got it. Then, taking into account the number of days we staid at Omaha and the leisurely fashion in which we had come across the plains, there was at least a chance-so she proved to herself-that her husband might at that very moment be landing at one of the New York wharves. It all depended on the steamer. Who knew any thing about that steamer? Notoriously it belonged to the fastest of all the lines. Was it possible, then, that as we were chatting and laughing in this railway carriage on the Colorado prairies, Balfour might be on the same continent with us? You could almost have imagined that his stepping ashore had communicated some strange magnetic thrill to his wife's heart. "We are getting near to Greeley now," said Queen T-to her friend Bell, looking rather eagerly out of the window. "Yes," said the practical lieutenant, "and we shall have twenty minutes there for a real breakfast. An apple and a bit of bread is not enough, if you are travelling in Colorado air " But I do not think it was altogether the breakfast-though that, as it turned out was excellent-that led us to look out with unusual interest for this little township set far among the Western plains; there were other reasons which need not be mentioned here. And, indeed, we have the most pleasant memories of Greeley, as it shone there in the early sunlight. We walked up the broad main thoroughfare, with its twin rows of cottonwood trees; and no doubt the empty street gained something from the fact that the end of it seemed closed in by the pale blue line of the Rocky Mountains, the peaks here and there glittering with snow. A bright, clean, thriving-looking place, with its handsome red brick school-house and its capacious white church; while many of the shanties about had pleasant little gardens attached, watered by small irrigation canals from the Cache-la-poudre River. As we were passing one of those tiny streams, a great heron rose slowly into the air, his heavy wings flapping, his legs hanging down; but a large hawk, crossing a field beyond, took no notice of him; and we were disappointed of a bit of extempore falconry. We had only a look at the public park, which is as yet mostly a wilderness of underwood, and a glimpse at the pretty villas beyond ; in fact, our explorations nearly lost us our train. As we think of Greeley now-here, in England, in the depth of winter-it shines for us still in the light of the summer morning, and the trees and fields are green around it, and the mountains are blue under the blue of the sky. May it shine and flourish forever! It is most unfair of the Americans to speak slightingly of Denver. It is a highly respectable city. We were quite astounded, on our first entrance, by the number of people who appeared in black coats and tall hats; and the longer we staid in the place, the more we were impressed by the fashion in which the Denverites had removed the old stains from their reputation by building churches. They have advanced much farther in the paths of civilization than the slowmoving cities of the East. In New York or Boston hotels the servants merely claim a free-and-easy equality with the guests; in Denver they have got far beyond that. The wines are such triumphs of skilful invention as no city in the world can produce. And then, when one goes into the streets (to escape from the beetles in one's bedroom), the eye is charmed by the variety of nationalities every where visible A smart Mexi can rides by, with gayly decorated saddle, on his long-tailed pony. Chinese women hobble on their small shoes into an iron-mongery shop. The adjoining saloon is called "Zur goldenen Trauben ;" and and at the door of it a red-haired Irishwoman is stormily quarreling with an angry but silent and sulky negress. Over this seething admixture of population dwell the twelve patrician families of Denver, shining apart like stars in a silent heaven of their own. We are not permitted to gaze upon any one of these-unless-unless? Those two people who stood on the steps of the hotel after dinner? They were distinguished-looking persons, and much bediamonded. The lady wore beautiful colours, and the red-faced gentleman had a splendid gold chain round his neck; and thus-so far as we could make out-they spake: "Jim," said the lady, "don't you remember that hop of Steve Bellerjean's that he giv after he run away wi' Dan Niggles's gal, to make up all around, when he found pay gravel and married the gal?" "No," said the other, reflectively, "I dis remember." "Well, that woman in yaller fixins that stared at me all dinner, I could swear was Steve's woman." "But Steve ran away from her," said the gentleman, who seems to remember some things, if not the hop. "She didn't pan out well. Tried to put a head on him with a revolver-jealousy and rum. Steve went to Sonora ; tried to bust the government; and the Greasers ketched him with a lariat, and his chips were passed in. The gentleman in the gold chain had suddenly grown melancholy. "Yes; Steve's chips were called," chimed in his spouse. "That's what's the matter with all of us," continued her companion, in a sad tone. "That's what no Fifteenth Amendment can stop; the chips must be paid. That's what I told the boys down at Gridiron Bend when I giv my experience and jined the church, and Euchre-deck Billy heaved that rock into the christenin'-place; sez I, Boys, sez I, life gen'rally begins with a square deal, leastways outside the idiot asylum. 'Cordin' as you play your hand, will the promises be kep'. Sure enough, some has aces, and some not, and that's luck; and four aces any day is as good a hand as the Ten Commandments. With four aces, I'd buck agin the devil. But we don't have four aces in the first deal, unless mebbe the Czar of Russia or the Prince of Wales, or some of them chaps; and so life and religion is pretty much as we play the hand we've got." The lady seemed to put another aspect on these moral truths. "Hosea Kemp," said she, practically, "that pig-skinned Mormon fraud, diskivered that when you raised him ten thousand, and raked in his pile; and he had a full, and you were only king high." "That was before I knowed better, and I hadn't seen the vanities," said the repentant sinner. "But when I played, I played my hand for all that it was worth; and that's what's the matter with me. You kent fool away your hand and keep the chips; and that's what you find in the Commandments. That's the idee." What the idea was we were rather at a loss to discover; but we were not exactly in search of conundrums at this moment. Indeed, our arrival at Denver had put an end for the time being to our idling and daydreaming. First of all, there were the let ters (there were no telegrams for any one, so we imagined that Balfour had not yet reached New York); and in the general selfishness of each seizing his or her own packet, no one noticed the expression with which Lady Sylvia broke open the only envelope addressed to her. There was a turmoil of news from home, mostly of a domestic and trivial nature, but none the less of tremendous importance to the two mothers. And when they turned to Lady Sylvia, she was sitting there quite calm and undisturbed, without any trace of disappointment on her face. "So Mr. Balfour has not reached New York yet," said Queen Tin her gentle way. "I suppose not," was the answer. "I was calculating on the very shortest time possible. This letter was written some time before he left England. It is only about business affairs.” It was not until that evening that Lady Sylvia communicated the contents of this letter to her friend, and she did so without complaint as to the cold and formal manner in which her husband had written. Doubtless, she said, he was perfectly right. She had left him of her own accord; she deserved to be treated as a stranger. But the prompt answer to her message to him convinced her-this she said with a happy confidence in her eyes-of the spirit in which he was now coming out to her; and if, when he came out here, she had only five minutes given to her to tell him- But the present writer refuses to reveal further the secrets that passed between these two women. In fact, he would probably never have known, but that at this juncture he was privately appealed to for advice. And if, in the course of this faithful narrative, he has endeavoured as far as possible to keep himself in the background, and to be the mere mouth-piece and reporter of the party, that rôle must be abandoned for a moment. He must explain that he now found himself in a position of some difficulty. Balfour had written out to Lady Sylvia, informing her of the collapse of his father's firm. It was hopeless, he said, to think of the firm resuming business; the trade that had made his father's fortune was played out. In these circumstances, he considered himself bound to give up everything he possessed to his creditors, and he wished to know whether she, Lady Sylvia, would feel disposed to surrender in like manner the £50,000 settled on her before her marriage. He pointed out to her that she was not legally bound to do so, and that it was a very doubtful question whether she was morally bound; it was a matter for her private feeling. If she felt inclined to give up the money, he would endeavour to gain her father's consent. But he thought that would be difficult, unless she also would join in persuading him; and she might point out that, if he refused, she could in any case pay over the annual interest of the sum. He hoped she was well; and there an end. Now, if Lady Sylvia had had a bank note for £50,000 in her pocket, she would have handed it over with a glad heart. She never doubted for a moment that she ought to pay over the money, especially as she now knew that it was her husband's wish; but this reference to her father rather bewildered her, and so she indirectly appealed for counsel. Now, how was it possible to explain to this gentle creature that the principle on which an antenuptial settlement is based is that the wife is literally purchased for a sum of money, and that it is the bounden duty of the trustees to see that this purchase money shall not be inveigled away from her in any manner whatever? How was it pos sible to point out to her that she might have children, and that her husband and fatherwere alike bound by their duties as trustees not to let her defraud these helpless things. of the future? Nay, more: it would be ne-cessary to tell her that these hypothetical young people might marry; and that, however they might love their mamma, papa, and grandpapa, some cantankerous son-in-law could suddenly come down on the papa and grandpapa and compel them to make good that money which they had allowed, in defi-ance of their trust, to be dissipated in a sort of quixotic sacrifice. "I always thought the law was idiotic," says Queen T—. "The law in this case is especially devoted to the protection of women, who are not sup-posed to be able to take care of themselves." "Do you mean to say that if Lady Sylvia, to whom the money belongs, wishes to give it up, she can not give it up ??"" "It does not belong to her; it belongs to Balfour and Lord Willowby, in trust for her; and they dare not give it up, except at their own risk. What Balfour meant by making himself a trustee can only be imagined; but he is a shrewd fellow." "And so she can not give up the money! Surely that is a strange thing-that one is not allowed to defraud one's self!" "You can defraud yourself as much as you like. If she chooses, she can pay over the £2,000 a year, or whatever it is, to Balfour's. creditors; but if she surrendered the original sum, she would he defrauding her children; do you see that?" Or does your frantic anxiety to let a woman fling away a fortune that is legally hers blind you to everything?" "I don't see that her children, if she has any," says this tiny but heroic champion of strict morality, "would benefit much by inheriting money that ought never to have belonged to them. That money, you know very well, belongs to Mr. Balfour's creditors." |