-men to
whom dark nights, precipitous trails, noxious insects, mud and storms
were all "a part of the game."

In those few days I absorbed the essential outlines of a new world. My
note-book of the time is proof of it--and "The Prairie in the Sky,"
which was the title of the article I wrote for _Harper's Weekly_, is
further evidence of it. How beautiful it all was! As I look back upon it
I see green parks lit with larkspur and painter's brush. I taste the
marvelous freshness of the air. The ptarmigan scuttles away among the
rocks, the marmot whistles, the conies utter their slender wistful
cries.

That trail led me back to the hunter's cabin, to the miner's shack on
whose rough-hewn walls the fire-light flickered in a kind of silent
music. It set me once again in the atmosphere of daring and filled me
with the spirit of pioneer adventure.

In a physical sense I ended my exploration ten days later, but in
imagination I continued to ride "The High Country." I had entered a
fresh scene--discovered a new enthusiasm.

By this I do not mean to imply that I at once set about the composition
of a Wild West novel, but for those who may be interested in the
literary side of this chronicle, I will admit that this splendid trip
into high Colorado, marks the beginning of my career as a fictionist of
the Mountain West.

Thereafter neither the coulee country nor the prairie served exclusively
as material for my books. From the plains, which were becoming each year
more crowded, more prosaic, I fled in imagination as in fact to the
looming silver-and-purple summits of the Continental Divide, while in my
mind an ambition to embody, as no one at that time had done, the spirit
and the purpose of the Rocky Mountain trailer was vaguely forming in my
mind. To my home in Wisconsin I carried back a fragment of rock, whose
gray mass, beautifully touched with gold and amber and orange-colored
lichens formed a part of the narrow causeway which divides the White
River from the Bear. It was a talisman of the land whose rushing waters,
majestic forests and exquisite Alpine meadows I desired to hold in
memory, and with this stone on my desk I wrote. It aided me in recalling
the scenes and the characters I had so keenly admired.

* * * * *

In calling upon Lorado one afternoon soon after my return to Chicago I
was surprised and a little disconcerted to find two strange young ladies
making themselves very much at