acute
judgments on men and events; on women also. He has pathos, poetry, and
humor, an intense love of nature, strong vanity in certain directions,
an obvious desire to act and speak in character, and sustain his
reputation as a desperado, a considerable acquaintance with literature,
a wonderful verbal memory, opinions on every person and subject, a
chivalrous respect for women in his manner, which makes it all the more
amusing when he suddenly turns round upon one with some graceful
raillery, a great power of fascination, and a singular love of
children. The children of this house run to him, and when he sits down
they climb on his broad shoulders and play with his curls. They say in
the house that "no one who has been here thinks any one worth speaking
to after Jim," but I think that this is probably an opinion which time
would alter. Somehow, he is kept always before the public of Colorado,
for one can hardly take up a newspaper without finding a paragraph
about him, a contribution by him, or a fragment of his biography.
Ruffian as he looks, the first word he speaks--to a lady, at
least--places him on a level with educated gentlemen, and his
conversation is brilliant, and full of the light and fitfulness of
genius. Yet, on the whole, he is a most painful spectacle. His
magnificent head shows so plainly the better possibilities which might
have been his. His life, in spite of a certain dazzle which belongs to
it, is a ruined and wasted one, and one asks what of good can the
future have in store for one who has for so long chosen evil?[17]

[17] September of the next year answered the question by laying him
down in a dishonored grave, with a rifle bullet in his brain.

Shall I ever get away? We were to have had a grand cattle hunt
yesterday, beginning at 6:30, but the horses were all lost. Often out
of fifty horses all that are worth anything are marauding, and a day is
lost in hunting for them in the canyons. However, before daylight this
morning Evans called through my door, "Miss Bird, I say we've got to
drive cattle fifteen miles, I wish you'd lend a hand; there's not
enough of us; I'll give you a good horse."

The scene of the drive is at a height of 7,500 feet, watered by two
rapid rivers. On all sides mountains rise to an altitude of from
11,000 to 15,000 feet, their skirts shaggy with pitch-pine forests, and
scarred by deep canyons, wooded and boulder strewn, opening upon the
mountain pasture pr