supper at
seven, but our MENU never varies.

To-day I have been all alone in the park, as the men left to hunt elk
after breakfast, after bringing in wood and water. The sky is
brilliant and the light intense, or else the solitude would be
oppressive. I keep two horses in the corral so as to be able to
explore, but except Birdie, who is turned out, none of the animals are
worth much now from want of shoes, and tender feet.

Letter XIV

A dismal ride--A desperado's tale--"Lost! Lost! Lost!"--Winter
glories--Solitude--Hard times--Intense cold--A pack of wolves--The
beaver dams--Ghastly scenes--Venison steaks--Our evenings.

ESTES PARK.

I must attempt to put down the trifling events of each day just as they
occur. The second time that I was left alone Mr. Nugent came in
looking very black, and asked me to ride with him to see the beaver
dams on the Black Canyon. No more whistling or singing, or talking to
his beautiful mare, or sparkling repartee.

His mood was as dark as the sky overhead, which was black with an
impending snowstorm. He was quite silent, struck his horse often,
started off on a furious gallop, and then throwing his mare on her
haunches close to me, said, "You're the first man or woman who's
treated me like a human being for many a year." So he said in this
dark mood, but Mr. and Mrs. Dewy, who took a very deep interest in his
welfare, always treated him as a rational, intelligent gentleman, and
in his better moments he spoke of them with the warmest appreciation.
"If you want to know," he continued, "how nearly a man can become a
devil, I'll tell you now." There was no choice, and we rode up the
canyon, and I listened to one of the darkest tales of ruin I have ever
heard or read.

Its early features were very simple. His father was a British officer
quartered at Montreal, of a good old Irish family. From his account he
was an ungovernable boy, imperfectly educated, and tyrannizing over a
loving but weak mother. When seventeen years old he saw a young girl
at church whose appearance he described as being of angelic beauty, and
fell in love with her with all the intensity of an uncontrolled nature.
He saw her three times, but scarcely spoke to her. On his mother
opposing his wish and treating it as a boyish folly, he took to drink
"to spite her," and almost as soon as he was eighteen, maddened by the
girl's death, he ran away from home, entered the service of the
Hudson's Bay Com