Susie's Story

“I have heard that lives go in cycles. If that is true mine has been completed as it was just fifty years ago this summer that I came here as a bride and now I am back, building a new home here.  Fifty years and the lake looks just the same.” The grey haired woman who was Mother Johnston to half the county ended her remark softly, as we sat upon a granite boulder among the pines and looked out across the rippling, sun-flecked water one summer day.

“Tom had a three-room cabin ready for us on the Point by the inlet.  It was long ago built over and since added to, until it is now that big house with the tall chimneys you can see above the trees.  But they kept the original cabin, it was firm and sturdily built,” she added pridefully.

“Your little cabin was very much like you, wasn’t it, Susie dear?” As she looked at me in surprise, I continued. “Life has changed you outwardly, too, since those happy days on the Point but like the sunny little house your standards have stood firm—but do not listen to me I want to hear about you when you lived here.”

Mother Johnston continued,  “There weren’t many people right in the town then—no summer people at all, of course, but just let someone give a dance, or election come and it seemed that out of every gulch poured men.  Old, young, good and bad, alike in one thing only and that was their desire for gold.

Our first summer was all play.  I tagged after Tom wherever he went.  While he tapped rocks here, there and everywhere with his prospecting hammer I fished the swift little streams, gathered berries or hunted grouse with the twenty-two rifle he had given me soon after we were married.

Then our babies came, first Robert, then Willard—quite close together, but they were such good little boys and played so well together.  I can still see them sitting as still as mice in one end of an old water-soaked row boat while I rowed out into deep water, dropped anchor and fished for half an hour.  I think fishing must have been better then than now, I never had any trouble in getting enough for our dinner in that time, and now I see boats stay out for half a day.”

“Or perhaps you were a better fisherman,” I suggested.

“It was the summer Wid, as Rob called him, was two that Father Monmartin came and the men of the community built the Catholic Mission.  It was good to feel we had a church, though not many went.  You get out of the way of churches off here in the mountains, though I don’t think you get away from God.

“It was on the morning of the Fourth of July of that year—your Aunt Molly was helping me get a big dinner.  All the relatives from Sulphur Springs were coming and of course any friends that might be in town would be there.  There was to be speech making and foot races on the lake shore, and fireworks in the evening.  It was to be Grand Lake’s first celebration so everybody was full of high spirits.  Everyone who had a flag had it out and I remember the little frame building they used for a court house had bunting all along the porch rail.

“I was cutting up a chicken when three shots rang out, in a minute, three more—then one.  Molly laughed and said, “The fireworks are starting early.”  It was just a few minutes until Tom came running in, white as a sheet and cried, “My God, Suse, they’ve killed the Commissioners!  Shot them from ambush on the trail along the west side of the lake!” And he grabbed his rifle from the rack and ran out.

“But Susie,” I gasped, “Why would anyone do a thing like that?”

“A County seat fight had been brewing for a long time,” Mrs. Johnston explained, “Some thought the seat should be moved to Sulphur, which it was later, but bitter feeling started and one thing led to another until that wicked deed was done.  One of the ambushers was killed when the Commissioners returned their fire, and many were suspected.  Two were brought to trial—one of them was later your Uncle Lon Coffin.  He was held in jail in Georgetown.  We all went over for the trial, but,” with a chuckle, “I could establish an alibi for him easily enough.  He had been on the back porch pestering Molly most of the morning when I wanted her to help me, and had left such a short time before the shooting that he couldn’t possibly have got clear around the lake.  As soon as he was freed he and Molly were married and we all returned to the Lake as gay as could be.

“We went back to Kansas soon after that and stayed for thirteen years, as long as Tom’s mother lived.  Jim, Johnnie and Margie were born there.”

“Did you like it better there?” I asked.

Susie smiled, “No, we tried to be patient, but Colorado and its mountains were always calling us,  and as soon as his mother was laid to rest Tom hurried back to join Lon in another gold mining venture—the one that was to make us rich!

“As soon as they were outfitted and ready to start into the hills Tom wrote me to sell everything.”  An amused laugh rose to Susie’s lips at the memory of that journey.

“Even as much as children like to eat on the train there was plenty of fried chicken to last throughout the trip,” she said.  “Every friend and neighbor in that little town appeared at the station with a box of lunch for us and – they all had chicken.

I never did willfully deceive anyone before, but I did the railway company.”  Then in an apologetic tone, “I had so little money and so many needs.  Widdie had never grown as he should and although he was fifteen he was no taller than ten year old Jim, so I dressed them just alike in knee pants and ruffled shirts and bought a half-fare ticket for him.”  With a rueful smile, “I thought I was caught when I overheard him telling the conductor about riding race horses but he thought it was only childish bragging.” Then with a sigh, “He had the fever of the racetrack in him even then.

“It was just like taking care of a covey of mountain grouse trying to watch those four boys the morning we spent in Georgetown waiting for the stage to Hot Sulphur Springs.  Georgetown is a pretty little place set deep in a gulch with bare mountain sides going almost to timberline on three sides of it; all of the hillsides were gophered with prospect holes.  I would just get two of the boys within calling distance when the other two were off, scrambling up the slopes to peer into another abandoned hole.

“The trip over the range was another test of nerves.  The road was only wide enough for one vehicle with turnouts every half mile, and so narrow that it had to be cribbed up in places.  The boys were so anxious to see everything that they were half out of the coach most of the time.  I am sure my cries of ‘Jim, do sit down,’ ‘Johnnie be careful,’ and ‘Rob, you must watch the little ones,’ must have rung in the driver’s ears for many days.

“My friends and sister, Lucy, and her family in Hot Sulphur Springs tried to persuade me to stay there that winter and let the men go on to Whiskey Park alone, but,” with a smile of sweet remembrance, “Tom wanted us with him, and of course that was where I wanted to be.

“We made quite a procession, four big freight wagons loaded with tools and equipment, Molly and Lon and their three children, for Molly said if I went she would too, in their wagon.  Tom, the little children and I in one wagon, Rob, who thought he was old enough to do a man’s work, driving one team and Jim McBride, the third partner in the mine making the fourth.

“We camped the first night at a ranch on the Troublesome.  The next morning Jim crept out with a small rifle, sure that we were in the wilds, and when one of the rancher’s Plymouth Rock hens appeared through the willows he promptly shot it and hurried back to display his prairie chicken.

“After days of jiggling and bouncing over roads none too well cared for to begin with, and which each day grew worse, the rude cabins and stables which the men had built during the summer were a welcome sight to men and beast alike.  The rolling hills surrounding us were dotted here and there with patches of spruce and aspen.  The latter’s leaves touched by the early frost were as bright as the gold we hoped to find at their roots.

“The Elkhorn mine which held such rich promise proved to be a rich pocket only seventy-five feet in depth, but by the time this was learned a brilliant offer for it had been refused and the snow was three feet deep so we had to stay on until spring.

“It grew tiresome, so few people and mail not more than once a month when one of the men would snowshoe fourteen miles to Columbine, but we suffered no actual hardships.  Of food there was plenty, but no variety.  Molly and I racked our brains trying to devise new ways of cooking dried fruit, beans and bacon.

“Toward spring our meat supply ran low, and the men in camp snow-shoed out to some barren ridges to the south were deer were wintering and shot two bucks.  I shall never forget that meat.  Due to the hard winter the deer were thin.  I used to boil that meat all day, and still the boys would say they couldn’t stick a fork in the gravy.

“The children had a pet doe that followed them around everywhere just like a dog.  She wore a piece of red flannel around her neck so hunters would know her.  We had to watch her on wash day as she loved to play with the clothes on the line, and with her tiny sharp hoofs she would rip a garment to ribbons.

“The men had all allowed their beards to grow all winter as a protection against snow burn.  One day toward spring Tom decided to shave, and after doing so found that he scarcely knew himself; so he put on his black suit and slipped down to Molly’s house and had her send out word that there was a stranger there who was interested in buying the mine.  My!  Such a scurrying around and how importantly the men all walked and how proudly they talked to this strange man who kept back a little in the shadows, until he couldn’t keep on any longer without laughing.

“That was our last attempt at mining.  As early as the roads would permit, we loaded our wagons, took our glass windows out of our cabins and made the long hard trip back to Middle Park.  There we bought the Stillwater Ranch, but as it had no house on it, only a two room cabin right down in the creek bottom among the willows we went on with the Coffin’s to the adjoining ranch which Lon had owned for some time.  But the house was dank and odorous from being closed and so long empty, and made dark and gloomy by so many pine trees so close about it, and the two families of children had been together for so long that quarrels started for no reason at all.

“I was very unhappy and for the first time felt homeless.  The men were away cutting wild hay wherever they could find it to feed the stock through the coming winter.  One day the children and I walked over to the little cabin in the willows, it looked so cheerful and sunny that I swept it out with an old worn-out broom which I found in a corner and calling the boys I said ‘Come on, we are going over to Aunt Molly’s and get our things.  We are coming home.’

“Molly cried and begged us not to leave and imagined all sorts of wild animals creeping around at night, but I was determined, so we loaded up our precious windows, and while they were much too large for the openings, we nailed them on the outside, and they served very well.  We had an open fireplace to cook by.  I will always remember the brightness of the sunshine as it poured into our open doorway those late summer mornings.

”There is lots of work attached to making a hay ranch on a sage brush flat.  The boys, especially Jim and Johnnie, were so little to grub sage and do all the other hard work that seemed their share, but,” brightening at happier memories, “They had lots of pleasures, too.

“Margie was so small when we first went to Stillwater that I used to worry that she would get lost.  She wandered so far away hunting flowers in the sagebrush.  But we had an old shepherd dog that was her constant companion.  I would see her bonnet and his curved-bushy tail bobbing along over the high sage then I would know she was all right.

“One morning Jim and Johnnie were busy out at the shop fixing a set of harness for a team of burros a prospector had left at the ranch.

“About ten o’clock they drove up to the gate in a rickety old buggy and called me to come take a ride.  I said, ‘All right, but I can’t be gone long or dinner will be late.’

“Jim said, ‘Oh we will get you back in time,’ with a look at Johnnie at which they both giggled, ‘Here you sit with Johnnie, I will sit in the back.’

“I was no sooner seated than the burros pricked up their ears and trotted off as smartly as our best driving team.  We took a fine ride with the burros keeping up a brisk trot all the way, and it was not until we returned home, when, in getting out, I tripped over a wire that I found those boys had a wire connected with the burros bits and attached to a telephone generator which Jim had been grinding merrily all the while.  Those poor burros surely were shocked into action.

“I think we had the most fun of our lives at Stillwater.

“Jim and Johnnie began playing for dances when they were still very young, and rather than let them go alone we took them.  I guess that got us started.  We never thought of missing a dance anywhere from Coulter to Hot Sulphur Springs.  One winter night, I think it was New Years, we went to Lehman’s.  We danced until midnight and had a big supper; everyone had brought things, of course, and Mrs. Lehman made a wash boiler full of coffee, then after supper it got so cold we couldn’t go home, so we just danced on until morning and Mr. Lehman, himself, cooked breakfast for the whole crowd.”

“Were you quite popular, Susie?”

“Of course I was.  I was a good dancer,” she declared with spirit.

“I expect you were pretty too,” I suggested.

“I may have been,” she said modestly, “No one ever told me so but once, and then Tom took me home before the dance was half over.”

“Why, Susie did you have an admirer?”

“Tom thought so.  It was just a young easterner out here to make his fortune in a year.  He wondered how any girl as pretty as I could belong out here.  I expect men are still saying that to western girls.  But that was long before I had boys big enough to play for dances.

“Wid was the only dissatisfied one of the children and he was always longing for the race track.  All his talk was of riding, and he was little enough to be a jockey.  I used to wish he would grow up suddenly and think maybe it would change his mind about what he wanted, but he didn’t and at last he decided to go.  His Father and I wouldn’t keep him, knowing that he felt as he did, though we did need him on the ranch. The younger boys weren’t very large to do all the work we had to ask of them.”

“Twenty-five years ago last spring he left and five years since I had a letter from him.” Then with a tiny sigh, “He is never far from my thoughts.”

The “Mickey,” a big new pleasure boat, chugged past making the waves lap higher on the rocks on which we sat.  My outward eye saw and registered this fact, but at heart I was back at Stillwater watching Susie’s family grow up, enjoying with them their music and their pranks and suffering with them, their heartaches and disappointments.

“It wasn’t long until Rob went to Wyoming to visit Aunt Molly, and married there.  It was just a year later that he and Aunt Molly brought his tiny Motherless son home to me to raise.  He was such a comfort to us, particularly as we had to lose big Tom in such a short while.  I thought for a while I couldn’t stay on where everything I saw and everything I touched reminded me of him, but nothing is ever gained by running away from sorrow.  Soon I began to love the very things that had hurt me so at first.

“Tommy was such a little mite; I was always trying to fatten him up.  Once I gave him too much cream in his bottle and made him sick, and he drank skimmed milk ever after.  Of course he was teased and made much of by all our boys and all the other big boys who were always there.  Once Rob came upon him sitting in the sun at the south end of the Post Office, holding a kitten.  He would spank it sharply then hold it to his ear and listen then spank it again.  Finally he said, ‘Boil, damn you, boil.’

“Each of my children has had a measure of happiness, even Jim who was taken right in the prime of life, which always seems the hardest.  Each, too, has had to face the most severest of trials – the loss of a loved one, but they have all stood their tests with courage.  It was from their Irish Father, I think, that they learned to meet life with a smile and a joke on their lips.

“Though we have never been a family to talk much of religion, I know they all have a deep abiding faith as I do, that we are simply carrying on here as best we can until we can all be together again.

“The ranch was too much for me after Johnnie married and went away.  It became so run down that I knew Tom wouldn’t be proud of it so I was glad to sell.  I am glad, too, to have a house here at the Lake, close to Rob and his family – but you see why I say I have lived my life in a circle and am back at the starting point.”

As we rose I realized that the sun had set and the soft twilight was already setting over the lake.

With apologies for not making a better story from such good material.

                                                             Beulah