Page:A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879).djvu/188

 and treeless, upon the brown and treeless plain, which seemed to nourish nothing but wormwood and the Spanish bayonet. The shallow Platte, shrivelled into a narrow stream with a shingly bed six times too large for it, and fringed by shrivelled cotton-wood, wound along by Denver, and two miles up its course I saw a great sand-storm, which in a few minutes covered the city, blotting it out with a dense brown cloud. Then with gusts of wind the snow-storm began, and I had to trust entirely to Birdie's sagacity for finding Evans's shantie. She had been there once before only, but carried me direct to it over rough ground and trenches. Gleefully Mrs. Evans and the children ran out to welcome the pet pony, and I was received most hospitably, and made warm and comfortable, though the house consists only of a kitchen and two bed-closets. My budget of news from "the Park" had to be brought out constantly, and I wondered how much I had to tell. It was past eleven when we breakfasted the next morning. It was cloudless and an intense frost, with six inches of snow on the ground, and everybody thought it too cold to get up and light the fire. I had intended to leave Birdie at Denver, but Governor Hunt and Mr. Byers of the Rocky Mountain News both advised me to travel on horseback rather than by train and stage, telling me that I should be quite safe, and Governor Hunt drew out a route for me and gave me a circular letter to the settlers along it.