Page:A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879).djvu/56

 Its chief features were greasiness and black flies. Twenty men in working clothes fed and went out again, "nobody speaking to nobody." The landlady introduced me to a Vermont settler who lives in the "Foot Hills," who was very kind and took a great deal of trouble to get me a horse. Horses abound, but they are either large American horses, which are only used for draught, or small, active horses, called broncos, said to be from a Spanish word, signifying that they can never be broke. They nearly all "buck," and are described as being more "ugly " and treacherous than mules. There is only one horse in Greeley "safe for a woman to ride." I tried an Indian pony by moonlight—such a moonlight—but found he had tender feet. The kitchen was the only sitting-room, so I shortly went to bed, to be awoke very soon by crawling creatures apparently in myriads. I struck a light, and found such swarms of bugs that I gathered myself up on the wooden chairs, and dozed uneasily till sunrise. Bugs are a great pest in Colorado. They come out of the earth, infest the wooden walls, and cannot be got rid of by any amount of cleanliness. Many careful house-wives take their beds to pieces every week and put carbolic acid on them.

It was a glorious, cool morning, and the great range of the Rocky Mountains looked magnificent. I tried the pony again, but found he would not do