raveled
Roads_ and its companion volumes a group of thirty short stories
(written between 1887 and 1891), in which I had expressed all I had to
say on that especial phase of western life. To attempt to recover the
spirit of my youth would not only have been a failure but a bore--even
to those who were urging me to the task. It was my business to keep
moving--to accompany my characters as they migrated into the happier,
more hopeful West. Like them I was "Campin' through, podner, just a
campin' through."

As in _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, I had dealt with the
three-cornered fight of the cattlemen, the Indian, and the soldier, so
now, in 1902, I returned to the mountain West, to picture another
conflict, equally stirring and possessing a still finer setting and
back-ground. In _Hesper_ I was concerned with a war, in which most of
the action had taken place among the clouds, on the hilltops nearly two
miles above sea-level. There was something grandly pictorial in this
drama; but, after writing a few chapters of it, I felt the need of
revisiting the scene.

Zulime again accompanied me and as our train slid down the familiar road
leading to Colorado Springs and we could see the lightning flashing
among the high summits on which I had laid the scenes of my story,
Zulime glowed with joy and I took on a renewed sense of power. For an
hour I felt equal to my task, to be historian of the free miner seemed
to me a worthy office.

The Ehrichs were again our hosts and they (as well as Russell Wray, the
Editor of the _Gazette_) took the keenest interest in my design. From
Wray and his friends I began at once to derive an understanding of the
part which "Little London" (as the miners called the Springs) had taken
in the war. I relied on a visit to Bull Hill and Victor to furnish the
Sky-town or "Red-neck" point of view.

Wray was especially valuable to me, for he had taken part in the famous
expedition of the "Yaller Legs" and his experiences as a reporter and
his sense of humor had enabled him to report both sides of the
controversy. He had many friends in the camp, to whom he gave me
letters.

The character which interested me most, in all the warring factions, was
the free miner, the prospector, the man of the trail. Him I clearly
understood. He had been companion in most of my trips into the wild. He
was blood brother to my father, and cousin to my heroic uncles. He
represented the finest phases of pioneering. "