legend: "The tree that grew here was 380
years old; circumference, 28 feet; height, 79 feet; was cut down June
25, 1883, at a cost of $250." So perished, at the hands of an amazingly
stupid city council, the oldest landmark in Colorado. Under the shade of
this cottonwood Kit Carson, Wild Bill, and many another famous Indian
scout built early camp fires. Near it, in 1850, thirty-six whites were
massacred by Indians; upon one of its huge limbs fourteen men were
hanged at convenient intervals; and it is a pity that the city council
did not follow this admirable lead and leave the one glory of Pueblo to
save it from damnation. It afforded the only grateful shelter in this
furnace heat; it was the one beautiful object in a most unbeautiful
place, and it has been razed to the ground in memory of the block-heads
whose bodies were not worthy to enrich the roots of it. Tradition adds,
pathetically enough, that the grave of the first white woman who died in
that desert was made beneath the boughs of the "Old Monarch." May she
rest in peace under the merciless hands of the baggage-master and his
merry crew! Lightly lie the trunks that are heaped over her nameless
dust! Well, there came a time when we forgot Pueblo, but we never will
forgive the town council.

Then we listened in vain at evening for the strumming of fandango music
on multitudinous guitars, as was our custom so long as the _muchachos_
were with us. Then we played no more progressive euchre games many miles
in length, and smoked no more together in the ecstasy of unrestraint;
but watched and waited in vain--for those who were with us were no
longer of us for some weeks to come, and the mouths of the singers were
hushed. The next thing we knew a city seemed to spring suddenly out of
the plains--a mirage of brick and mortar--an oasis in the
wilderness,--and we realized, with a gasp, that we had struck the
bull's-eye of the Far West--in other words, Denver!

CHAPTER II.

In Denver Town.

Colorado! What an open-air sound that word has! The music of the wind is
in it, and a peculiarly free, rhythmical swing, suggestive of the
swirling lariat. Colorado is not, as some conjecture, a corruption or
revised edition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, who was sent out by
the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico in 1540 in search of the seven cities of
Cibola: it is from the verb _colorar_--colored red, or ruddy--a name
frequently given to rivers, rocks, and ravines in the lower