re beds and grub with each
other and strangers; a feeling akin to insult being awakened if payment
be tendered for hospitality even of several days' duration, excepting,
of course, regularly established quarters where stage coaches change
horses and provision is made for the accommodation of summer tourists.
Every man is a blacksmith, carpenter, tinker, tailor, cook, chamberman,
physician, nurse, even undertaker and grave digger when occasion
demands. The food is the most primitive known in a civilized
land--bread, venison or elk meat, occasionally antelope, bear, mountain
sheep, always bacon and black coffee, and dried prunes, peaches or
apples furnish fruit if the ranchman's ambition fires him sufficiently
to stew sauce. Occasionally a ranchman has milch cows, which add butter
and cream to the simple fare. Vegetables are a scarce commodity, except
for a case or two of canned corn, tomatoes, succotash and baked beans,
the latter being a dish utterly impossible of being prepared in high
altitudes without the aid of baking soda to soften the bean; even then
unless great care is taken the alkali spoils the flavor of this
toothsome Boston creation. Buckskin and heavy woolen underclothes form
the general run of garments, an outer protecting duck coat and overalls
being worn to a large extent. White goods as wearing apparel, table or
bed furnishings are seldom found, much less used. Time is reckoned by
'sun ups,' 'snows' and the mail carrier. In event of the latter being a
day late or ahead, the fact is recorded, or every one would eventually
lose complete track of dates, Sunday likely as not being observed in
name in the middle of the week."

Jack kept his record straight for a month and then lost the combination
entirely for eighteen days. There were no churches, no schools, and but
one voting precinct in the whole of Grand County. Ward primaries had not
been established and politics centered in a justice of the peace,
sheriff, and county judge, none of whom accumulated wealth from office
emoluments.

On Thanksgiving Day Jack's last officially correct entry in his log book
noted the thermometer as "frozen up," subsequent days for a long period
recording "a little colder," "much colder," "terribly cold."

The fifth day from Hot Sulphur Springs found the trapper and his pupil
on the west slope of the Gore or Park range, encountering a terrific
snowstorm, in the midst of which they stumbled into a band of elk which
made Ja