COLORADO TRAILS

Riding and tramping trails would lose half their charm if the motive
were only to hunt and to fish. It seems fair to warn the reader who
longs to embark upon a bloody game hunt or a chronicle of fishing
records that this is not that kind of story. But it will be one for
those who love horses and dogs, the long winding dim trails, the wild
flowers and the dark still woods, the fragrance of spruce and the
smell of camp-fire smoke. And as well for those who love to angle in
brown lakes or rushing brooks or chase after the baying hounds or
stalk the stag on his lonely heights.

[Illustration: PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO]

We left Denver on August twenty-second over the Moffet road and had a
long wonderful ride through the mountains. The Rockies have a sweep, a
limitless sweep, majestic and grand. For many miles we crossed no
streams, and climbed and wound up barren slopes. Once across the divide,
however, we descended into a country of black forests and green valleys.
Yampa, a little hamlet with a past prosperity, lay in the wide valley of
the Bear River. It was picturesque but idle, and a better name for it
would have been Sleepy Hollow. The main and only street was very wide
and dusty, bordered by old board walks and vacant stores. It seemed a
deserted street of a deserted village. Teague, the guide, lived there.
He assured me it was not quite as lively a place as in the early days
when it was a stage center for an old and rich mining section. We stayed
there at the one hotel for a whole day, most of which I spent sitting on
the board walk. Whenever I chanced to look down the wide street it
seemed always the same--deserted. But Yampa had the charm of being old
and forgotten, and for that reason I would like to live there a while.