Buffalo Roost. Frank H. Cheley
our marriage we moved to Lansing, and he became superintendent in an electrical manufacturing company. He had a little shop of his own in the basement at home, and during the long winter evenings of the first year that we were there he built furniture for our little home. The chair we are sitting in, Willis, is one of his first pieces. We were very happy together there, and it wasn't long before you came. The summer before you were born his company sent him West to install mine machinery. It was then that he became interested in the great gold mines of Colorado. Everybody seemed to be prospecting and staking gold claims. He thought he saw his chance to get rich quickly, so he, too, began prospecting. He very soon developed a great love for the mountains, and while you were a baby he used to go to Colorado Springs for his vacations. His mind was very active, and as he became more closely acquainted with the mines he conceived an idea for a machine to roast gold ore by electricity. In the winter evenings he would sit sketching its parts and dreaming over his plans. Sometimes in his boyish enthusiasm he would assure me that he would yet be a rich man."
"And what about his mine, mother; doesn't that come into the story pretty soon?" "Yes, yes, but don't hurry me, son. It seems so very strange to be sitting here telling you all about him, for it seems to have happened so long, long ago.
"On one of his trips west he fell in with an old mountaineer named Kieser, Tad Kieser. Tad became interested in his roasting machine, and they decided to locate claims together. Tad was to put up the 'grub stakes,' as they called it, for your father had no money except his salary. All one fall, when he was not installing machinery, they explored the mountains south of Colorado Springs, especially along the old Stage Road to Cripple Creek, looking for suitable claims. The old Stage Road was a steep, rocky mountain road over which they hauled provisions and passengers into the Cripple Creek district.
"Several miles from the city there was an old log hostelry—'Wright's Road House' they called it. Here lived a strange old man, a mountaineer of the oldest type. Daddy Wright, they called him. He and Tad were old friends, so your father became very well acquainted with him. The stages to and from the gold camp always stopped at Dad's; sometimes for a meal and sometimes for all night. It was one of the delights of your father's business trips to spend an evening with this old man in his rough mountain cabin, sitting before his crude stone fireplace smoking and listening to stories of the days of 'forty-nine,' when Dad had hunted for gold in the mountains of California. Your father and Tad were both in the old road house the night it was burned and barely escaped with their lives. He didn't tell me about it until long afterwards.
"Tad and your father finally filed on two claims. One was on Cheyenne Mountain, near Dad's claims, and the other was somewhere near a mountain called Cookstove. Your father thought that valley was the most beautiful spot he had ever seen. He used to write me long letters describing the beautiful canyon and the falls, which was just a ribbon of water that trickled down the face of a monstrous granite boulder hundreds of feet in height. He called it St. Marys Falls. Here, somewhere in a hidden spot of this canyon, they found a strange outcropping of black rock which your father believed would lead to an extensive gold vein in the interior of the mountain. I remember he called the vein an 'iron dyke,' and said that a compass revolted when placed on it. His great desire was to mine that strata by means of a tunnel, but he had no money, so he and Tad decided that they would work during the winter months and save what money they could, then both work on the tunnel in warm weather. They chose a spot down in the canyon that was high, but still near the stream, and there built a log shanty to live in while they worked the claim. He wrote me how they cut the great spruce on the side of the mountain far above the chosen spot and rolled them in. Dad let them use his team of donkeys to pack in the necessary lumber and shingles for the 'shack.' Father came home, and Tad, with some hired help, erected the first log cabin in the canyon. My, but he was proud of it.
"The next spring saw them at work on the tunnel. I did so hate to let father go, for I was afraid some harm would befall him; but he reassured me and seemed so positive that all our future hopes lay hidden in that hole that I let him go. The first season they went in thirty feet, and things looked better every foot. It was very hard for him to close up the hole and come home to his winter's work. His company in Lansing had inspected the drawings of his proposed machine and had promised him a goodly sum for the patent if he proved that it would work. The only question was the securing of the proper ore for flux. I remember his hopes ran high when one day they came upon a narrow vein of this necessary flux stone. He was so sure that they would find more, and the gold, too, that he made plans to build a great reducing plant, using the falls for motor power. He had it all worked out on paper, even to details.
"Meanwhile my sister, your Aunt Lucy, and Uncle Joe went West for her health, and settled in Colorado Springs. Uncle Joe became a real estate dealer and also interested in mines and mining properties. He was greatly interested in the tunnel, and predicted great things for its future. About this time all the land around the canyon, both north and south, became a part of the Pike's Peak Forest Reserve, so that your father had to refile on his claim and prove to the land office that he was working a real mineral vein. In refiling, his claim was not big enough to include the shanty, but anticipating no trouble on account of it he neglected to lease his cabin from the Forest Reserve officials. The news leaked out that gold had been discovered in Cookstove Gulch, and in a few days the entire stream was staked from one end of the canyon to the other as placer claims. Of course the cabin site became the property of another man, and with it the cabin, as it could not be moved. The new owner was a little, short, pudgy man with an ever-ready eye for business, so father and Tad were forced to rent the cabin they had built and paid for. That winter was the one your sister Mabel was taken from us, and the last year we were all together."
She stopped and gazed into the fire, seemingly forgetting the boy who sat by her side. Then she reached forward and placed the last stick on the slowly-dying embers. As it caught, and the flames leaped into the chimney in response to the wind outside, she continued:
"The next summer was the last. I never knew just how it happened exactly; but some way, while making a new side drift in the tunnel, a blast went off prematurely, and he was caught in the falling rocks and crushed to death. Uncle Joe wrote me the particulars—all that I ever had.
"He was too badly mangled to be recognized, so even before I knew of the accident his poor, broken body was laid to rest under the pines in Evergreen Cemetery. The tunnel was closed and locked, and your uncle packed father's few belongings in the little old trunk I gave you last spring for your own and sent it home—all that I ever saw again of your father.
"Then followed the terrible fever that nearly took my life. How I prayed, my boy, that I might die, so great was my sorrow and utter loneliness; but the Great Father saw fit to keep me here, and now I am thankful. He needed me to help you become a man. When I was so sick grandfather came and brought us home, and here we have been ever since."
"But, mother, have you never wanted to go to Colorado?"
"Yes, son, I've often thought I would be happier there, but father has never thought so. I've often promised Aunt Lucy we'd come. I'm afraid she won't be long for this world, for she has a very serious tubercular trouble. You must never mention it, son, but your grandfather never had any use for Uncle Joe, and was very much opposed to Lucy's marrying him, so they slipped off and were married secretly. She has never felt like coming home since—not even for a visit. Father gets very lonely for her, for she was the life of the old home. I would not be surprised, son, if I should be called to her bedside any time now, for she is very low."
"Mother, if such a thing should happen, you'd take me with you, wouldn't you?" eagerly asked Willis.
"Of course I would, my son."
"And perhaps I could find father's tunnel. Say, mother, did you ever hear what became of that Tad Kieser after father's death?" he inquired.
"No, son, I never heard. He wrote me one letter, expressing his sympathy, and in that letter I remember he said he had abandoned the tunnel because he was convinced that it was not a safe place to work, and probably it never would have amounted to anything, anyway."
"Do you suppose he is still prospecting somewhere in the mountains, mother?"
"I don't