  The weather all summer had been fine. When there was an occasional shower it came, considerately enough, late in the afternoon. It never interfered with the outdoor activities and indeed was only noticed by the concert-goers, who heard the brief but heavy drumming on the canvas of the huge tent. This Saturday morning was no exception. The sun rose brilliantly and the air was crystal clear, a perfect day for the excursion to Toklat. To Judy there was only one drawback: if only Karl could have come. Yet he might turn up with Fran, late in the afternoon. She paced the walk outside her home. Lynne and Allen were late. She thought of that silly old adage about the early bird! All those pancakes she’d left uneaten! There’s such a thing as being too prompt! But, she grudgingly remembered, in that not so distant past she had been the one for whom others had waited. At last their station wagon approached. “We overslept!” Lynne gaily announced as the car stopped. Judy climbed in. The winding road to Toklat hugged the mountain and although Allen drove at only a moderate speed, a number of furry animals, feeling much at home in the early morning stillness, flipped across their path to escape only just in time! Once they all breathlessly exclaimed, “There’s a deer,” but it was so fleet of foot as it bounded into the woods that they couldn’t be sure. At the entrance to Toklat was a handsome wood and stone structure, Toklat Lodge. Early as it was, people were already lined up to make their reservations for the luncheon they hoped to enjoy later. The food at the Lodge was famous. Everyone knew about the gourmet dishes and the perfection of its service. But Lynne, with a shade of regret in her voice said, “That kind of elegance is not for us or our budget. However,” she smiled as she indicated the lunch basket on the back seat, “we’ve come prepared.” They parked the car in the shade of some trees and beyond a log fence enclosure they could see the heavy wooded area where the dogs lived. Mr. Mace, they were told, would arrive later to take visitors through the gate and see and hear all about the Huskies. On the other side of the road stretched a vast, treeless meadow abruptly ended by the range of mountains rising sheer from the valley. There were some houses sparsely set in the field. “Is that part of Toklat, too?” Allen asked the man idly standing guard at the gate. “Nope,” came the laconic answer. “That’s Ashcroft.” In the clear sunlight the houses seemed close at hand. They could count eight, maybe ten. Judy recalled the description of Ashcroft described in her library book, “The giant mountains guarding their silvery treasure.” She wondered what there was to guard in that desolate spot now. She was eager to go there at once. The tour could wait. Judging by the crowds already arrived, there would be a number of tours. Besides, if Karl did come, he would expect to meet her at Toklat. Lynne agreed, but Allen preferred to remain in the hope of having a few words alone with Stuart Mace. They would meet later “over there,” meaning Ashcroft. “And don’t forget the lunch,” Lynne cautioned. Crossing the rough fields overgrown with wild, prickly grasses, they soon came close enough to see the houses—large, three stories high, the frames of gray, weather-beaten timber, ageless. Two of them had wooden signs nailed over the entrance, “Groceries,” “Drygoods.” They tried to look in and discover if anything remained of the boasted merchandise. But the windows were barred. They walked down to another house further down the field, but that too had the doors and every window boarded up. “You’d think from the care with which they closed the houses they expected to return,” Lynne said wonderingly. All had the sad, forlorn look of houses long empty and deserted. But one house, larger than the others, gaped wide open. Glad of the opportunity at last to satisfy their curiosity as to what the interior might be like, they stepped inside. Had vandals carried away the staircase to the upper chambers, or torn out the partitions that must have once divided this huge room? The window frames in the upper portion of the house were hung with vines through which no ray of sun could penetrate. From the heavy beams under the roof, wisps of clothes waved weird and ghostlike in the slight wind. The two girls stood huddled together and felt like intruders as they talked of the people who once must have lived there. Judy, her imagination in full flight, pointed to the tattered garments. “Look, I can make out a miner’s cap—and there’s an old bearskin coat. They probably had to shoot the bear, eat the meat—bear meat is very good, you know—and then use the fur to keep from freez—” She stopped in the middle of her rhapsody. A pair of small beady eyes looked down on her. She could distinguish a wing—then another. It moved! more wings—more beady eyes. Wings fluttered—began to circle near them. “Bats! The place is full of them. They can attack us—get into our hair!” Without a moment’s delay, they flung hands over their heads and rushed to get out, stumbling over the ancient doorsill in their hasty exit. Once out in the sunny meadow, Lynne laughed at herself. “I feel like a goose running out the way I did. Who ever heard of bats attacking anyone?” “Is that so?” Judy said warmly. “One night a few summers back a bat got into my bedroom. It flapped around horribly, looking for me. I still get the creeps when I think of it. If Grandpa hadn’t come in—” “O.K. I’ve heard of bats in the belfry,” Lynne said dryly, “but never mind. Have it your own way.” They walked on to examine the few remaining houses. Except for the ruins of a fence and an upside-down hut that was probably once an outhouse, nothing remained to indicate that people once lived there. “Ashcroft is sure a ghost town,” they both agreed. They started to trudge back. They had gone further than they expected and found the walking hard and tiring. When they stopped once or twice to rest, they thought they heard the unmistakable chop chop of an ax. Following the direction of the sound, they came upon a cabin, no larger than a good-sized woodshed. Near it stood a man swinging his ax with an easy, steady rhythm. He looked up as they approached and said, in answer to their greeting, “’Tis a fine morning.” He nodded and smiled at them. They could see at once that he was old, very old. His face was crisscrossed with fine lines, but his blue eyes were bright and he held himself so erect that Judy involuntarily straightened her slumping shoulders. “Isn’t that pretty strenuous?” Lynne asked, pointing to the huge tree he was splitting. He smiled again. “I’m eighty-two and never felt better. We’ll need all the wood we can cut.” He spoke with the pride of the very old whom the years have used well. Judy walked closer to the cabin and the door being ajar, she looked inside—two cots, some shelves sparsely stacked with cans of soup, some other foodstuffs. “You don’t live here, do you?” she asked, her voice incredulous as she again faced the old man. “Yes. My pal and I, we live here. We’re the only two natives left in Ashcroft.” “You are?” Lynne and Judy said in one voice. “Let’s stay here for a while,” Judy whispered. “The meadow’s so flat, we can’t help seeing Allen when he comes looking for us.” Lynne nodded. “May we sit here a little while and rest, Mister? We expect to meet someone later.” He seemed pleased. “I’m glad of your company.” He picked up his ax and placed it against the woodpile. “Set yourselves down. Make yourselves comfortable—the logs or the grass.” He sat down on the fallen tree and Judy, on the stiff undergrowth, looked up at him with deep, commiserating eyes. “I don’t see how you can bear to live in that little cabin all winter. I should think you’d die of lonesomeness or freeze to death!” “It’s never that cold, Miss. The sun’s good and hot even on the coldest days. And I’m used to it.” He looked at Lynne. “Came here as a boy when my father worked in the silver mines and I’ve stayed here, off and on, ever since.” He fished out a pipe from his shirt pocket and the girls watched the gnarled fingers first clean it and then stuff it with some yellowish weed. “Was Ashcroft ever like Aspen? You know what I mean, well populated, with lots of mines?” Lynne asked, as the old man puffed contentedly on his pipe. “Well, yes and no. Ashcroft was built up before Aspen, but Aspen got ahead faster.” “Why?” Judy asked. “I’ll tell yer. For one thing, the mines out this way were hard to work and new mines weren’t easy to locate. At Aspen things were different. New veins kept on being opened all the time and they weren’t so hard to mine. Nature favored it more, or maybe it was better equipment. Anyhow, prospectors and settlers both got discouraged. They gradually took off. Yep, they just moved away. A lot of them dragged their houses with them by mule team.” “What about Montezeuma and Tam-o-shanta? They were here. Horace Tabor made a big success of his mines.” Judy wagged her head in the manner of one who had spent her life in the bowels of the earth. Lynne looked at her in surprise. “How do you know?” “Oh, I’ve been reading up about it,” she answered with a superior smile. But the old man saw nothing strange in Judy’s erudition. “The young lady’s right,” he said. “Montezeuma had plenty of good ore and it did well. Made Tabor a tidy fortune. But it was too high. Nearly thirteen thousand feet. Dragging supplies out there was hard, but only a man like Tabor could make a good thing of it.” He nodded at them and a great smile spread over the wrinkled face, deepening the two well-marked furrows around his jaw. “Tabor built a mansion out here, real elegant, gold paper on the walls. Built it for Baby Doe. That’s the second Mrs. Tabor that maybe you heard about.” “Yes. Did you ever see her?” Judy asked, with mounting interest. “Well, in a manner of speaking. Saw her coming and going. The day she came out to see Montezeuma, Tabor was that happy he declared a twenty-four-hour holiday for everyone working in the mine. He was a real silver king.” The old man shook his head appreciatively. “He treated everyone that day to all the liquor he could drink.” But his smile quickly faded. “Augusta got that mine too.” He sat thinking for a moment. “Not that you can altogether blame her, the first Mrs. Tabor. She’d helped him when he was—well, nobody. And now that he was rich and famous, she wanted to hold on. Guess she loved him, so she said right out in all the newspapers.” “Augusta seems to have done very well for herself,” Judy commented sternly. Again Lynne lifted her eyebrows. She was certain now Judy had been boning up not only on the history but on the gossip column of those days. “Well, did Horace Tabor and his new love live happily ever after?” Lynne asked lightly. Judy brushed aside the question. “What happened after the Silver Panic, Mister? Did Baby Doe leave Tabor when he became poor?” “No, Miss.” The answer was emphatic. “She stuck to him through thick and thin. Nobody expected it of her—she was that young and handsome. When she married Tabor, the biggest people in Washington came to the wedding. Tabor was an important man, not only rich. He’d done a lot for Leadville—the opera house and then at Denver, built a hotel and lots more. “The State of Colorado was grateful and he become a Senator for a while.” His words came more slowly as if the embers of his excitement had died out like his pipe. “Well, Augusta made such a scandal of his leaving her that she spoiled his chances in politics. Then comes the Panic—1893! Baby Doe, from being the millionaire darling of a silver king, came down to even taking in washing. She proved herself a good wife and faithful.” “I knew she would,” Judy said triumphantly. She wanted to know more. “Is that all?” she asked. “No.” The old man shook his head gravely. “As I was saying, Tabor lost everything and what he didn’t lose, he’d given to Augusta. She was rich and stayed rich. All that remained to Tabor was one mine. He still owned Matchless. It wasn’t paying any but he had great faith in it. When he was on his deathbed, he tells Baby Doe, ‘Hold on to Matchless. It’ll make a fortune yet.’” “And did it?” Judy asked anxiously. The old man shook his head. “She held on to it because Tabor told her. She become that poor, she didn’t have a roof over her head. So she moved out to the mine. Lived alone in a one-room cabin.” He leaned forward, holding his young listeners. “Gettin’ enough to eat wasn’t all her trouble. Tax collectors came out to the mine and she held them off with a gun. But she had friends who stuck by her, respected her grit, like that Jacob Sands of Aspen and some others, I forget the names. They spent money to clear her title to Matchless so that she could hold on to it, to the very end. She held it for forty years, but it never paid any.” He sighed deeply. “They found her one day, her body dressed in rags, her feet covered with newspapers to keep out the cold—found her frozen to death.” For a while no one spoke. Then as if wishing to break the pall of sadness that engulfed him, Lynne asked, “Do you ever get to Aspen?” “Sometimes. We have friends over there,” and he pointed in the direction of Toklat. Looking across the field, they saw Allen coming toward them with great long strides. “Had a wonderful time with Mr. Mace,” he said as soon as they were within earshot. Then coming closer he noticed the old man. Allen’s eyes seemed to ask, “Where did you pick up this ancient?” “Allen,” Lynne said quickly, “this gentleman is one of the two natives of Ashcroft—and still lives here.” “I’m happy to know you,” Allen said, shaking his hand. They repeated the Baby Doe story for Allen’s benefit as they spread their lunch, which they insisted the old man share with them. When they left, he stood there waving, a tall spare figure, framed by the deserted houses and the brooding mountains. Allen hurried them along. “What an extraordinary man Mace is! What skill he uses in handling his dogs!” “What’s so special about that?” Judy asked, still ruminating about the ups and downs of Baby Doe. “Horses pull wagons and dogs pull sleighs. Why is Mr. Mace so wonderful?” “For one thing, kid,” Allen said, annoyed at Judy’s lack of enthusiasm, “he was with the ski troops that saw Arctic duty in World War II. He learned about dogs the hard way.” Allen turned to a more appreciative audience. “Lynne, I guess none of us realized what these mountain troops went through out in that wasteland of snow and ice. The pilots they saved, the planes and cargo they salvaged—” “What had the dogs to do with the pilots?” Judy asked. “Fierce storms often forced the planes down,” Allen explained patiently. “Mace was in charge of a division whose job it was to search for and rescue the flyers and, of course, to save the air cargo on which their lives depended. You see, Judy, only dogs and dog-sleighs can travel over that sort of country.” They moved along at a snail’s pace as Allen became more and more engrossed in his subject. “Mr. Mace had to train the dogs, keep the drivers from fighting each other. Tempers get ugly under such conditions. The war went on. Sleighs wore out. He had to make new ones—new equipment.” Allen shook his head. “Mace is a modest man. You have to drag the story out of him.” “How did he happen to get to Ashcroft?” Lynne asked. Allen laughed. “I asked him that myself. It seems that when the war was over, they didn’t know what to do with those wonderful dogs. The top brass ordered them sold. Mace said he’d grown to love working with dogs. The thought of giving it up made him wretched. He saved some money and he bought all the top-strain dogs he could afford. He and his wife decided to take their dogs to Aspen to breed and train them, as a hobby.” “What did he do before the war?” Lynne asked. “Some kind of research on flowers that grow on the Rocky Mountain slopes. But when he came back, there was no interest in that sort of thing. And there weren’t any jobs that he could find to do around Aspen. So he decided to move out to Ashcroft. Land was cheap and snow lay on the mountains seven months of the year. Dog-sledding and skiing had become a great national sport. So he decided to turn his hobby into a job! He and Mrs. Mace worked through one summer and a long hard winter to build the log and stone lodge we passed. Guests can stay there and enjoy long trips into the mountains with the dog-sled teams and—” Lynne, interrupting him with a laugh, said, “You’re so wound up talking about Mr. Mace, you forgot about the tour. I can see from here people crowding through the gate.” They made the remaining distance on the run. They arrived in time to join the twenty or thirty others all trying to squeeze as close as possible to the owner and guide, while Judy unabashed scrutinized every likely or unlikely person that might be Karl. |
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