Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber's note:
The original hyphenation, spelling, and use of accented words has
been retained. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.

_THE PASSING OF THE STORM
AND OTHER POEMS_

_See page 17._]

_The Passing of the Storm_

_AND OTHER POEMS_

BY

ALFRED CASTNER KING

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Copyright, 1907, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

DEDICATION

TO A RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING CLASS, THE PIONEER PROSPECTORS, WHOSE
BRAVERY, INTELLIGENCE AND INDUSTRY BLAZED THE TRAILS IN THE
WESTERN WILDERNESS FOR ADVANCING CIVILIZATION, AND MADE POSSIBLE
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT WEST, THIS VOLUME IS VERY
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

_PREFACE_

Oh that my words were now written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!--JOB xix, 23.

Books have, from time immemorial, been the conservators of human wisdom, the repositories of information, the mentors of youth and adolescence, the counsellors of manhood, the comfort and companionship of age.

The experience of an individual, school or era, when committed to book form, becomes the common property of all succeeding time, and the accumulated knowledge of the past, transmitted from generation to generation, through the medium of books, may with justice be regarded as the most valuable of human heritages.

But they have not always been unmixed blessings; they have both led and misled; they have elucidated, yet have mystified.

They have dissipated the shadows of ignorance and superstition, but in some instances have confused and obscured the searchlight of truth. In the economy of human affairs, books have been factors of no small importance. They have proved the most potent expositors of iniquitous systems, and when properly directed against crying evils have accomplished speedy reforms. They have precipitated wars, incited revolts and seditions in the cause of progress, yet have intensified prejudice, political, religious and racial. With silent eloquence, they have cried out against the wrongs of those who had none to plead their cause, while in other cases, their influence has tended to perpetuate existing abuses. In some instances they have taught men to be content with servitude, in others have ignited the beacon fires of liberty. Though they are usually found enlisted under the banners of justice, yet no cause has ever been so unworthy, and no institution so unholy, that books have not been written in their defence. In verity, they have sown both wheat and tares.

Books have been written on every conceivable subject, under all conditions, by all sorts of writers, and from an endless variety of motives. The recompense of those who have written them has been equally various. Some have been apotheosized and worshipped, others have been the recipients of orders and decorations of honor at the hands of kings and potentates, while others have received the ovations of admiring multitudes. Some have anonymously contributed their mite toward the enrichment of literature, others have appeared, from whence we know not, and after placing their offerings upon the altars of poesy and art have departed unrewarded into the shadows of obscurity, leaving as footprints innumerable quotations which have become proverbial. Some, as the bards and minnesingers of old who in mediæval castles ate their bread by the sufferance of the feudal lords and barons, have in more recent years been dependent upon the bounty of some munificent, and usually titled patron, to whom they, as a matter of policy, dedicated their strains and panegyrics, consequently wielding mercenary pens. Some who have presumed to write in a manner displeasing to those who sat in high places have met with vilification, exile, imprisonment, decapitation, and have not been strangers to the pillory. Criticism and ridicule are the patent rewards of incipient authorship, while want, neglect and starvation have terminated the career of more than one name afterwards great in the world of letters.

Aside from motives common to all who with reverent steps humbly strive to follow where the great lights of poesy have led, the author of these unpretentious pages has been actuated by a desire to portray, in his correct light, a very frequently misrepresented character, viz.: the pioneer prospector. It has long been customary for writers of western fiction to picture this character as a large-hearted but rough and untutored individual, expressing himself in a vernacular consisting of equal parts of slang, profanity and questionable grammar, possessing no ambitions above the card table or the strong waters which cause all men to err who drink them. An intimate acquaintance with this class, extending from the years of infancy to middle age, convinces the writer that the common description is manifestly unjust and misleading.

The men who flocked to the early gold excitements, and who subsequently prospected the western mountain ranges for their hidden wealth, were the cream of American and European manhood; men possessed of more than ordinary endowments of intellect, education and physique, while their industry, bravery and hardihood have never been questioned.

Proof of this exists in the names which have lingered behind them as a matter of record, for it was the prospector who christened the mountains, gulches and mining locations of the west. A cursory perusal of the maps of mineral surveys in any western mining district, will reveal in abundance such names as Hector, Ajax, Golden Fleece, Atlas, Pegasus, etc.; indicating that those who applied them were, if not college graduates, men not unfamiliar with the classics. The use of such names as Cleopatra, Crusader or Magna Charta, by a prospector unversed in history, would naturally be unexpected. One without knowledge of literature would hardly grace his location stakes with such names as Dante, Hamlet or Mephistopheles, while one entirely unlettered could not by chance hit upon such names as Pandora, Medusa or Sesostris.

Of the pioneer prospectors but few remain; many have fallen asleep, others tiring of the privation and uncertainty incident to a miner's life, are pursuing other vocations, while many have become prosperous ranch and cattle-men and may now be found in almost any western valley. A few, a very few in comparison with the less fortunate majority, acquiring a competence, removed to other localities, and in not a few instances, have become conspicuous figures in the world of business, politics and finance.

In the mountainous districts of the west, you may still occasionally see a veteran prospector of the old school, living the life of a hermit in his log cabin, situated in some picturesque park or gulch, near his, sometimes valuable but more frequently worthless, mining locations. There he lives winter and summer, his only companion a cat or dog; the ambitions of his youth still unrealized, but at three score and ten, hopeful and expectant. His bent form, white hair, and venerable bearing impress you strangely at first, but it is only when you overcome the reticence peculiar to those who have long dwelt in solitude, and engage him in conversation, that his mental status becomes apparent. To your surprise you discover that he can converse entertainingly on any subject, from the Mosaic dispensation, to the latest inventions in the world of mechanism. You may find him to be, not only a Shakspearean scholar, but a deep student of that volume which, whether considered from a sacred or secular point of view, stands preeminently forth as the Book of Books. You may find him able to translate Homer, or Virgil, and that the masterpieces of literature are as familiar to him as his own cabin walls. A glimpse at the interior of his cabin discloses an ample stock of newspapers and magazines, while books are not strangers. There is something pathetic about his loneliness; you leave him with the feeling that society has been the loser by his voluntary banishment, and are reminded of Gray's immortal lines:

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene.
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

You speculate upon the story of his life, for you feel that it has a secret, if not a tragedy, connected with it, into which you may not probe. You ask yourself the question, "Has not his life been wasted?" and if he alone is to be considered, there is none but an affirmative answer. But his life has not been barren of results. He has been a contributory factor in the upbuilding of an empire, for he is one of the class who laid the foundations of western prosperity.

These men came west for various reasons, some actuated by the spirit of adventure, some to acquire fortunes or to retrieve vanished ones, others possibly to outlive the stigma of youthful mistakes. In the lives of many of them are sealed chapters. It is with such that these pages have to do.

ALFRED CASTNER KING.

OURAY, COLO., 1907.

_CONTENTS_

_The Passing of the Storm_ _Page_

_I._ _The Storm_ _17_

_II._ _A Chapter from an Old Man's Life_ _28_

_III._ _The Prisoner_ _36_

_IV._ _A Sequel of the Lost Cause_ _49_

_V._ _The Avalanche_ _58_

_VI._ _The Rescue_ _65_

_VII._ _The Blight of War_ _72_

_VIII._ _The Story of an Exile_ _93_

_IX._ _Conclusion_ _115_

_Dolores_ _120_

_Great Shepherd of the Countless Flocks
of Stars_ _122_

_The Ruined Cabin_ _123_

_An Idyll_ _124_

_The Borderland of Sleep_ _125_

_Stellar Nocturne_ _126_

_Father, at Thy Altar Kneeling_ _127_

_Dreams_ _128_

_Nocturne_ _129_

_The True Faith_ _131_

_A Fragment_ _131_

_Mortality_ _132_

_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS_

_Facing Page_

_"The mountains lay in calm repose
Slumbering 'neath their robes of white."_ _Title._

_"As stormy cowls their summits hid."_ _17_

_"Exceeding the tremendous height
Of brother peaks, on left and right."_ _26_

_"Beseamed with countless scars and rents
From combat with the elements."_ _30_

_"He towered with mute and massive form
A challenge to the gathering storm."_ _40_

_"With swift and spoliating flow,
Uprooting many a noble tree,
To strew the desert's waste below,
With scattered drift-wood and debris."_ _50_

_"Arrayed in Nature's pristine dress
This was, indeed, a wilderness."_ _62_

_"We grew as two twin pines might grow,
Upon some isolated edge,
Of some lone precipice or ledge."_ _70_

_"The noble spruce and stately fir
Stood draped in feathery garniture."_ _114_

_"From the mountain peaks crested with snow."_ _120_

_"High up on the cliffs in their dwellings
Which were apertures walled up with rocks,
Lived this people, sequestered and happy;
Their dwellings now serve the wild fox."_ _126_

_"As it fearlessly leaps o'er the rocky wall
From the mountain peaks stern and hoary."_ _130_

_"I love the lake in the mountain's lap."_ _134_

_See page 19._]

_The Passing of the Storm_