“Pike’s Peak or Bust!” was the chosen motto of those early pilgrims who, thirty-odd years ago, crossed the continent in a “prairie schooner,” escorted by a cavalry guard to keep Indian marauders at a respectful distance; and “Pike’s Peak or Bust!” was the motto chosen by Polly and Dan, our two young modern pilgrims, as they journeyed with greater ease, but with no less courage and venturesomeness, across the two thousand miles intervening between quiet Fieldham and their goal.
“Pike’s Peak or Bust!” No one looking into the bright young faces turned so bravely westward ho! could have had any doubt as to which of the two alternatives hinted at in that picturesque motto 153 would be fulfilled for them. On they journeyed, on and on, past populous cities, across great rivers, over vast plains brown with last year’s stubble or white with newly fallen snow, till at last there came a morning when they awoke in the tingling dawn, and, looking forth across miles of shadowy prairie, beheld a great white dome cut clear against a sapphire sky. On the train rushed, on and on, straight toward that snowy dome, and, as they drew nearer, other mountains began to define themselves on either side the central peak, and presently a town revealed itself, and they knew that it could be no other than Colorado Springs, sleeping there at the foot of the great range, all unconscious of the two young pilgrims, coming so confidingly to seek their fortunes within its borders.
Their first spring and summer were a very happy time, of which Polly and Dan could relate a hundred noteworthy incidents. They rented a tiny cottage of three rooms in the unfashionable part of the town where rents were low. Here 154 was a bit of ground all about, and a narrow porch that looked straight into the face of the splendid old Peak; and here they lived the merriest of lives on the smallest and most precarious of incomes; for they were determined to infringe as little as possible upon the slender capital, snugly stowed away in a Colorado bank.
Dan soon found employment in a livery-stable at fifty cents a day. His chief business was the agreeable one of delivering “teams” and saddle-horses to pleasure-seekers at the north end of the town, riding back to the stable again on a “led horse” provided for the purpose. If not a very ambitious calling, it was, at least, exceedingly good fun, and it also had the merit of conforming to the doctor’s directions. “Don’t let him get behind a counter or into any stuffy back-office,” the doctor had said to Polly. “Whatever he does, let it keep him in the open air as much as possible.” Had the very obvious wisdom of this advice required demonstration, Dan’s rapid improvement would have been sufficient. 155
They did not shock the sensibilities of the sewing-circle by writing home exactly what the employment was that Dan had found, while, for themselves, Polly had her own little ways of embellishing the somewhat prosaic situation. She dubbed the young stable-boy Hercules, and always spoke of the establishment he served as “The Aug?ans.” Nor did her invention fail when, a month or two later, Dan got a place at somewhat higher wages as druggist’s messenger; for then he was promptly informed that his name was Mercury, and that there were wings on his heels, though he could not himself see them, by reason of their being turned back, and visible only when his feet were in rapid motion!
Meanwhile, Polly, too, was doing her part, though it had not yet proved very lucrative. When they first took the house, Dan painted a sign for her, bearing the following announcement:
Fine Needlework and Embroidery to Order.
But the spring and summer went by, and autumn came, and still the sign which 156 had ornamented their house-front for so many months had as yet attracted the notice of only the impecunious class of customers their immediate neighbourhood afforded. Polly had gratefully taken coarse work at low prices, but she still hoped for better things. The street where their tiny cottage stood, though at the wrong end of the town, was a thoroughfare for pleasure parties driving to the great ca?ons, and Polly never saw the approach of a pretty turnout without a thrill of hope that the occupants might be attracted by her sign. She knew herself to be a quick and skilful needlewoman, and she thought that if only she might once get started in well-paid work, Dan, who was growing stronger every day, might go on with his education at the Colorado College Preparatory School. She had found out all about the college, of which she had formed a very high opinion, and she told herself proudly that Dan had such a good mind that he would not need to study too hard.
One evening in September they were 157 clearing the supper table, preparatory to washing up the dishes, which ceremony was one of the numerous “larks” by which brother and sister found life diversified and enlivened.
“Mercury, I have an idea!” Polly suddenly cried.
“Never saw the time you hadn’t, Polly.”
“But this is a great idea, a really great one, because it includes all the little ones, like Milton’s universe in the crescent moon; don’t you remember?”
“My goody, Polly! But it must be a corker!”—and Dan was all attention.
Now Polly, it is needless to repeat, was a young person of ideas; that was her strong point, and Dan at least considered her a marvel of ingenuity and invention. Their tiny sitting-room, where Dan slept, was a witness to her taste and originality. There were picturesque shelves which Dan had made in accordance with her directions; there were cheesecloth window-curtains, with rustic boughs in place of poles; there were barrels standing bottom 158 upward for tables, draped with ancient “duds”—a changeable-silk skirt of her mother’s over one, a moth-eaten camel’s-hair shawl over another. The crack in the only mirror which a munificent landlord had provided was concealed by a kinikinick vine; a piece of Turkey-red at five cents a yard, their one bit of extravagance, converted Dan’s cot-bed into a canopy of state. And having heard Dan chant the praises of her “ideas” with gratifying persistence for a month past, Polly had begun to wonder whether they might not be turned to account.
“What’s the latest idea, Polly?” Dan asked, seizing a dripping handful of what they were pleased to call their “family plate.”
“Well, Dan, I want you to paint something more on my sign. Only two words; it won’t take you long.”
“What two words?”
“Also Ideas!”
Dan reflected a moment, and then he proceeded to dance a jig of delight, wildly waving his dish-cloth about Polly’s head. 159
“Polly, you beat the world!” he cried.
A house-painter lived next door, from whom Dan borrowed paint and brushes, and before they slept the old sign was further decorated with two magic words done in brilliant scarlet. The inscription now read:
Fine Needlework and Embroidery to Order.
Also Ideas
There was something positively dazzling about those two words in flaming scarlet, and Polly and Dan stepped out twice in the course of their early breakfast to have a look at them.
“Don’t you feel scared, Polly?” asked Dan, as he left her at her dish-washing.
“Scared? Not I!” and she walked down the path with him, drying her hands on a dish-towel.
It was a delicious morning in late September; the air dry and sparkling as a jewel, the mountains baring their shoulders to the morning sun. The Peak had already a dash of winter on his crown, but the barren slope of rock below looked like 160 an impregnable fortress. Polly and Dan were never tired of wondering at the changing moods that played so gloriously upon that steadfast front.
“Seems as if they must almost see him from Fieldham this morning, he’s so bright,” said Polly.
“That’s so,” Dan agreed. “I say, Polly, isn’t he enjoying himself, though?”
“Course he is!” Polly answered. “Isn’t everybody?”
Then Polly went back to her splashing water and flopping dish-towels, and was busy for an hour about the house. By and bye she sat herself down in the little porch and proceeded to put good honest stitches into a child’s frock, for the making of which she was to receive twenty-five cents. Not very good pay for a day’s work, but “twenty-five-hundred-million per cent. better than nothing,” as she had assured the doubtful Dan.
Life looked very different to her since those two bright words had been added to the sign. Not that it had looked otherwise than pleasant before; but there was 161 so little originality in the idea of doing needlework that it had scarcely merited success, while this,—of course it must succeed!
In truth, she had sat there hardly an hour, when she distinctly heard the occupant of a yellow buckboard read the sign, and then turn to her companion with a word of comment. Polly had always had an idea that one of those yellow buckboards would be the making of her fortune yet. The one in question was drawn by a pretty pair of ponies, and two young girls were in possession of it.
“I have an idea they’ll notice it again, when they come back this way,” Polly surmised. “But if they’re going up the ca?on they won’t come back till just as I’m getting dinner.”
And, sure enough, the mutton stew was just beginning to simmer, when there came a rap at the door.
The front door opened directly into the little sitting-room, and was never closed in pleasant weather. As Polly emerged from the kitchen, her face very red from 162 hobnobbing with the stove, she found one of the girls of the yellow buckboard standing in the doorway.
“Good morning, Miss––”
“Fitch. My name is Polly Fitch.”
“What a jolly name!” the visitor exclaimed. “I think you must be the one with ideas.”
“Yes,” said Polly, “Do you want one? Come in and take a seat.”
“I do want an idea most dreadfully,” the young lady rejoined, taking the proffered chair. “I want something for a booby prize for a backgammon tournament. I don’t suppose anybody ever heard of a ba............