It was busier than usual, even, that evening; for a noisy but
good-natured crowd had gathered around the telegraph office, eager for
news of a wrestling match then taking place in an Eastern city. As we
came up they broke into a cheer at the news that the American wrestler
had defeated his foreign opponent. There was a discussion as to what
constituted the "toe-hold," three boys ran an impromptu foot-race,
there was some talk on the poor condition of the range, and the party
began to break up.
The little excitement over, we returned to the hotel; feeling, in
spite of our enthusiasm, somewhat lonesome and very much out of place.
Our sleep that night was fitful and broken by dreams wherein the
places we had known were strangely interwoven with these new scenes
and events. Through it all we seemed to hear the roar of the Rio
Colorado.
We looked out of the window the next morning, on a landscape that was
novel, yet somehow familiar. The river, a quarter of a mile away, very
clear and unruffled under its groves of cottonwood, wound through low
barren hills, as unlike as could be to the cliffs and chasms we knew
so well. But the colours--gray, red, and umber, just as Moran has
painted them--reassured us. We seemed not so far from home, after all.
It was Wyoming weather, though; clear and cold, after a windy night.
When, after breakfast, we went down to the river, we found that a
little ice had formed along the margin.
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