In the Heart of the Rockies | Page 3

all the burden upon
your shoulders, yours and Janet's, though I know it will be principally
on yours; but what else is there to do? It was not for my own sake that I
wanted before to go, but I did not see what there was for me to do here
even when I grew up. Still, as mother said it would break her heart if I
went away, of course there was an end of it for the time, though I have
always thought it would be something to fall back upon if, when I got
to eighteen or nineteen, nothing else turned up, which seemed to me
very likely would be the case. Certainly, if it came to a choice between
that and enlisting, I should choose that: and now it seems to me the
only thing to be done."
"It is such a long way off, Tom," the girl said in a tone of deep pain;
"and you know when people get away so far they seem to forget those
at home and give up writing. We had not heard from uncle for ten years
when that letter came."
"There would be no fear of my forgetting you, Carry. I would write to
you whenever I got a chance."
"But even going out there does not seem to lead to anything, Tom.
Uncle has been away twenty-five years, and he does not seem to have
made any money at all."

"Oh, but then he owned in his letter, Carry, that it was principally his
own fault. He said he had made a good sum several times at mining,
and chucked it away; but that next time he strikes a good thing he was
determined to keep what he made and to come home to live upon it. I
sha'n't chuck it away if I make it, but shall send every penny home that
I can spare."
"But uncle will not expect you, Tom, mother refused so positively to let
you go. Perhaps he has gone away from the part of the country he wrote
from, and you may not be able to find him."
"I shall be able to find him," Tom said confidently. "When that letter
went, I sent one of my own to him, and said that though mother would
not hear of my going now, I might come out to him when I got older if
I could get nothing to do here, and asked him to send me a few words
directed to the post-office telling me how I might find him. He wrote
back saying that if I called at the Empire Saloon at a small town called
Denver, in Colorado, I should be likely to hear whereabouts he was,
and that he would sometimes send a line there with instructions if he
should be long away."
"I see you have set your mind on going, Tom," Carry said sadly.
"No, I have not set my mind on it, Carry. I am perfectly ready to stop
here if you can see any way for me to earn money, but I cannot stop
here idle, eating and drinking, while you girls are working for us all."
"If you were but three or four years older, Tom, I should not so much
mind, and though it would be a terrible blow to part with you, I do not
see that you could do anything better; but you are only sixteen."
"Yes, but I am strong and big for my age; I am quite as strong as a good
many men. Of course I don't mean the boatmen and the dockyard
maties, but men who don't do hard work. Anyhow, there are lots of men
who go out to America who are no stronger than I am, and of course I
shall get stronger every month. I can walk thirty miles a day easy, and I
have never had a day's illness."

"It is not your strength, Tom; I shall have no fears about your breaking
down; on the contrary, I should say that a life such as uncle wrote about,
must be wonderfully healthy. But you seem so young to make such a
long journey, and you may have to travel about in such rough places
and among such rough men before you can find Uncle Harry."
"I expect that I shall get on a great deal easier than a man would," Tom
said confidently. "Fellows might play tricks with a grown-up fellow
who they see is a stranger and not up to things, and might get into
quarrels with him, but no one is likely to interfere with a boy. No, I
don't think that there is anything in that, Carry,--the only real difficulty
is in going away so far from you, and perhaps being