In the Heart of the Rockies | Page 5

Janet about our talk,
Tom, and she is altogether on your side, and only regrets that she is not
a boy and able to go out with you. We need not go over the ground
again, we are quite agreed with you that there seems no prospect here
of your obtaining work such as we should like to see you at, or that
would lead to anything. There are only two things open to you, the one
is to go to sea, the other to go out to Uncle Harry. You are old to go as
an apprentice, but not too old, and that plan could be carried out; still,
we both think that the other is better. You would be almost as much
separated from us if you went to sea as you would be if you went out to
America. But before you quite decide I will read uncle's letter, which I
have found this afternoon among some other papers."
She took out the letter and opened it.
"'My dear Jack,--I am afraid it is a very long time since I wrote last; I
don't like to think how long. I have been intending to do so a score of
times, but you know I always hated writing, and I have been waiting to
tell you that I had hit upon something good at last. Even now I can only
tell you that I have been knocking about and getting older, but so far I
cannot say I have been getting richer. As I told you when I wrote last I
have several times made good hauls and struck it rich, but somehow the
money has always slipped through my fingers. Sometimes I have put it
into things that looked well enough but turned out worthless;
sometimes I have chucked it away in the fool's manner men do here. I
have just come back from a prospecting tour in the country of the Utes,
where I found two or three things that seemed good; one of them
first-rate, the best thing, I think, I have seen since I came out here.
"'Unfortunately I cannot do anything with them at present, for the Utes
are getting troublesome, and it would be as much as one's life is worth

to go back there with a small party; so that matter must rest for a bit,
and I must look out in another quarter until the Utes settle down again.
I am going to join a hunting party that starts for the mountains next
week. I have done pretty nearly as much hunting as mining since I
came out, and though there is no big pile to be made at it, it is a pretty
certain living. How are you all getting on? I hope some day to drop in
on your quiet quarters at Southsea with some big bags of gold-dust, and
to end my days in a nook by your fireside; which I know you will give
me, old fellow, with or without the gold bags. '"
[Illustration: CARRY READS UNCLE HARRY'S LETTER.]
"'I suppose your boy is thirteen or fourteen years old by this time. That
is too young for him to come out here, but if in two or three years you
don't see any opening for him at home, send him out to me, and I will
make a man of him; and even if he does not make a fortune in
gold-seeking, there are plenty of things a young fellow can turn his
hand to in this country with a good certainty of making his way, if he is
but steady. You may think that my example is not likely to be of much
benefit to him, but I should do for an object lesson, and seriously,
would do my very best to set him in a straight path. Anyhow, three or
four years' knocking about with me would enable him to cut his
eye-teeth, and hold his own in the world. At the end of that time he
could look round and see what line he would take up, and I need not
say that I would help him to the utmost of my power, and though I have
not done any good for myself I might do good for him.
"'In the first place, I know pretty well every one in Colorado, Montana,
and Idaho; in the next place, in my wanderings I have come across a
score of bits of land in out-of-the-way places where a young fellow
could set up a ranche and breed cattle and horses and make a good
thing of it; or if he has a turn for mechanics, I could show him places
where he could set up saw-mills for lumber, with water-power all the
year round, and