Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science | Page 6

study.
In these latter days it frequently requires but a few months, or even
weeks, to give some new one a fair start upon its prosperous way.
Sometimes a mineral vein, sometimes the temporary "end of the track"
of a lengthening railway, forms the nucleus, and around it are first seen
the tents of the advance-guard. Before many weeks have elapsed some
enterprising individual has succeeded, in the face of infinite toil and
expense, in bringing a sawmill into camp. Soon it is buzzing away on
the neighboring hillside, and the rough pine boards and slabs are
growing into houses of all curious sizes and shapes, irregularly lining
the main street. Delightfully free from conventionality are matters in
these new towns. Former notions of things go for naught. Values are in
a highly-disturbed state, and you will probably be charged more for the
privilege of sleeping somewhere on the floor than for all the refined
elegancies of the Fifth Avenue. The board-walks along the street,
where they exist at all, plainly typify this absence of a well-defined
dead level or zero-point in the popular sentiment; for the various
sections are built each upon the same eccentric plan that obtains in the
corresponding house. The result is an irregular succession of steps
equally irregular, with enough literal jumping-off places to relieve any
possible monotony attending the promenade. If the growth of the town

seems to continue satisfactory, its houses--at least those in or near its
central portions--begin gradually to pass through the next stage in their
development. During this interesting period, which might be called
their chrysalid state, they are twisted and turned, sometimes sawn
asunder, parts lopped off here and applied elsewhere, and all those
radical changes made which would utterly destroy anything possessed
of protean possibilities inferior to those of the common Western frame
house. But, as a final result of this treatment and some small additions
of new material, at last emerges the shapely and often artistic cottage,
resplendent in paint, and bearing small resemblance to the slab-built
barn which forms its framework. If the sometime camp becomes a
city--if Auraria grows into a Denver and Fontaine develops into
Pueblo--the frame houses will sooner or later share a common fate, that
of being mounted on wheels or rollers for a journey suburbward, to
make room for the substantial blocks of brick or stone. By this curious
process of evolution do most of our Western towns rapidly acquire
more or less of a metropolitan appearance.
[Illustration: MEXICAN INTERIOR.]
Pueblo, while not a representative Western town in these respects, yet
in its early days presented some curious combinations, most of them
growing out of the heterogeneous human mixture that attempted to
form a settlement. The famous Green-Russell party, on its way from
Georgia to the Pike's Peak country, had passed through Missouri and
Kansas in 1858, and there found an element ripe for any daring and
adventurous deeds in unknown lands. Many of the border desperadoes,
then engaged in that hard-fought prelude to the civil war, found it
desirable and expedient to leave a place where their violent deeds
became too well known; and these, together with others who hoped to
find in a new country relief from the anarchy which reigned at home,
fell into the wake of the pioneers. Pueblo received its full share of
Kansas outlaws about this time, and, what with those it already
contained, even a modicum of peace seemed out of the question. Here,
for instance, was found living with the Mexicans by the plaza a
quarrelsome fellow named Juan Trujillo, better known by the sobriquet
of Juan Chiquito or "Little John," which his diminutive stature had
earned for him. This worthy is represented as a constant disturber of the
peace, and he met the tragic fate which his reckless life had invited.

From being a trusted friend he had incurred the enmitv of a noted
character named Charley Antobees, than whom, perhaps, no one has
had a more varied frontier experience. Coming to the Rocky Mountains
in 1836 in the employ of the American Fur Company, he has since
served as hunter, trapper, Indian-fighter, guide to several United States
exploring expeditions, and spy in the Mexican war as well as in the war
of the rebellion. Antobees still lives on the outskirts of Pueblo, and his
scarred and bronzed face, framed by flowing locks of jet-black hair, is
familiar to all. The frame that has endured so much is now bent, and
health is at last broken, and about a year since an effort was made by
Judge Bradford and others to secure him a pension. But twenty years
back he was in his full vigor and able to maintain his own against all
odds. Whether or not it is true we cannot say, but