Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science | Page 6

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 certain it is that he is credited with causing the death of Juan Chiquito. An Indian called "Chickey" actually did the deed, lying in ambush for his victim. Perhaps few were sorry at