the mountains south of Colorado Springs, especially along the old Stage
Road to Cripple Creek, looking for suitable claims. The old Stage Road
was a steep, rocky mountain road over which they hauled provisions and
passengers into the Cripple Creek district.

"Several miles from the city there was an old log hostelry--'Wright's
Road House' they called it. Here lived a strange old man, a mountaineer
of the oldest type. Daddy Wright, they called him. He and Tad were old
friends, so your father became very well acquainted with him. The stages
to and from the gold camp always stopped at Dad's; sometimes for a meal
and sometimes for all night. It was one of the delights of your father's
business trips to spend an evening with this old man in his rough
mountain cabin, sitting before his crude stone fireplace smoking and
listening to stories of the days of 'forty-nine,' when Dad had hunted for
gold in the mountains of California. Your father and Tad were both in the
old road house the night it was burned and barely escaped with their
lives. He didn't tell me about it until long afterwards.

"Tad and your father finally filed on two claims. One was on Cheyenne
Mountain, near Dad's claims, and the other was somewhere near a mountain
called Cookstove. Your father thought that valley was the most beautiful
spot he had ever seen. He used to write me long letters describing the
beautiful canyon and the falls, which was just a ribbon of water that
trickled down the face of a monstrous granite boulder hundreds of feet in
height. He called it St. Marys Falls. Here, somewhere in a hidden spot of
this canyon, they found a strange outcropping of black rock which your
father believed would lead to an extensive gold vein in the interior
of the mountain. I remember he called the vein an 'iron dyke,' and said
that a compass revolted when placed on it. His great desire was to mine
that strata by means of a tunnel, but he had no money, so he and Tad