Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba — 34 - Letter 34
THE RANCH, UNCOMPAHGRE PARK, September 16. Ten miles below Ouray.
Amidst many tears and regrets, we have torn ourselves away from the cabin, where we could have spent another month or six weeks in perfect contentment; but a storm being predicted, and duck-shooting and fly-fishing being part of our Colorado programme, we accepted the loan of a house on a farm down in the valley, and are installed in it.
It wanted a certain amount of pluck, on first seeing our accommodation, to come down.
Our house is one room, thirty feet long by about eighteen wide, an open roof with plenty of air-holes, and no partition whatsoever, excepting what we have made by hanging three blankets from a rafter, behind which is our bed (or lounge in day-time), the washing-stand, a box set up longways, and a tin bason, an arm-chair which consists of two pieces of wood, and an old wolfskin, much worn, and a rickety table, at which I am writing now, lighted by a candle stuck into a bottle.
On the other side of the blanket-partition is the kitchen stove, big table, store shelves, a pile of saddles, &c. Mr. W---- sleeps in a tent outside; Henry in a waggon: he, poor man, is not at all happy, as he imagines bears and coyotes are nightly intending making their evening meal off his portly form.
He is the greatest coward I ever saw, and came in horror confiding to me that he had seen a snake, yards long, which Mr. W----
killed the day following, and it proved to be a small water-snake, hardly ten inches.
Henry affords us a great deal of amusement; he does not at all presume, but, in his quaint way, wishes to tell, and asks so many things, queries which often are almost unanswerable.
The day we spent in Ouray on our way down from the cabin here, we much distressed him by not "striking a show" in the street, and not wearing smart clothes which had a "tong," if it were only to show that we consider Mr. W---- a "big bug."
He left his wife in the South eleven years ago, and, in spite of all our protestations and lectures, informs us he is going to marry again, as in the Bible he reads "that it is wrong for man to live alone."
It is a matter of infinite surprise to him how we can remain out of doors with no covering to our heads, he could not stand the rays of the sun as we do; and why our complexions in consequence are not as dark as his is a mystery to him.
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