The Tenderfoots by Francis Lynde

THE Denver to which Philip and Harry Bromley returned, after their year in the mountain half of Colorado, had undergone many changes in the twelve-month; was still undergoing them. Developing under the double stimulus of the unabated rush of treasure -- and health-seekers from the East and the marvelous and increasing flow of wealth from the mines, the city was growing like a juggler's rose. In the business district the one- and two-storied makeshifts of pioneer days were rapidly giving place to statelier structures; a handsome railroad passenger terminal had been completed at the foot of Seventeenth Street; horse-car lines were extending in all directions; new hotels had sprung up; and the theater which was to rival in magnificence, if not in actual size, the Paris Opéra, was under construction.

Unlike that of other western communities owing their prosperity to a mining boom, the city's growth was notably substantial. With eastern and Pacific Coast lumber at a high freight rate premium, brick and the easily worked lava stone of the hogbacks were the chosen building materials. In the outlying residence districts the empty squares were filling with rows of brick cottages absurdly restricted in width by the limitations of the standard twenty-five-foot lots, but making up for the lack of breadth in slender length; and other streets besides Larimer were acquiring massive steel bridges over the bisecting Cherry Creek which, from being a mere moist sand bed in most seasons of the year, could -- and did upon occasion -- become a raging cloud-burst torrent, sweeping all before it.

After quarters had been secured in the new St. James Hotel in Curtis Street, Philip left Bromley reading the morning papers in the lobby and went around to the building in Lawrence Street where he had served his brief apprenticeship in the auditor's office of the narrow-gauge railroad. Here he learned that the mountain road had been absorbed by the Union Pacific, that its office force had been scattered, but that Middleton, his former desk-mate, could be found at the car-record desk in the Union Station. When he walked in upon the former tonnage clerk a little later, Middleton's greeting was salted with a bantering grin.

"Well, well, well; so the cat came back, did it? No, wait -- let me say it: you've had your fill of the tall hills and want a railroad job again. Do I call the turn?"

"Not exactly," Philip returned, seating himself at the desk end. "I have looked you up to see if, by any chance, you have any mail for me."

"Sure! There's a bunch of it. You didn't seem to think it worth your while to send in any forwarding address, so we've been holding your letters on the chance that you'd turn up sometime and somewhere. Wait a minute and I'll go get 'em for you."

When the packet of mail came, Philip went through it leisurely. Most of the letters were from his sisters in New Hampshire, the later ones reminding him rather acidly that a correspondence was ordinarily supposed to be two-sided. These, and two or three from former classmates and friends, made up the accumulation.

"There was nothing else? " he asked, with a shade of disappointment.

"That's the crop, I believe. Ought there to be more?"

"One more, at least."

"Let me think," said Middleton. "I believe all your mail was brought to me while we were in the old Lawrence Street office. I kept the letters in my desk for a long time, but after the consolidation I turned them over to Baldwin in the superintendent's office, thinking I might not be here when you sent or came for them. " As he spoke, he opened a drawer and rummaged in it, saying: "They were stacked here in this corner, and . why, yes; here _is_ another. Don't see how I came to miss it."

Philip glanced at the envelope of the newly found letter. It bore the Denver postmark, and the date was barely two weeks later than that upon which the prospecting trip had been begun. The enclosure was merely a note, but it was easy to read the heartbreak between the lines.

Dear Mr. Trask:

The Captain left us three days ago. We waited too long before bringing him here. I am writing because you asked me to, though I don't know whether or not this will find you. The end came very suddenly at the last; but you will be glad to know that it was peaceful -- that there wasn't unbearable suffering.

I don't know yet what we shall do, or where we shall go; or if, indeed, we shall go anywhere. There is nothing to go back to Mississippi for, even if we could afford it; and there ought to be something for us -- or for me -- to do here in Denver. I shall try to find something, anyway.

Mother wishes to be kindly remembered to you, and so do the children. You were friendly to us at a time when we needed friendship; and, as I once told you, we do not forget.

Sincerely and sorrowfully, Jean Dabney.

Philip returned the letter to its envelope and put it in his pocket.

"Bad news? " Middleton asked.

Philip was of no mind to share personal confidences with his former desk-mate. "Sad for the writer," he replied. "It is a note telling of the death of a poor consumptive who was on the train with me coming out from Kansas City last spring."