for your help. I know so little about anything up here that I don’t know how to start. I can’t even cook. Do let me see your baby.”
Only six weeks old, he still seemed very tiny and his face looked thin and pinched. She was nursing him but her abundant milk was not nourishing and she kept in constant communication, she said, with Dr. Edgar Hadley, the leading physician in Telluride who had attended her at Billy’s birth.
Beth BatcheLler skiing on the roof of her house at Tomboy Mine. (Photo courtesy of Telluride Historical Museum, all rights reserved.)
My new friend’s large, beautiful brown eyes and face glowed with health and happiness. She was a picture of loveliness: olive skin, pink cheeks, well-shaped nose, attractive mouth with even white teeth, dark-brown hair piled high on her head. Her capable, graceful hands were used expressively.
We talked about cooking and baking with the handicap of the high altitude, and about Billy, her great joy and concern.
“Come to see me often, won’t you?” she invited. “We’re just across the trail and I won’t get out much until Billy gains a good deal because he must not catch cold.”
I promised, delighted with finding a friendship that was to endure throughout our lives, and eager to tell George about her. He brought work home—many reports that had been neglected during our honeymoon, and since I had taken mathematics and chemistry in college and had some knowledge of chemical terminology, I helped check his figures. He wiped dishes for me. Then we sat at the table checking his reports. (This partnership arrangement lasted throughout the years.)
Suddenly my ear was cocked at the sound of tin pans rattling and banging. As the noise came nearer and louder we laid aside the papers and pencils, wondering what it was so close to our little house. Then in the middle of the ding-donging and rat-atatting came a heavy banging on the house. George opened the door.
“Come right in,” he said. “We’re glad to see you.”
It was a two-man shivaree staged with the noise of an army squad by Johnny Midwinter, the foreman of the Japan Flora, a stubby blond and genial Cornishman, and the mine carpenter, Ole Oleson. They exclaimed over the hot chocolate and toast I served, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mountain tales of these two typical men of the mines, rugged and sincere, artlessly punctuating every sentence with vehement “damns,” “hells,” and “Gods.”
The next day again was sunny. The snow had begun to settle and frost crackled in the crisp air. Some of the chill was gone from my bones. I was working happily about the house and life was all aglow until suddenly, a loud roar shook the place. The roof must be caving in! For one terrified moment my world shattered. I fell limply on the bed, too weak to stand. Instantly the cataclysm was over and I slowly began to realize what had happened. The heavy snow pack on both sides of our steep roof, warmed by the sun and the fire within, had let go with a crash heard far beyond the trail. I understood then why Bill Langley so greatly feared an avalanche!
I was still unnerved and shaking when George came home and suggested taking a walk. I went gladly.
The teacher’s house was the only one on a level area known as “The Flat,” built up by tailings from a mill above that had been discarded. Across the trail, scattered hit-and-miss, were several shacks which had never known paint. Rooted to the ground by small wooden blocks they squatted like setting hens as the deepening snow, even this early in winter, mounted almost to their windows.
Two hundred feet beyond and above the tailings was a level bench on which stood four houses fifty feet apart. A tree standing near one house distinguished it from every other in the Basin.
“All this,” said George, “belongs to the Tomboy. It is one of the richest gold mines in North America. The mill is on a dandy site. It’s a good one and uses the latest methods. The Japan Flora is much smaller and the ore is of lower grade. I am wondering if it can continue operations much longer. The Liberty Bell and Smuggler mines open into such steep slopes they had to build their mills down in Pandora and haul the ore over the trams that you saw as we came up.”
Pointing to a long line running toward the foot of the cliffs he continued: “That long wooden box in the snow covers pipe lines for both air and water. It’s filled with sand to keep the water from freezing. It’s just wide enough to walk along, single file, and miners use it instead of the trail going to the upper workings.”
We walked past the shaft house and I had my first glimpse of a hoist. There was the machinery operating a cage, lowering and lifting men and materials within a nearly vertical opening from the surface to the lowest level of the mine.
The only splash of color in that area was the red junction house of the Telluride Power Company through which came the high tension wires distributing power to all the mines.
We came home to a scanty dinner. We were out of food, and what would happen if our supplies did not arrive on the morrow! I couldn’t imagine. I went to bed wishing there were a corner grocer nearby. At four o’clock in the morning a faint sound like the muffled pounding of a hammer filtered through to my consciousness. I woke George and drawled sleepily, “Dear, what is that noise? I heard the same thing yesterday morning. It seems to be near our house.”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ve heard it too. Perhaps the shifts are changing at the mine. It’s about that time. Anyway, it’s nothing to worry about.” Reassured, I fell asleep again.
Later that morning when I had finished my dab of housework I heard a threshing sound near the door. Opening it hastily I beheld a big mule, heavily loaded, wallowing in the snow. The skinner was tugging at his rope, trying to get him nearer the door while, out on the trail, the other mules of the string stood waiting indifferently.
My supplies! Just in the well-known nick of time. The skinner began dumping boxes in the snow and I gaped in amazement. That sack of sugar which, in Oakland years ago, weighed ten pounds, changed by a misunderstanding in nomenclature to one hundred pounds! Ashamed to betray my ignorance I never mentioned it. Besides, it would cost a dollar fifty to return it. But sugar was not listed on my orders for a long time.
The Tomboy Mill, 1906.
That afternoon I crossed the trail to borrow a cake pan from Beth Batcheller. Six feet of snow covered the trail separating our shacks. As I neared the door I could hear her whistling a cheery tune. Inside that drafty hut I forgot cold, snow, and isolation, for the room glowed with warmth and hospitality. A faint odor of roses came from a potpourri on a small table in one corner. Portraits of her New England ancestors looked down from the rough walls. Old candlesticks held burning candles which brought out the shine in Beth’s lovely eyes and a gleam of happiness on the cheeks of this young wife who was transplanted from a life of wealth and travel to a remote mining camp. Within minutes we were “Beth” and “Harriet” to each other, exchanging family data and events like old friends long apart. The Batchellers were both members of pioneer New England families. Jim, a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was superintendent of the Tomboy Mill. He and Beth had been married in 1905 in Mattapoisset, Massachusetts, at the summer home of Beth’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Deyoung Field. A special train had carried the guests from Boston. We talked until it was time for me to mix the cake I was planning for dinner. Saying farewell she added, “Come over for tea tomorrow afternoon. I want you to meet Kate Botkin. She lives in that house above the tailings, the one with a tree in front. She has been suffering from rheumatism and hasn’t
