Both of us were well acquainted with a
greater part of the country to be traveled over, and there were
few other men as well posted as to where the Indians were likely
to make attacks, which was one of the most essential requirements
in scouting with a train.
About the first of April we started, by the way of Denver City,
for Fort Kearney, and as it had been nearly a year since we had
seen the first named place we found quite a change there. Instead
of a tented town, of shreds and patches, we saw a thriving village
that had some quite comfortable wooden houses and an air of
distinct civilization. To-day Denver is probably the best built
city of its size in the world, but there was a time after this
present visit of mine and Bridger's when the place became almost
deserted. That was when the Union Pacific railroad was being
constructed to Cheyenne, leaving Denver one hundred and eight
miles due south. Then, all the people in Denver who could raise
any sort of a team, took their household goods and gods, and in
some cases the houses, and struck out for Cheyenne. Many who were
too poor to get away became enormously rich, afterward, from that
very fact, for they became possessed of the ground, and when the
Kansas Pacific railroad was projected, and afterward constructed,
Denver took on such a boom that real estate nearly went out of
sight in value.
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