The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1876-12-21
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION,
A COLORADO HEROINE.
Alone With Death in an Isolated Colorado
Park-A Thrilling Story With
Moral.

Ou Iluily ulgnJ OI ldSt week, III one
of the small parks of Colorado, lying
among the mountains of the North
Platte, there was curious scene.
There, in place fifteen miles away
from the nearest neighbor, sat a wo-
man, surrounded by her family of seven
children, watching the dead body OF
her husband. A large fire which she
and her eldest boy, lad OF IA, had
built, threw a CHASTITY glare over the
lonely landscape. The broad sky above
and the huge hills around made more
intense the sense of desolation and the
littleness of humanity, and the murmur
of the stream near by and the bark of
the fox in the distance, were the only
utterances of solitude to grief. This
woman's story, as told in the Denver
Tribune, is one of the most affecting in
the strange annals of pioneer ad-
venture. Her husband, H. Ostrom,
had come to Colorado from Alabama,
and on account of the depredations of
the grasshoppees had not been very
prosperous. He had prepared a new
home for his family in a park on the
North Platte, and set out that morning
from Blue Grove Gulch for the journey
of twenty miles in Western wagon,
drawn by team of mules, and loaded
with his household and his household
goods. Toward evening, as he was
crossing a small stream at rough part
of the road, one of the mules SHE'D and
the wagon was overturned. 1t is prob
able that Ostrom was walking beside it,
and flung himself in the way to try and
save his wife and children. They were
thrown violently out and he was caught
under the overturned wagon and borne
to the ground, with the cross-bar of the
wagon-bed across him and a weight of
1,500 pounds crushing him. His terri
fed wife found him lying in this way,
cool and deliberate, but very pale. He
directed her in her vain efforts to pry
tile wagon over, and died in five min
utes, even while assuring her that he
was not dangerously hurt. The oldest
boy was on foot driving COW, and
came up only in time to join his mother
in her attempts to release his fathers
dead body. With true pioneer readi-
ness and sternness the team was un-
hitched and put to drag off the
wagon, the corpse was rolled in a sheet,
a fire was built, the mules were corral
ed, and the widow and orphans sat
down in their dismal bivouac. Even
when death comes by slow approaches
and with fair warning, where the care
of anxious friends and the comforts of
civilized life mitigate suffering, the loss
of husband and father is a calamity
that evokes our sympathy for the afflict-
ed. 1t is a grief that no coincidence
can soften, no wealth alleviate, no COM
panionship,render endurable. 1t would
be useless, therefore, to dwell upon the
terrors of death when it struck down
the head of family Unexpectedly and
violently in a Colorado wilderness, ,leav.
ing woman and children desolate,
with darkness and desert upon them.
We think picture of this night-watch
of Mrs. Ostrom would be as character
istic of great phase of American life
as any scene that the imagination
could conceive of. In her bitter exper-
ience, giving us glimpse of the suffer-
ings of the woman of the western FROM
tier, we have something to suggest the
trials and labors of all that hardy gen.
Grafton which pushed slowly on from
the Atlantic to the Mississippi, before
whom the wilderness receded like the
horizon. 1t is the fault of our time to
underrate the rough virtues of the pion-
eers, and forget the value of their
achievements. We are losing sight of
the romantic and heroic aspects of their
life, in the refinements and luxuries of
ourown. Her story should bring back old
memories of those in the heart of civil
ization, and teach them what it cost.
1t was not by enchantment that the log
cabin was changed to the brown-stone
mansion, the homespun dresses to silk,
the emigrant wagons to carriages. The
metamorphosis was rapid, but it was
the result of the sacrifice and endeavor
of ages heaped into a few years. The
Colorado woman, sitting all night in
her mournful bivouac, with her seven
children around her and the corpse OF
her husband just outside of the glare OF
the fire, stiffening In the frost-the pen.
niless widow, arousing herself in the
morning, taking the dead body on the
wagon and retracing her steps toward
civilization, is as distinct type Of
American womanhood as the gayest
lady that attends church in New York
to-day. They have different missions
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