I returned to Denver and spent the next year solidifying my position on the Denver Sun. The series of boomtown articles I penned for the paper were received with great favor by the reading public, and as a result, I was given a bonus and a raise in salary. In 1883 and 1884, I was even given the opportunity to travel to Washington DC on behalf of the paper when some particularly important legislation was making its way through Congress.

I was twenty-four going on twenty-five, and my future looked bright. I had even forgotten about what happened at Battles Gap almost six years before, and the name Bledsoe was as far from my mind as it had ever been. I continued to court Mallie, and the subject of matrimony was becoming more and more viable as my position at the paper increased in importan...

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