nce upon a time, in the mountains of Colorado Springs, there lived a woman who wore a candlestick atop her hat, who carried a pickax in one hand and a pistol in the other.

She dug for treasure around these mountains, burros in tow. Otherwise, she could be found at her cabin with her cats and parrots. She’d take pictures with tourists and tell tales at her place along High Drive.

That old carriage route is now silent, free of motors, left for hikers and mountain bikers to roam. Some say a spirit resides there — the spirit of that woman who died a century ago but maybe never left.

Or maybe it’s a fairy, as Ellen Jack knew herself to be. She titled her autobiography “The Fate of a Fairy,” published before her death in 1921.

By then, she was well known as Captain Jack.

She was “one of the

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