After a little some of
the Indians belonging to the camp we had passed came in, bringing some
venison, for which we traded by giving them some needles and a few other
trinkets. I beat these fellows shooting at a mark, and then they wanted
to trade guns, which I declined. This piece of meat helped us along
considerably with our provisions, for game was very scarce and only some
sage hens had come across our trail. One day I scared a hawk off the
ground, and we took the sage hen he had caught and was eating, and made
some soup of it.
After being on this trail six or seven days we began to think of killing
one of our colts for food, for we had put ourselves on two meals a day
and the work was very hard; so that hunger was all the time increasing.
We thought this was a pretty long road for Walker to ride over in three
sleeps as he said he could, and we began also to think there might be
some mistake somewhere, although it had otherwise turned out just as he
said. On the eighth day our horse-tracks came out into a large trail
which was on a down grade leading in a northward direction. On the ninth
day we came into a large valley, and near night came in sight of a few
covered wagons, a part of a train that intended going on a little later
over the southern route to Los Angeles but were waiting for the weather
to get a little cooler, for a large part of the route was over almost
barren deserts. We were very glad to find these wagons, for they seemed
to have plenty of food and the bountiful supper they treated us to was
the very thing we needed.
Pages:
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118