Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/160

 to lie still for thirty hours. Of course, cooking was out of the question, and we were reduced to bacon and “hardtack.” The horses were kept well blanketed, and fed with corn. When the storm ceased, there was eighteen inches of snow on the ground, but the warm sun made it melt rapidly.

We replenished our supplies, as far as necessary, at Fort Kearny—a trading and military post with three companies of cavalry—and pushed on as fast as possible (forewarned, as we had been by the snowstorm, of the season of blizzards) over the remaining one hundred and eighty miles to St. Joseph on the Missouri, our destination. We reached the first settlements at Marysville, an embryo town eighty miles from Fort Kearny, on the Blue River, after a three days' drive. Here we found decent hotel accommodations and good stabling for the horses, at moderate Eastern prices. From this point on, our hardships were at an end, nice roadside inns being situated at convenient distances all the way. About thirty miles from St. Joseph an extraordinary incident occurred. A buggy with two occupants was coming towards us over the open prairie. As it approached, I thought I recognized one of them, and, sure enough, it turned out to be no less a person than Abraham Lincoln! I stopped the wagon, called him by name, and jumped off to shake hands. He did not recognize me with my full beard and pioneer's costume. When I said, “Don't you know me?” and gave my name, he looked at me, most amazed, and then burst out laughing. “Why, good gracious! you look like a real Pike's-Peaker.” His surprise at this unexpected meeting was as great as mine. He was on a lecturing tour through Kansas. It was a cold morning, and the wind blew cuttingly from the northwest. He was shivering in the open buggy, without even a roof over it, in a short overcoat, and without any covering for his legs. I offered him one of my buffalo robes, which he gratefully accepted. He undertook, of course, to return it to me, but I never saw it