Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/361

 We did not get across the snowy range that night, but were compelled to bivouac two or three miles from it, in a sheltered nook offering fairly good grass for the mules, and any amount of fuel and water for our own use. There might be said to be an excess of timber, as for more than six miles we had crawled as best we could through a forest of tall pines and firs, uprooted by the blasts of winter. Game trails were plenty enough, but we did not see an animal of any kind; neither could we entice the trout which were jumping to the surface of the water, to take hold of the bait offered them. General Crook returned with a black-tailed deer and the report that the range as seen from the top of one of the lofty promontories to which he had climbed appeared to be studded with lakelets similar to the ones so near our bivouac. We slashed pine branches to make an odorous and elastic mattress, cut fire-wood for the cook, and aided in the duty of preparing the supper for which impatient appetites were clamoring. We had hot strong coffee, bacon and venison sliced thin and placed in alternate layers on twigs of willow and frizzled over the embers, and bread baked in a frying-pan.

Our appetites, ordinarily good enough, had been aggravated by the climb of twelve miles in the keen mountain air, and although epicures might not envy us our food, they certainly would have sighed in vain for the pleasure with which it was devoured. After supper, each officer staked his mule in a patch of grass which was good and wholesome, although not equal to that of the lower slopes, and then we gathered around the fire for the post-prandial chat prior to seeking blankets and repose, which fortunately was not disturbed by excessive cold or the bites of mosquitoes, the twin annoyances of these great elevations. We arose early next morning to begin a march of great severity, which taxed to the utmost the strength, nervous system, and patience of riders and mules; much fallen timber blocked the trail, the danger of passing this being increased a hundredfold by boulders of granite and pools of unknown depth; the leaves of the pines had decayed into a pasty mass of peat, affording no foothold to the pedestrian or horseman, and added the peril of drowning in a slimy ooze to the terrors accumulated for the intimidation of the explorer penetrating these wilds.

We floundered along in the trail made by our Shoshones on