Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/279

Rh company would not take any, all saying they would rather starve than eat poor horse meat. Four days from this place we came to snow from three to seven feet deep, and very cold, making only from five to seven miles per day, with our mules living on willows. We were in this snow seven days when we arrived on one of the tributaries of Bear River, where we found grass for our horses. Here we recruited our animals a few hours, and ate the last of our horse meat. The rest of the company by this time thought horse meat a great luxury. Here wild geese were seen and some of the boys went out to try and capture some, but returned empty-handed. We held a consultation about what to do, as starvation was now staring us in the face, and something must be done and right soon; and we wanted all of our animals for future use. No man was willing to kill his and take the chances of being left afoot. However, as the mountain man's last resort after all other plans fail, we decided to separate and some of us go on in advance afoot and the rest to bring up the animals. I being one in advance, after a few miles came upon some tracks, and then we knew that Indians were near. I ascended a hill and saw in the distance some lodges. Then I signalled the remainder of the company to come on and then we went into the camp, not knowing whether it was to death or life; and to our great joy we found it to be the camp of old "Peg Leg" Smith and a couple of Frenchmen, old companions of years gone by, and they had a lot of cattle and with the proverbial hospitality of all mountain men, he made us a large kettle of coffee and killed the fatted cow. Some of it was jerked and prepared for us on our journey. After a stay of a couple days we bade our hospitable friends adieu and again turned our faces eastward.

Four days from here we arrived at a stream called Little Muddy. Here Meek had the misfortune to ride in and get his papers all wet, the river being swimming, and in consequence had to lay over one day to dry himself and documents. Three days from this we arrived at Bridger's fort and laid by two days. Here we saw the first white woman since leaving the