Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/403

Rh by nine men with fifty-six horses, making a herd of one hundred and fifty-four, and a joint company of seventeen men. Such a combination was sufficient to arouse suspicion, which indeed the characters of some of the recruits justified, and from which Kelley suffered on his arrival on the Columbia. Before they reached the mountains of Southern Oregon, however, these men had deserted, and the colonists were reduced to "about a dozen" as Lee relates.

While Kelley and Young were yet among the mountains of Southern Oregon, the former was attacked with a malarial fever in camp, Young being absent looking for straying horses. In the midst of a severe ague Kelley received a visit from the leader of a Hudson's Bay party, Michael La Framboise, on his return from an expedition to San Francisco. The genial and humane Frenchman at once proceeded to administer both medicines and nourishment, remaining with his patient a couple of days, and finally sending him in a canoe to a rendezvous, whence he was conducted to a camp of the Hudson's Bay Company. Kelley continued to travel with La Framboise until overtaken by Young, suffering a relapse when deserted by his faithful nurse, who, when he had been too ill even to ride, had caused him to be carried upon the shoulders of one of his men for several miles.

After such treatment as this, Kelley must have modified his opinion of the company he had come so far to unseat. But what was his surprise to be met at the gate of Fort Vancouver with an edict of exclusion which embraced the whole of his own and Young's party. Kelley being very ill was placed in a house outside the fort,