Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/155

Rh which, unfortunately for the service, the Oregon cavalry were not supplied with. At intervals gulches break the face of the margin wall, and down these, with much labor in rolling stones and smoothing, a way can be made down which the thirsty horses and men will force themselves when urged by the strongest of all possible inducements— desire for water on a sagebrush desert. While passing down the river we got one drink a day in the manner above described.

Down in one of these deep canyons we found three Indians, who claimed to be Conner's Indians, and as General Conner and the governor of Utah had sent the commanding officer of the expedition notice that they had treated with the Bannocks, as a matter of course we twenty would not molest three. Besides their discovery was rather fortunate for us, as the morning before finding them our last ration, one half inch square of flatcake, was devoured, and we relished some fresh elk, procured from the Indians, exceedingly."

In this painful and apparently useless manner the march continued down the Bruneau River; losing the trail at night, examining it by the light of "Dutch" matches, for horse tracks; finding one dead Indian which seemed to say that some part of the command had been in a skirmish in that region; scrambling down precipices two thousand feet in depth to slake intolerable thirst, and marching the last day without food, it came up with another detachment under Lieutenant Apperson with a detachment of Company A, who was encamped fifteen miles further down stream. From Apperson supplies were obtained, and Currey's command returned to the main camp, having traveled in eleven days about four hundred miles. On this march, "with the exception of two camps on Goose Creek Mountains [Seven Peaks], the remainder were made in fissures of the earth so deep that neither the