Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/159

Rh having been left at Fort Boise to lighten transportation, the troopers made themselves wickeups out of willow wands, grass, canes, or sagebrush, which served as shelter from the burning desert sun.

On the twenty-eighth of May, Currey, with CampaniesCompanies [sic] A and E, mounted for a ride to a snow peak in the southwest. "After thumping along all day through sagebrush and loose trap rock without water, a short time before sundown, the sergeant of Company E, who had been sent to the top of a neighboring height to examine the country around for appearances of water, returned to the command and reported a large lake about two miles further on. This encouraged us, and tumbling more than marching we reached the bottom of a canyon that led into our prospective lake, and just as the sun was passing behind the dark ridge of basalt to our west. But what was our surprise and disappointment upon nearing it to find that it did not contain a drop of water. It was nothing but an extensive tract of perfectly smooth, yellow clay smooth as the drying yard of the brickmaker. It was the mirage caused by this flat, hard surface that deceived us. At a hundred yards from it Old Neptune himself would have wagered his trident that it was a beautiful sheet of water, but he would have lost. While riding towards it I heard men, when within less than fifty yards of it, offering to wager six months' pay that it was a lake we were approaching, so complete was the deception. Passing over this deceptive ground, in about two miles, at the foot of a high ridge, we luckily found some beautiful springs and a nook of excellent grass. Part of the Indians accompanied me on this scout, and so much did one of them suffer for water that when we reached the springs he had completely lost his hearing in one of his ears, and could hardly see his horse."