Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/376

280 crowd sufficient to come back and trap on the Gallatin river this winter.

At that time Fort Hall was a great rendezvous for trappers.

Now we were beginning to feel more encouraged and to think our chances were pretty good, but that evening, while traveling up Beaver Canyon, which, I think the railroad runs up now, from Pocatello, Idaho, to Butte City, Mont., the Bannocks attacked us about fifty strong.

They held us there for about an hour, and had it not been for a thunder storm that came up, I don't think one of us would have got out of that canyon, for they had us completely surrounded. They killed two horses from Jim Bridger's string and wounded Uncle Kit in one shoulder severely.

When the thunder storm came up the Indians were gradually closing in on us, and it commenced to thunder and lightning, and it actually rained so hard that one person could not see another two rods before him.

While it was raining so hard, we mounted and rode out of the canyon.

I never saw it rain harder in my life than it did for a half hour. When we were on open ground and it had quit raining, we stopped, and Uncle Kit said: "Now who says the Almighty didn't save us this time by sending that shower of rain just at the right time?"

That night we camped near the summit of the Rocky Mountains, dividing the waters that run into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Uncle Kit suffered all that night from his arrow wound, the arrow going under his shoulder blade, and when we examined the wound we found