Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/511

Rh and they were afraid that through carelessness they might fall into the hands of Indians.

The train was loaded, principally, with flour, bacon, sugar, coffee and tobacco. Flour was then worth twenty-five dollars per hundred, bacon forty cents a pound, and other things in proportion. On the twentieth of September I took two horses and started off to meet the freight train.

Three days from the time I left Virginia City I crossed the summit of the Rocky Mountains and it was snowing hard. I thought it doubtful whether or not they would be able to cross the mountains this winter, but I went on, and met them between Fort Hall and Soda Springs. I gave the wagon-boss a letter which Boon and Bivian had sent him, and after reading the letter he asked me if I thought they could cross the range this fall. I told him that it was about one hundred and eighty miles from there to the summit, and if he could make that distance in ten days he would be able to get through, but if not, he could not cross the mountains this fall. He said it would be impossible to make it in that length of time, as the cattle were all getting very poor and weak and the teams very heavily loaded. The next morning I struck out, taking another man with me, to try and find if possible, another ford on Snake river some thirty or forty miles above the old crossing, knowing if I could do that it Would save us two or three days' travel, and might be the means of our getting across the mountains that fall. I told the wagon-boss that I would meet him at Fort Hall, so in company with one other man, I struck straight across the country for Snake river. The second day