Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/521

Rh In the latter days of April Messrs. Boone and Bivian employed me to cross the mountains and take letters to the wagon-master, and also to assist him in crossing the Rockies, so taking one pair of blankets, ten days provisions and a pair of snow shoes on my back I started afoot and alone across the mountains. The fourth day after leaving Virginia City I came to the foot of the main divide, and up to this time I did not have to use my snow shoes. Where I camped that night the snow was two feet deep, and the next morning there was a crust on it strong enough to bear me up until I went six or seven miles farther on, when I commenced to break through.

Then I put on my snow-shoes, and in a short time I was at the summit of the mountain. After reaching the top, the country being open and all down hill, I had fine traveling while the snow lasted, making a distance of about forty miles that day. Then I abandoned my snowshoes, and in two days more I was in camp on the river bottom where the stock had been wintered.

The wagon-master informed me that he had lost about one-third of the oxen, which had stampeded and ran off in a storm; also my two saddle horses, and his one and only saddle horse had gone with the cattle. He said they had been gone about six weeks, so I struck out to Fort Hall to try and buy a horse to ride to hunt up the lost stock.

I succeeded in buying a very poor excuse of a horse for a hundred dollars, that under any other circumstances I would not have accepted as a gracious gift. But it