Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/606

474 and she would pay him good wages, and she said she would write to her brother, who, when he came out, would close up her business there as quickly as possible, and they would return to the East.

Arriving at the fort and finding no idle men, Lieut. Jackson wrote to San Francisco for a man, and in about three weeks he came, and he proved to be a good one, as Mrs. Davis told me several years afterwards.

It was nearly a month after we arrived at the fort before George Jones came. The next day after he arrived he told me that he had just received a letter from his father, who was then living somewhere in the state of Illinois, and had written him to come home as he wanted to emigrate to Oregon the following spring, and wanted George to pilot the train across the plains and over the mountains to the country where big red apples and pretty girls were said to grow in such abundance.

George had made up his mind to accede to the wishes of his father, and as we had been there twenty-two months and both were tired of the business, and having made up my mind to quit the scouting field, I talked the matter over with George for two days and concluded to accompany him to San Francisco; so we went to Gen. Crook and told him we were going to quit and go away.

He asked what was the matter, if anything had gone wrong. We told him there was nothing wrong at all, but we were tired of the business and had made up our minds to quit. He said he was very sorry to have us leave, but if we had made up our minds to that effect there was no use saying any more. He asked me how many head of horses George and I had. I told him that