t night. They tied us
with our backs to a little tree; we could not lay down and what little
sleep we got we took sitting up; we had not had a bit of breakfast that
morning when the Indians came upon us; it was all ready, and we were
waiting for our men folks to come back, and we have had nothing since,
but a little piece of broiled fish with no salt on it."

Until now I had not said anything about our finding the dead bodies of
their men, I thought it better to tell them now rather than wait until
we reached camp, as I thought the shock would be less when they came to
see the condition they were in.

Before I had finished telling the condition of the bodies when we found
them, I was afraid the young lady would faint, she seemed to take the
horrid news much harder than her mother did.

When we got to camp we found that Bridger had been there some two hours
ahead of us and had men digging the graves and others tearing up the
wagon box to make coffins to bury the bodies in.

We took the women to a family they were acquainted with and left them in
their care. After they had been given something to eat they went where
the bodies lay and looked at them, and with sobs of bitter grief bent
over them; which made my heart ache in sympathy for them in their
loneliness.

The next morning we laid them away into their lonely graves in as decent
a manner as we could, and in sadness left them.

Through the influence of Jim Bridger arrangements were made with two
families to take these two ladies with them to California. Just before
noon Jim came to me and said, "We will stay here until tomorrow morning;
I would like you to take four or five men who have good horses and go
around the north end of the lake and find out, if you can, if the Piutes
are gathering together in a large band. It is about the time of year for
the Piutes to leave this part of the country, but if they are gathering
in a large band they are bent on giving us trouble, and we will have to
make preparations to defend our selves. In three days more if we have
good luck we shall be out of the hostile Indian country."

We had an early dinner and four others and myself set out for the head
of the lake, we rode hard all that afternoon and to our great surprise
we never saw an Indian. We passed a number of camps where they had been,
but their trails all showed that they had pulled out for the north.
Seeing this we turned back and struck the emigrant trail about ten m