As soon
as he could walk, we started away from that locality with what strength
and energy we had left. He was there alone and unarmed, looking for
strayed cattle, and had been skulking and hiding from Indians for more
than an hour before I came along. I, being well armed, might have
discouraged them in their hunt for either one of us. At least they never
got in my way after our first sight of each other.

My hands were now swollen and very painful. The stranger carried my gun,
and in a couple of hours we overtook my comrades. As I got on to my mule
I thought what a fool I had been to go alone so far on a wild-goose
chase. That day's experience ended my hunting at any considerable
distance from camp.

While we were still trailing close beside the Humboldt River a most
remarkable and pathetic incident occurred, the vicinity being that now
known as Elko, in Elko County, Nevada.

We had been camping over night in the Humboldt Mountains, and on our
way out in the morning I chanced to be some distance ahead. Riding down
a steep, narrow place, walled in on either side, I could catch only a
glimpse of the Humboldt River as it spun along just ahead of me. Just
before emerging from this narrow place I heard loud screaming for help,
although as yet I could see no one. Coming out into the open, I saw a
man in the river struggling with a span of horses to which was still
attached the running gear of a wagon. A few rods below him were his wife
and two children about five and three years old, floating down the
strong current in the wagon bed.

I swam my mule across, and the minute I reached the land, I jumped off,
and, leaving my rifle on the ground, ran over the rocks down stream
after the woman and children, who were screaming at the top of their
voices. The river made a short bend around some rocks on which I ran
out, and, wading a short distance, I was able to grasp the corner of the
the wagon bed as it came along, which was already well filled with
water. Holding to it, the current swept it against the shore, where the
woman handed her children out to me and then climbed ashore herself. As
soon as all were on land, the woman, hugging her children with one arm,
knelt at my feet and clasping me about the knees sobbed as though her
heart would break, as she kept repeating that I had saved their lives,
and expressing her thanks for the rescue.

As soon as I could collect my wits I began to tug at the wagon-bed, and
then the wo