hing except their
admiration of my pony. They swarmed around me, grunting, nodding, and
gesturing, and brought buffalo robes and tanned buckskin, also pretty
beaded moccasins and robes made of grass, and signed to me that they
would give all these in exchange for Billy. I shook my head as hard as
I could shake it, but they were determined to have Billy. They made
signs that they would give their ponies for mine, but again I shook my
head. They talked together awhile, then one of them triumphantly
brought me an old coat which had evidently belonged to a soldier, and
seemed much surprised that its brass buttons were not enough of an
inducement to make me give up the coveted prize. Though both father
and I continued to refuse their request as positively as ever, they
still swarmed around us and looked at me in a most embarrassing way. I
did not mind much, but father seemed angry and he said, sternly:
'Virginia, you dismount at once and let one of the men take Billy. Get
into the wagon now.' When father spoke in that way I was never slow to
obey, so I climbed into the wagon, and, being anxious to get a better
look at the Indians, I took a field-glass out of the rack where it
hung and put it to my eyes. The glass clicked as I took it from the
rack and like a flash the Indians wheeled their ponies and scattered,
taking the noise for the click of firearms. I turned to mother and
laughed.

"'You see you need not be afraid, mother dear,' I said; 'I can fight
the whole Sioux tribe with a spy-glass! If they come near the wagon
again just watch me take it up and see them run!'"

Those were happy days of adventuring in a new and smiling country, and
all were in high spirits when on the 19th of July they reached the
Little Sandy River, where they encamped, and all gathered together to
talk over whether to take a new route which had been opened up by Mr.
Lansford Hastings, called the Hastings Cut-off. This route passed
along the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake, then joined the Old
Fort Hall emigrant road on the Humboldt River. The new route was said
to shorten the trip by about three hundred miles, and Virginia says in
her diary, "Father was so eager to reach California quickly, that he
was strongly in favor of taking the Cut-off, while others were equally
firm in their objections to taking such a risk. At that time our party
had grown to be a large one, for so many families had joined us on our
way across the plains, and all