n a little cove far down on
the opposite bank. The empty wagons were easily passed across; and then
each man mounting a horse, we rode through the stream, the stray animals
following of their own accord.

CHAPTER VI

THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT

We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the
St. Joseph's trail. On the evening of the 23d of May we encamped near
its junction with the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We
had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find wood and water,
until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from a pool encircled by
bushes and a rock or two. The water lay in the bottom of a hollow, the
smooth prairie gracefully rising in oceanlike swells on every side.
We pitched our tents by it; not however before the keen eye of Henry
Chatillon had discerned some unusual object upon the faintly-defined
outline of the distant swell. But in the moist, hazy atmosphere of the
evening, nothing could be clearly distinguished. As we lay around the
fire after supper, a low and distant sound, strange enough amid the
loneliness of the prairie, reached our ears--peals of laughter, and the
faint voices of men and women. For eight days we had not encountered a
human being, and this singular warning of their vicinity had an effect
extremely wild and impressive.

About dark a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and
splashing through the pool rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in a
huge cloak, and his broad felt hat was weeping about his ears with
the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout,
square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as leader
of an emigrant party encamped a mile in advance of us. About twenty
wagons, he said, were with him; the rest of his party were on the
other side of the Big Blue, waiting for a woman who was in the pains of
child-birth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves.

These were the first emigrants that we had overtaken, although we had
found abundant and melancholy traces of their progress throughout the
whole course of the journey. Sometimes we passed the grave of one who
had sickened and died on the way. The earth was usually torn up, and
covered thickly with wolf-tracks. Some had escaped this violation. One
morning a piece of plank, standing upright on the summit of a grassy
hill, attracted our notice, and riding up to it we found the following
words very roughly tr