ed his right hand a little, and
the Captain was quick to see it, shouting;--"Let your gun alone or I
will make a hole through you," at the same time grasping his own and
pointing it straight at the other officer. During all this time the
Captain's lady stood in the tent door, and when she saw her favorite had
the drop on the Lieutenant she clapped her delicate, little hands in a
gleeful manner:--"Just look at the Captain! Ain't he spunky?" and then
she laughed long and loud to see her lord show so much military courage.
She seemed more pleased at the affair than any one else. I don't know
exactly what the others thought, but I never could believe that the lady
and the Captain were ever married.

The Lieutenant was no coward, but probably thinking that prudence was
the better part of valor, refrained from handling his gun, and the two
soon rode away in opposite directions.

We passed a lone rock standing in the river bottom on the Sweetwater,
which they named Independence Rock. It was covered with the names of
thousands of people who had gone by on that road. Some were pretty
neatly chiseled in, some very rudely scrawled, and some put on with
paint. I spent all the time I could hunting Mr. Bennett's name, but I
could not find it anywhere. To have found his name, and thus to know
that he had safely passed this point would have been a little
re-assuring in those rather doubtful days. Some had named the date of
their passing, and some of them were probably pretty near the gold
fields at this time.

All along in this section we found alkali water near the road, some very
strong and dangerous for man or beast to use. We traveled on up the
Sweetwater for some time, and at last came to a place where the road
left the river, and we had a long, hard hill to pull up. When we reached
the top of this we were in the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the
backbone of the American continent. To the north of us were some very
high peaks white with snow, and to the south were some lower hills and
valleys. The summit of the mountains was not quite as imposing as I
expected, but it was the summit, and we were soon surely moving down the
western side, for at Pacific Springs the water ran to the westward,
toward the Pacific coast. The next day we came to the nearly dry bed of
the river--the Big Sandy. The country round about seemed volcanic, with
no timber, but plenty of sage brush, in which we were able to shoot an
occasional sage hen. T