and we had duck for supper. Our
party consisted of five men and two small ponies only two years old,
with a stock of provisions very small including that the old chief had
given us. We started on in the morning, following our faint trail till
we came to the canon we had in view, and up this we turned as we had
been directed, finding in the bottom a little running stream. Timber
began to appear as we ascended, and grass also. There were signs of deer
and grouse but we had no time to stop to hunt, for I had the only gun
and while I hunted the others must lie idly by. We reached the summit at
a low pass, and just above, on the north side of the higher mountains
were considerable banks of snow. Following the Chief's instructions we
left the trail and followed some horse tracks over rolling hills, high
on the mountain side. We found the Indian camp exactly as the Chief had
described, consisting of two or three lodges. The men were all absent
hunting, but the women were gathering and baking some sort of a root
which looked like a carrot. They made a pile of several bushels and
covered it with earth, then made a fire, treating the pile some as a
charcoal burner does his pit of coal. When sufficiently cooked they beat
them up and made the material into small cakes which were dried in the
sun. The dried cakes were as black as coal and intended for winter use.
These roots before roasting were unfit for food, as they contained a
sort of acrid juice that would make the tongue smart and very sore but
there was a very good rich taste when cooked. The woman pointed to our
horses and said "Walker", so we knew they were aware that we got them of
him, and might have taken us for horse thieves for aught I know. As it
was not yet night when we came to the camp, we passed on and camped on a
clear mountain brook where grew some pine trees. After a little some of
the Indians belonging to the camp we had passed came in, bringing some
venison, for which we traded by giving them some needles and a few other
trinkets. I beat these fellows shooting at a mark, and then they wanted
to trade guns, which I declined. This piece of meat helped us along
considerably with our provisions, for game was very scarce and only some
sage hens had come across our trail. One day I scared a hawk off the
ground, and we took the sage hen he had caught and was eating, and made
some soup of it.

After being on this trail six or seven days we began to think of killing
o