uty bound to stand by the women and small children who could never
reach a land of bread without assistance. If I was in the position that
some of them were who had only themselves to look after, I could pick up
my knapsack and gun and go off, feeling I had no dependent ones to leave
behind. But as it was I felt I should be morally guilty of murder if I
should forsake Mr. Bennett's wife and children, and the family of Mr.
Arcane with whom I had been thus far associated. It was a dark line of
thought but I always felt better when I got around to the determination,
as I always did, to stand by my friends, their wives and children let
come what might.

I could see with my glass the train of wagons moving slowly over the
plain toward what looked to me like a large lake. I made a guess of the
point they would reach by night, and then took a straight course for it
all day long in steady travel. It was some time after dark, and I was
still a quarter of a mile from the camp fires, where in the bed of a
canon I stepped into some mud, which was a sign of water. I poked around
in the dark for a while and soon found a little pool of it, and having
been without a drop of it for two days I lay down and took a hasty
drink. It did not seem to be very clear or clean, but it was certainly
wet, which was the main thing just then. The next morning I went to the
pond of water, and found the oxen had been watered there. They stirred
up the mud a good deal and had drank off about all the clean part, which
seemed to refresh them very much. I found the people in the camp on the
edge of the lake I had seen from the mountain, and fortunately it
contained about a quarter of an inch of water. They had dug some holes
here, which filled up, and they were using this water in the camp.

The ambitious mountain-climbers of our party had by this, time,
abandoned that sort of work, and I was left alone to look about and try
to ascertain the character of the road they were to follow. It was a
great deal to do to look out for food for the oxen and for water for the
camp, and besides all this it was plain there were Indians about even if
we did not see them. There were many signs, and I had to be always on
the lookout to outgeneral them. When the people found I was in camp this
night they came around to our wagons to know what I had seen and found,
and what the prospects were ahead. Above all they wanted to know how far
it was, in my opinion to the end of our