ity the probable time that
the trappers had left them; at length, after much wandering and
investigating, they came upon the regular trail of the hunting party,
which led into the mountains, and following it up briskly, came about
two o'clock in the afternoon of the 20th, upon the encampment of
Hodgkiss and his band of free trappers, in the bosom of a mountain
valley.

It will be recollected that these free trappers, who were masters
of themselves and their movements, had refused to accompany Captain
Bonneville back to Green River in the preceding month of July,
preferring to trap about the upper waters of the Salmon River,
where they expected to find plenty of beaver, and a less dangerous
neighborhood. Their hunt had not been very successful. They had
penetrated the great range of mountains among which some of the upper
branches of Salmon River take their rise, but had become so entangled
among immense and almost impassable barricades of fallen pines, and so
impeded by tremendous precipices, that a great part of their season had
been wasted among these mountains. At one time, they had made their way
through them, and reached the Boisee River; but meeting with a band of
Bannack Indians, from whom they apprehended hostilities, they had again
taken shelter among the mountains, where they were found by Captain
Bonneville. In the neighborhood of their encampment, the captain had the
good fortune to meet with a family of those wanderers of the mountains,
emphatically called "les dignes de pitie," or Poordevil Indians. These,
however, appear to have forfeited the title, for they had with them
a fine lot of skins of beaver, elk, deer, and mountain sheep. These,
Captain Bonneville purchased from them at a fair valuation, and sent
them off astonished at their own wealth, and no doubt objects of envy to
all their pitiful tribe.

Being now reinforced by Hodgkiss and his band of free trappers, Captain
Bonneville put himself at the head of the united parties, and set out
to rejoin those he had recently left at the Beer Spring, that they might
all go into winter quarters on Snake River. On his route, he encountered
many heavy falls of snow, which melted almost immediately, so as not to
impede his march, and on the 4th of December, he found his other party,
encamped at the very place where he had partaken in the buffalo hunt
with the Bannacks.

That braggart horde was encamped but about three miles off, and were
just then in high