After getting something to eat, and learning something, through Smith, of my adventures, my escort made ready to return to their camp.  Their trip, as Smith told me, was made solely for my accommodation and now I had nothing with which to compensate them; but as they were about to leave I took a large “bandanna,” the only one I had left, and tied it around the neck of the chief’s son, he being one of the clever escorts.  He at first refused to accept it, but when Smith told him that I desired him to take it as a token of regard, he accepted it with an expression of thanks, and after I had bidden them all good-bye, they rode away as rapidly as we had come.  I will always hold that chief and his people in kindly remembrance.

All of the other white men with Smith were French, and all had plenty of wives (squaws) and numerous slaves.  The wives were not slaves, but they had slaves all around them.  The whole tribe traveled about and lived much as other tribes did, only much better, for they lived by trading while the others lived by hunting and fishing.  In this camp I ate bread for the first time in many weeks.  At the end of three days after my arrival here a caravan was ready to start for Fort Bridger for winter supplies for the traders.  I was furnished with a good horse and saddle, and Smith, one of the Frenchmen, five slaves, 20 horses, and myself made up the caravan, and on the evening of the third day we reached the fort where I was very kindly received.

Smith was a large man, had a good head, and some cultivation and apparent refinement, and treated his women and children well.  He said he had been to his old home in Illinois since he had entered upon this kind of life, but was not contented there and soon returned to his Indian friends.  He and those Frenchmen were as generous and hospitable as old Southern planters, and their kindness to me will not be forgotten while my memory lasts.

I was well treated at the fort which is 116 miles from the point where the seven dug up the little flat-boat from its sandy bed on the fifth day of August, just three mouths before, since which I had undergone many hardships, took many fearful risks, and traveled more than a thousand miles, far enough to have taken me from Green River to San Francisco.

On the morning of the seventh day of November I started with a Government train for Salt Lake City where I arrived on the fifteenth.  I soon found a home with a prominent Mormon, a Scotchman named Archie Gardner, living in the fifth ward, on Mill Creek, one of the many small streams coming down from the mountains east of the city.  Mr. Gardner was a clever gentleman about 45 years old, had a saw-mill up in, the mountains, and was then building a flour mill only a few rods from his dwelling.  I assisted him in completing the little flour mill and in attending it during the winter.  Mr. Gardner had three wives, all living in one house, but occupying separate rooms at night.  I usually attended the little mill until midnight, and Gardner made it part of my duty to go to his house and call him.  He usually told me where I could find him, but not always, so at times I was under the necessity of rapping at more than one door before I found him.