fire burning at my side.  I thought it looked dark and troublesome before us.  I took a stone for a pillow with my hat on it for a cushion, and lying down close under the shelving rock I went to sleep, for I was very tired, I woke soon from being cold, for the butte was pretty high, and so I busied myself the remainder of the night in adding little sticks to the fire, which gave me some warmth, and thus in solitude I spent the night.  I was glad enough to see the day break over the eastern mountains, and light up the vast barren country I could see on every hand around me.  When the sun was fairly up I took a good survey of the situation, and it seemed as if pretty near all creation was in sight.  North and west was a level plain, fully one hundred miles wide it seemed, and from anything I could see it would not afford a traveler a single drink in the whole distance or give a poor ox many mouthfuls of grass.  On the western edge it was bounded by a low, black and rocky range extending nearly north and south for a long distance and no pass though it which I could see, and beyond this range still another one apparently parallel to it.  In a due west course from me was the high peak we had been looking at for a month, and lowest place was on the north side, which we had named Martin’s Pass and had been trying so long to reach.  This high peak, covered with snow, glistened to the morning sun, and as the air was clear from clouds or fog, and no dust or haze to obscure the view, it seemed very near.

I had learned by experience that objects a day’s walk distant seemed close by in such a light, and that when clear lakes appeared only a little distance in our front, we might search and search and never find them.  We had to learn how to look for water in this peculiar way.  In my Wisconsin travel I had learned that when I struck a ravine I must go down to look for living water, but here we must invariably travel upward for the water was only found in the high mountains.

Prospects now seemed to me so hopeless, that I heartily wished I was not in duty 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.