I answered, “Jim, I am going to keep that bonnet for two reasons.  One is for the protection of my own scalp and the other is to keep in remembrance my last trip in company with you as a pilot across the plains to California.”

Jim looked at me a moment and then said, “Will, you don’t pretend to say that you will never take any more trips with me.”

I answered, “Yes Jim, I mean what I say.  This is my last trip as a pilot for emigrants.”

Jim did not answer for a few moments, and then he said, “Who will go with me next year Willie?  I thought the pilot business just suited you.”

I answered, “In some respects I do like it, and in others I dislike it very much.  You know yourself how impossible it is to please everybody.  There are so many of the people who come from the east that don’t think there is any more danger of the Indians than there is of the Whites, and you know Jim that is the class of people who will always get us into trouble.  See what those nineteen smart alecks did for us on this last trip.  Do you think if they had known any thing of Indian trickery they would have left our protection to go hunting in the very heart of the Indian country?  And if we had not been firm with the rest of those people the whole outfit would have been scalped and then we would have had to bear the blame.”

Jim answered, “There is more truth than poetry in all you say Will, but maybe you will change your mind when spring comes.”

We had a peaceful night’s sleep and pulled out on the road bright and early the next morning.  We left the main trail and took a south east course and crossed the extreme southern portion, of what is now the state of Utah.  We traveled hundreds of miles in this country without seeing a human being.

A year ago I passed through this same country in a comfortable seat in a railroad car, and it would be difficult for me to make the people of this day understand the feelings that I experienced when in looking from the car window I saw the changes that fifty-five years have made in what was a wild, rough wilderness, inhabited by Buffaloes, Antelopes, Coyotes and savage men.

We kept on through this section of country until we struck the Colorado river, which we crossed just below the mouth of Green river, and a few days’ travel brought us into the northwest part of what is now New Mexico.

The country which is now New Mexico was at the time of which I am writing considered perfectly worthless.  It is a rolling, hilly country with smooth, level valleys between the hills and is proving to be very fertile and is settling as fast as any part of the west.

There was nothing more to trouble us, and we made good progress on our journey, and in ten days from the time we left the Colorado river we reached Taos, New Mexico, which was the end of our journey, and tired and worn with the long hours in the saddle and the anxiety of mind which we had experienced in all the long months since we left there in the spring, we were glad to get there and rest a few days and to feel that we were free with no responsibility.