Wadsworth, who was equally as joyful as ourselves. We camped together
that night and had a good visit. It was a genuine family reunion. How
thoroughly we listened to each other's rehearsals and became mutual
sympathizers and encouragers! This was the last time the original
company ever met together.

Some of our boys, whose stock was nearly worn out, concluded that they
would join the three wagons and take more time to get through. This move
reduced our little company of packers to six men and ten animals. In the
morning we bade them all goodby (some of them for the last time), swung
into our saddles, and moved on.

After crossing the divide we entered Pleasant Valley, which, with its
level floor, abundant grass, and willow-fringed stream of cool water,
was very appropriately named. As our provisions were now getting short,
I was on the lookout for game of any sort that would furnish food. After
dinner, taking my rifle, I went along down the stream as it led off the
road, when a pair of ducks flew up and alighted a short distance below.
These were the first ducks I had seen since leaving the Platte, and,
being out for something to eat, I was particularly glad to see them. I
watched them settle, and then creeping up through tall wild rice I got a
shot and killed one of them. I quickly reloaded. As I was out there
alone I was necessarily on my guard. The duck was about twenty-five
feet from the bank, and as the water was deep and cold and no one with
me I concluded not to go in after it. So I took out the ramrod, screwed
the wormer to it, lengthened it out with willow cuttings fastened one to
another, and then shoved it out on the water until the wormer touched
the duck, which I managed to twist into the game and draw it ashore. We
had an elegant supper that night.

The next day or two I came to a pond where were sitting five snipe. I
killed the whole bunch, and they helped to make another square meal. We
were now near the border of the Great Desert proper, where, out of the
midst of a level plain, stood a lone mountain known as the "Old Crater,"
which, together with its surroundings, had all the appearance of an
extinct volcano. The plain round about this mountain had been rent in
narrow cracks or crevices leading in various directions from the
mountain off on to the plain, some of them crossing the trail, where we
had to push and jump the stock across them. In dropping a rock into them
there seemed to be no bottom. Al