long, a
brave old crow surprised us by lighting on a bush near the trail, and we
surprised him by killing him with a charge of shot. "Here's your fresh
meat," said Rogers as he put it into his knapsack to cook for supper,
and marched on. As we approached the summit we could see, on the high
mountains south of us, some trees, and when we came near the highest
part of our road there were some juniper trees near it, which was very
encouraging. We crossed over several miles of hard snow, but it
moistened up our moccassins and made them soft and uncomfortable. After
we had turned down the western slope we killed a small hawk. "Here's
your meat" said I, as the poor thin fellow was stowed away for future
grub, to cook with the crow.

When we got out of the snow we had lost the trail again but the hills on
the sides were covered with large brush, and on a higher part of the
mountain south, were some big trees, and we began to think the country
would change for the better pretty soon. We followed down the ravine for
many miles, and when this came out into a larger one, we were greatly
pleased at the prospect, for down the latter came a beautiful little
running brook of clear pure water, singing as it danced over the stones,
a happy song and telling us to drink and drink again, and you may be
sure we did drink, for it had been months and months since we had had
such water, pure, sweet, free from the terrible alkali and stagnant
taste that had been in almost every drop we had seen. Rogers leveled his
shot gun at some birds and killed a beautiful one with a top knot on his
head, and colors bright all down his neck. It was a California quail. We
said birds always lived where human beings did, and we had great hopes
born to us of a better land. I told John that if the folks were only
there now I could kill game enough for them.

We dressed our three birds and got them boiling in the camp kettle, and
while they were cooking talked over the outlook which was so flattering
that our tongues got loose and we rattled away in strange contrast to
the ominous silence of a week ago. While eating our stew of crow and
hawk, we could see willows alders and big sage brush around and we had
noticed what seemed to be cottonwoods farther down the canon, and green
trees on the slope of the mountain. We were sure we were on the edge of
the promised land and were quite light hearted, till we began to tell of
plans to get the good people out who were wa