by being careful what I shot
at. It just kept snowing, so at last I decided to take a little hunt
and provide for the day. I left Jerrine happy with the towel rolled
into a baby, and went along the brow of the mountain for almost a
mile, but the snow fell so thickly that I couldn't see far. Then I
happened to look down into the canon that lay east of us and saw smoke.
I looked toward it a long time, but could make out nothing but smoke,
but presently I heard a dog bark and I knew I was near a camp of some
kind. I resolved to join them, so went back to break my own camp.

At last everything was ready and Jerrine and I both mounted. Of all the
times! If you think there is much comfort, or even security, in riding
a pack-horse in a snowstorm over mountains where there is no road, you
are plumb wrong. Every once in a while a tree would unload its snow
down our backs. "Jeems" kept stumbling and threatening to break our
necks. At last we got down the mountain-side, where new danger
confronted us,--we might lose sight of the smoke or ride into a bog.
But at last, after what seemed hours, we came into a "clearing" with a
small log house and, what is rare in Wyoming, a fireplace. Three or
four hounds set up their deep baying, and I knew by the chimney and the
hounds that it was the home of a Southerner. A little old man came
bustling out, chewing his tobacco so fast, and almost frantic about his
suspenders, which it seemed he couldn't get adjusted.

As I rode up, he said, "Whither, friend?" I said "Hither." Then he
asked, "Air you spying around for one of them dinged game wardens arter
that deer I killed yisteddy?" I told him I had never even seen a game
warden and that I didn't know he had killed a deer. "Wall," he said,
"air you spying around arter that gold mine I diskivered over on the
west side of Baldy?" But after a while I convinced him that I was no
more nor less than a foolish woman lost in the snow. Then he said,
"Light, stranger, and look at your saddle." So I "lit" and looked, and
then I asked him what part of the South he was from. He answered, "Yell
County, by gum! The best place in the United States, or in the world,
either." That was my introduction to Zebulon Pike Parker.

Only two "Johnny Rebs" could have enjoyed each other's company as
Zebulon Pike and myself did. He was so small and so old, but so
cheerful and so sprightly, and a real Southerner! He had a big, open
fireplace with backlogs and andirons. How