t it in."

"It means," said Danny, "that some day Morton's gang will go a little
too far, and we'll have to get together and string some of them up."

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE OVERLAND IMMIGRANTS

The overland immigrants never ceased to interest us. The illness,
destitution, and suffering that obtained among these people has never
been adequately depicted. For one outfit with healthy looking members
and adequate cattle there were dozens conducted by hollow-eyed, gaunt
men, drawn by few weak animals. Women trudged wearily, carrying
children. And the tales they brought were terrible. They told us of
thousands they had left behind in the great desert of the Humboldt Sink,
fighting starvation, disease, and the loss of cattle. Women who had lost
their husbands from the deadly cholera were staggering on without food
or water, leading their children. The trail was lined with dead mules
and cattle. Some said that five thousand had perished on the plains from
cholera alone. In the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere, were
the death camps, the wagons drawn in the usual circle, the dead animals
tainting the air, every living human being crippled from scurvy and
other diseases. There was no fodder for the cattle, and one man told us
that he estimated, soberly, that three fourths of the draught animals on
the plains must die.

"And then where will their owners be?"

The Indians were hostile and thieving. Most of the ample provision that
had been laid in had to be thrown away to lighten the loads for the
enfeebled animals. Such immigrants as got through often arrived in an
impoverished condition. Many of these on the route were reduced by
starvation to living on the putrefied flesh of the dead animals along
the road. This occasioned more sickness. The desert seemed interminable.
At nightfall the struggling trains lay down exhausted with only the
assurance of another scorching, burning day to follow. And when at last
a few reached the Humboldt River, they found it almost impossible to
ford--and the feed on the other side. In the distance showed the high
forbidding ramparts of the Sierra Nevadas. A man named Delano told us
that five men drowned themselves in the Humboldt River in one day out of
sheer discouragement. Another man said he had saved the lives of his
oxen by giving some Indians fifteen dollars to swim the river and float
some grass across to him. The water of the Humboldt had a bad effect on
horses, and grea