On The 26th Of July, He Commenced His March At An Early Hour,
Making Directly Across The Valley, Toward The Hills In The West;
Proceeding At As Brisk A Rate As The Jaded Condition Of His
Horses Would Permit.
About eleven o'clock in the morning, a great
cloud of dust was descried in the rear, advancing directly on the
trail of the party.
The alarm was given; they all came to a halt,
and held a council of war. Some conjectured that the band of
Indians, whose trail they had discovered in the neighborhood of
the stray horse, had been lying in wait for them in some secret
fastness of the mountains; and were about to attack them on the
open plain, where they would have no shelter. Preparations were
immediately made for defence; and a scouting party sent off to
reconnoitre. They soon came galloping back, making signals that
all was well. The cloud of dust was made by a band of fifty or
sixty mounted trappers, belonging to the American Fur Company,
who soon came up, leading their pack-horses. They were headed by
Mr. Fontenelle, an experienced leader, or "partisan," as a chief
of a party is called in the technical language of the trappers.
Mr. Fontenelle informed Captain Bonneville that he was on his way
from the company's trading post on the Yellowstone to the yearly
rendezvous, with reinforcements and supplies for their hunting
and trading parties beyond the mountains; and that he expected to
meet, by appointment, with a band of free trappers in that very
neighborhood. He had fallen upon the trail of Captain
Bonneville's party, just after leaving the Nebraska; and, finding
that they had frightened off all the game, had been obliged to
push on, by forced marches, to avoid famine: both men and horses
were, therefore, much travel-worn; but this was no place to halt;
the plain before them he said was destitute of grass and water,
neither of which would be met with short of the Green River,
which was yet at a considerable distance. He hoped, he added, as
his party were all on horseback, to reach the river, with hard
travelling, by nightfall: but he doubted the possibility of
Captain Bonneville's arrival there with his wagons before the day
following. Having imparted this information, he pushed forward
with all speed.
Captain Bonneville followed on as fast as circumstances would
permit. The ground was firm and gravelly; but the horses were too
much fatigued to move rapidly. After a long and harassing day's
march, without pausing for a noontide meal, they were compelled,
at nine o'clock at night, to encamp in an open plain, destitute
of water or pasturage. On the following morning, the horses were
turned loose at the peep of day; to slake their thirst, if
possible, from the dew collected on the sparse grass, here and
there springing up among dry sand-banks. The soil of a great part
of this Green River valley is a whitish clay, into which the rain
cannot penetrate, but which dries and cracks with the sun.
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