Sometimes It Was Necessary Almost To Turn Around In Order To Keep Upon The Higher Ground.

In this way mules and drivers worked until four o'clock in the afternoon, the dirty water often coming up over the floor of the ambulance, and many times it looked as if we could not go on one step farther without being upset in the mud and water.

But at four we reached an island, where there was a small house and a stable for the stage relay horses, and not far beyond was another island where Faye decided to camp for the night. It was the only thing he could have done. He insisted upon my staying at the house, but I finally convinced him that the proper place for me was in camp, and I went on with him. The island was very small, and the highest point above water could not have been over two feet. Of course everything had to be upon it - horses, mules, wagons, drivers, Faye and I, and the two small squirrels, and the chickens also. In addition to our own traveling menagerie there were native inhabitants of that island - millions and millions of mosquitoes, each one with a sharp appetite and sharp sting. We thought that we had learned all about vicious mosquitoes while in the South, but the Southern mosquitoes are slow and caressing in comparison to those Montana things.

It was very warm, and the Chinaman felt sorry for the chickens shut up in the boxes, where fierce quarrels seemed to be going on all the time. So after he had fed them we talked it over, and decided to let them out, as they could not possibly get away from us across the big body of water. There were twenty large chickens in one big box, and twenty-seven small ones that had been brought in a long box by themselves. Well, Charlie and one of the men got the boxes down and opened them. At once the four or five mother hens clucked and scratched and kept on clucking until the little chicks were let out, when every one of them ran to its own mother, and each hen strutted off with her own brood. That is the absolute truth, but is not all. When night came the chickens went back to their boxes to roost - all but the small ones. Those were left outside with their mothers, and just before daylight Charlie raised a great commotion when he put them up for the day's trip.

When we were about ready to start in the morning, a man came over from the house and told Faye that he would pilot us through the rest of the water, that it was very dangerous in places, where the road had been built up, and if a narrow route was not carefully followed, a team would go down a bank of four or five feet. He had with him just the skeleton of a wagon - the four wheels with two or three long boards on top, drawn by two horses.

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