238 



THREE WESTERN BIRD GROUPS 



rating. Our schooner with Taylor's sturdy horses and a 

 saddle horse as tender, was under way at 7 :30 and we were 

 soon launched in a sea of sage-brush bounded ahead only by 

 the snow-ridged Laramie Mountains, forty miles away. The 

 Muddy Eiver was bankfull, but we forded it with a rush, 

 and early in the afternoon reached the edge of the great 

 depression in which, somewhere, was the object of our 

 search. 



^^^i^^lT^ 



In Bates' Hole 



The wind still blew violenth^, and it was necessary to 

 find a camp-site which would give us some i)rotection from 

 its force. The trail through the bottom of the Hole proved 

 impassable and, after a narrow escape from miring, we were 

 forced to turn to the left and in a mile or more, discovered 

 the cabin of a settler named Groener, so hidden in a pocket 

 on the shores of Stinking Creek, that we might have passed 

 it unseen within a hundred feet. 



We pitched our tent in the lee of the cabin — which Mrs. 

 Chapman was the second woman to enter — and gladly 



