LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



miles distant. On arriving at tlie base, the most minute search 

 failed to discover the slightest traces of water, and the vegetation 

 merely consisted of dwarf piiion and cedar. With their sufferings 

 increased by the exertions they had used in reaching the mountain, 

 they once more sought the trail, but every step told on their ex- 

 hausted frames. The sun was very powerful, the sand over which 

 they floundered was deep and heavy, and, to complete their suffer- 

 ings, a high wind blew it in their faces, filling their mouths and 

 noses with its searching particles. 



Still they struggled onward manfully, and not a murmur was 

 heard until their hunger had entered the second stage upon the 

 road to starvation. They had now been three days without food 

 or water ; under which privation nature can hardly sustain her- 

 self for a much longer period. On the fourth morning the men 

 looked wolfish, their captives following behind in sullen and per- 

 fect indifference, occasionally stooping down to catch a beetle if 

 one presented itself, and greedily devouring it. A man named 

 Forey, a Canadian half-breed, was the first to complain. " If 

 this lasted another sundown," he said, " some of them would ' be 

 rubbed out ;' that meat had to be raised anyhow ; and for his 

 part, he knew where to look for a feed, if no game was seen be- 

 fore they put out of camp on the morrow ; and meat was meat, 

 anyhow they fixed it." 



No answer was made to this, though his companions well un- 

 derstood him : their natures as yet revolted against the last expe- 

 dient. As for the three squaws, all of them young girls, they 

 followed behind their captors without a word of complaint, arid 

 with the stoical indifference to pain and suffering which alike 

 characterizes the haughty Delaware of the north, and the misera- 

 ble, stunted Digger of the deserts of the Far West. On the morn- 

 ing of the fifth day, the party were seated round a small fire of 

 piiion, hardly able to rise and commence their journey, the squaws 

 squatting over another at a little distance, when Forey commenced 



