288 ARRANGE WITH COLONEL P . 



I determined to return the following year and spend the 

 autumn in and about that country. 



Colonel Clendenin told me that he had the management of 

 the steamers on the Upper Missouri, and that if I wished he 

 would get my outfit for me horses, waggon, and men and 

 send it down from Benton by river, to meet me at a place called 

 Carroll, which he said was about the best starting-point, thus 

 saving me a great deal of time, trouble, and money, besides 

 giving me the benefit of his experience in choosing the men, 

 and of course I accepted his kind offer. 



The following spring I was trying to find a companion, when 

 I saw a very good article in the ' Forest and Stream/ from a 

 gentleman who said he had spent the last season in the country 

 to which I wished to go, and that he meant to return again 

 that summer. I wrote to the address given, and got a letter 



from a Colonel P , saying that he thought of starting soon 



and should like a companion ; and it was finally arranged that 

 he should share my outfit, and that we should meet at Carroll 

 late in August. "When the time came I was delayed by having 

 to go to New York to meet some guns, &c., coming from 

 England, so I wrote to the Colonel asking him to go on to our 

 starting-point, take out the outfit and leave a horse for me, on 

 which I could join him. This he did, and I started for Carroll 

 about a week late, going by rail to Bismarck, then the terminus 

 of the Central Pacific railway, and by steamer to Carroll, this 

 place being about a hundred and fifty miles above Fort 

 Buford, at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. At Bismarck 

 I had to wait a full week for a steamer from below; so 

 hearing that there were a good many black- and white-tailed 

 deer on Big-heart River, I hired a horse and made an excursion 



