16 A CALIFORNIA TRAMP. 



was that a congenial young fellow whom I got acquainted 

 with at my boarding-house, named Will Finlay, was going 

 with me ; in fact, the enterprise was a mutual affair. I knew 

 from the class of men I saw about the departing trains, that I 

 would want some one like him for a comrade, and thought, 

 from the spirit he showed, he would stick to me. Still, as he 

 had been brought up to gentle ways and had joined the train 

 out of a spirit of adventure, I do not wonder that he afterwards 

 deserted me, weighed down as I was with such surroundings. 



Some of the particulars of my campaign life I will tell in a 

 chapter entitled " A Day on the Plains." For a few days 

 we were engaged in loading the huge wagons and branding 

 cattle. The mark was an ox-yoke burned in front of the right 

 hip. This was the private brand of Russel, Majors and 

 Waddell, the most extensive freighters who ever crossed the 

 plains, with whom I had hired. We branded five hundred in 

 one day. The groans of the struggling oxen and the smell of 

 their burning flesh sickened me, but the fear of another rebuff 

 made me hide my emotion and feign that just such work was 

 what I was suffering for. 



The few days we were waiting to start on our journey I 

 lived at a place called the " Outfit." Our sleeping quarters 

 were full of vermin, but these were less disgusting than a por- 

 tion of my human associates, many of whom were merely 

 waiting for the time for their clothing to be dealt out to 

 them, when they would run off. Some of them were jailbirds 

 and other desperadoes, and petty thieving was common. In 

 their talk they were the vilest of the vile, yet on account of a 

 few semi-respectable fellows among them, I concluded to not 

 back down, but to follow out my resolve to go to Utah, to 

 which place we were to take supplies for the army sent to sub- 

 due the Mormons, then in rebellion. The soldiers around the 

 Fort made it a lively place, but their numbers were so small 

 compared with the million or more who sprung to arms four 



