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 Biver 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. 



In Bates' Hole 



The wind still blew violently, and it was necessary to 

 find a camp-site which would give us some protection 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 



