The train was loaded, principally, with flour, bacon, sugar,
coffee and tobacco. Flour was then worth twenty-five dollars per
hundred, bacon forty cents a pound, and other things in
proportion. On the twentieth of September I took two horses and
started off to meet the freight train.
Three days from the time I left Virginia City I crossed the summit
of the Rocky Mountains and it was snowing hard. I thought it
doubtful whether or not they would be able to cross the mountains
this winter, but I went on, and met them between Fort Hall and
Soda Springs. I gave the wagon-boss a letter which Boon and Bivian
had sent him, and after reading the letter he asked me if I
thought they could cross the range this fall. I told him that it
was about one hundred and eighty miles from there to the summit,
and if he could make that distance in ten days he would be able to
get through, but if not, he could not cross the mountains this
fall. He said it would be impossible to make it in that length of
time, as the cattle were all getting very poor and weak and the
teams very heavily loaded. The next morning I struck out, taking
another man with me, to try and find if possible, another ford on
Snake river some thirty or forty miles above the old crossing,
knowing if I could do that it Would save us two or three days'
travel, and might be the means of our getting across the mountains
that fall.
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