I would like you to take four or five men who have good horses and go
around the north end of the lake and find out, if you can, if the Piutes
are gathering together in a large band. It is about the time of year for
the Piutes to leave this part of the country, but if they are gathering
in a large band they are bent on giving us trouble, and we will have to
make preparations to defend our selves. In three days more if we have
good luck we shall be out of the hostile Indian country."

We had an early dinner and four others and myself set out for the head
of the lake, we rode hard all that afternoon and to our great surprise
we never saw an Indian. We passed a number of camps where they had been,
but their trails all showed that they had pulled out for the north.
Seeing this we turned back and struck the emigrant trail about ten miles
from where Jim was camped. Just as we struck the emigrants trail I
looked off to the south about a quarter of a mile and saw nine head of
horses, and they were heading in the same direction we were going. I
called the other men's attention to them and said, "Let's capture those
Indian ponies." You may imagine our surprise when we got near them to
find they were not Indian ponies but good American horses and several of
them had collar marks on them showing that they had been worked lately.
We drove them on to camp, and when we put them in the corral we found
them to be perfectly gentle. Bridger and the balance of the men came to
see them, and every man had his own view where they had come from. But
we never knew for certain whom they belonged to. The next morning we
pulled out very early. The third day we crossed the Sierra Nevada
mountains without any thing of interest happening to us. In two days
more we reached the Sacramento river. We were now about forty miles
above Sacramento City, California. We camped here about the middle of
the afternoon. It being Saturday Jim thought we would rest the balance
of the day. After we had eaten our dinner Jim called all the men of the