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Show 174 tomorrow....-3' It must have been assumed that a settlement would soon be made and an express established between there and Parowan because Dame then asked that his wives send him three pounds of sugar and a copy of the Deseret News. On the following morning, the camp moved out at 8:15 and marched over the divide four and one half miles away. From there the company proceeded down a dry wash for nine miles into Dry Lake Valley, a bleak desert with a huge dry lake bed immediately t o the south. According t o the Indians, the valley ran south to Las Vegas. Although t h e i r guides reported a small spring lay between them and their destination, each wagon took a full barrel of water on board. Until this point, the company had been following Bennett's t r a i l of 1849 with only slight variations. "It helps & aids us very much," wrote Dame of the trail of '49. But from t h i s point forward the company was completely on their own in an unexplored country. Colonel Dame had informed President Young that "if i t /Bennett's t r a i l ] s t i l l l i e s in our course we shall follow i t across the desert if not we shall turn to our course. In Dry Lake Valley Bennett's t r a il veered to the southwest while Dames took a new course a l i t t l e north of west. Their guide was a "wild" Indian they had recently picked up in Meadow Valley. The Indian guides were becoming increasingly valuable as they penetrated deeper into the country known only t o the Red men. In l a t e r years, Martineau recalled the process by which these guides were obtained: Whenever a guide was needed, we always found one; often the only Indian, as i t seemed, in the whole country round about, and when be would leave us afraid to go any farther from his home, another was always found just in the nick of time t o take his place, though sometimes we had to run them down by horsemen and capture them l i k e we would wild animals.5 The company pressed on across Dry Lake Valley toward a gap in the North |
