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Show 245 Old Father Sheppard, tbe company chaplain, was also given permission to return home and rest himself. The following day, James Cliff, of Cedar City, also received permission to return home upon his own request. Dame saw a need for cows to be brought into the new settlement, and he called upon his men to donate any they thought their families could spare. Eighteen cows were pledged to be forwarded to Meadow Valley as soon as men could be sent to bring them. Before leaving he advised his men not to plant any more after June 17. June 9 sav "the Dame party get underway as scheduled. In doing this, Dame had, for some reason, actually disregarded his own declaration to Brigham Young that he would "remain here until I have received word from you."1 7 The colonel took two wagons with him and ordered two barrels of water secured to each. They struck a course almost due east on the present line of Nevada Highway 25 heading for Panaca Summit. It was not long before they ran into difficulty. On this final leg of their journey the hand of fate seems to have turned against them. Perhaps it was the excitement of going home, or maybe it was a simple misunderstanding, but instead of two water barrels on each wagon, the men had only brought two barrels total. This went unnoticed until it was too late to rectify, and soon it was discovered that the water had leaked out of one of the casks leaving them with only one barrel for eleven men and fifteen animals in a desert that would take at least four days to cross. It was now imperative that they locate additional water sources along the trail, but none could be found. The party passed the site of modern Modena, Utah, near tbe Utah-Nevada border, and entered the Escalante Desert on the approximate line of today's Utah Highway 56. They had hoped to make Little Salt Lake Pass west of Parowan, but they now faced tbe prospect of crossing fifty miles of bleak desert with no water. On the third day out of Meadow Valley, the party was forced to turn south and bear toward Iron Springs where the expedition had organized in April. |