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Show 70 MORE ABOUT FORT BRIDGER. the risk of being tedious on this subject, I will record the experiences of another night out, in the same country. On this occasion I had but one companion, and that a gentle man. It was fortunate that it was so. We were about six or eight miles from our station, travelling in a sleigh, and just at dark our establishment broke down. I meet with such accidents, and lose the road oftener than any other officer in the army. Remembering my experience in a snow- storm, about which I have here told the reader, and there being a prospect of one overtaking us if we started to walk in, we decided to spend the night with an old mountaineer whose cabin was not far away. We led the horses to the place, and of course we were accommodated as we desired, or rather as we could be. This ranch, unfortunately, had but one room, in which they cooked, ate, slept, & c. & c. The landlord occupied a bed on a rude bedstead in one corner, and as we entered we discovered several lying around on the dirt floor covered with robes, but as there was no light, except such as was emitted from a few embers on the hearth, we could not distinguish who they were, or how many. The son of the proprietor, whose mother is a squaw, furnished a few dirty robes, and we stretched out in front of the fire, after adding a few sticks which blazed up, and, to some extent, illuminated the room. I thought of sleep, but that was as near as I got to it. In a few minutes others commenced dropping in one by one, and soon I found that we were occupying a room with at least a dozen dirty buck Indians, squaws and pappooses. Added to the real discomfoirt of lying on an uneven piece of ground, were those of my imagination, and a peculiar sensitiveness of my olfactory nerves, and the thoughts of what surrounded me. We stood it like martyrs until two or three o'clock, when we woke up the proprietor, borrowed a couple of saddles, and started homeward, determined to wander about the country / the remainder of the night, if we couldn't find the way, rather than remain. For about three days, I was constantly smelling smoked |
