WE MEET MEN RETURNING TO THE STATES.
Thursday, August 24.
We came to a toll bridge over the Blackfoot this morning, where the toll was one dollar per team, and fifty cents for horseback riders. There had been an excellent ford just below the bridge. The men collecting the toll had spoiled it by digging ditches on both sides near the bank. The water was clear, and they were plainly visible. Hillhouse mounted Dick to see if we could ford it. One of the men screamed out at him: “You will mire your horse if you try that.”
“I’ll risk it.” And he rode in below where the ditches were dug. The pony’s feet were not muddy. Hillhouse found we could easily ford the creek below the ditches, which we did without accident.
It does seem a shame that we should have to pay toll for crossing a stream like that, after fording South Platte, North Platte and Green River.
The Missourians refused to pay the exorbitant price, and offered them fifty cents per wagon. They swore they would not take a cent less than one dollar. But the travelers were too many for them, and they drove over and did not pay a cent. The toll men were fearfully angry, and made great threats, but the men dared them to do their worst and laughed at them.
I do hope we will get ahead of these people to-morrow. They are not the kind of people I like to travel with.
We have met as many as twenty men to-day going back to the States from the Virginia City mines. George Mays was with them. I mentioned about his leaving the train to go through on horseback, expecting to get his meals at stations and emigrant trains, when his brother with his bride went to Colorado. Says he worked just one day and got five dollars for it, and took the back track the next day.
“Mining is the only work a man can get to do, and it would kill an ordinary man in less than a week.”
He is distressingly homesick. He is going to Denver to his brother.
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Friday, August 25.
We were up at the first peep of dawn, had breakfast, and were hitching up to start, when the folks in the eight wagons began to emerge and light their camp fires, so we have left them some distance behind. We have been meeting men all day returning from the mines. They give a doleful account of the hard times in Montana. They say: “There are a few fortunate ones who are making money like dirt, but they are the exception, about one in a hundred.”
One man was very anxious to buy Dick. I told him: “This pony is not for sale,” and rode away before he could say anything more. The boys say we have met as many as two hundred men to-day returning from the mines. I believe we are all somewhat discouraged this evening. We have always heard such flattering reports from Alder Gulch and Virginia City.
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Friday, August 26.
We have overtaken Mr. Grier, Mr. Bower and Mr. Kennedy. Some of Mr. Bower’s cattle have eaten a poisonous herb—wild larkspur, I believe it is. One ox has died and several are poisoned, but will not die. They got the poison weed the day before yesterday, when they stopped at noon. I am glad we have overtaken them, but sorry for their misfortune. Hillhouse has just now come in, and says Joe, one of our big white oxen, is poisoned. He came for remedies and to sharpen his knife to bleed him. No doubt he got the poison the same place Mr. Bower’s cattle did when we stopped for noon. Sim, Hillhouse and Winthrop have gone to his relief.