Across a low, sandy, salty plain the late crew of the rubber boat rode for the log fort. The foiled wizard or genie who seemed to dwell in those mountains across the water pursued them with a thunder-storm, but they outstripped it, and welcomed gladly by the salute of Jacob’s howitzer they entered the friendly grove.
[XV]
ON TO THE COLUMBIA
“You say that the emigrants were going on, wagons and all, Kit?” queried the lieutenant.
“That war the plan. Whitman said he’d get ’em through, an’ they’d need their goods an’ cattle at t’other end.”
The little company were on the back trail for Fort Hall. As Ike Chamberlain had warned, already winter was creeping down the mountain-sides, with his banners of white ever investing closer the lowlands. Even while the explorers had been encamped near the lake, the snows seemed to have increased upon the crests of the Wasatch Range, overhead. It was a thousand long miles to the end of the trail at Vancouver upon the lower Columbia; therefore Lieutenant Frémont and Kit Carson agreed that to put in more time hereabouts was hazardous.
In the afternoon of the second day following the voyage to Disappointment Island the march was begun, up the Bear and the River of Weeds, for Fort Hall, six days’ travel with the baggage.
Once more the talk drifted to the amazing pilgrimage of Oregon emigrants, and the great concourse of them at Fort Hall, before Kit had left.