The Snake widow of a French trapper who had been shot in a Fourth of July celebration at the fort asked the lieutenant if she might not journey with the expedition as far as the Bear River, beyond the Green, so that she could join her own people; and she was accepted, and given a small tent.
The expedition made an imposing sight. The Frémont party numbered some forty men, as against the twenty-five of the previous year. The Carson party were fifteen. The Frémont men were armed with Hall flint-lock breech-loading rifles, which had been adopted by the army and were thought to be a fine gun; but the Carson men were better armed, with percussion-cap rifles, and with Colt revolving pistols. Besides the brass twelve-pounder, there was a baggage train of twelve two-wheeled carts and a light spring-wagon for the instruments, and six pack-horses loaded with the Snake squaw’s household goods.
This was altogether too large an outfit with which to thread the danger-trail of the short-cut. Therefore Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand was directed to take the baggage train and about twenty-five of the men, and proceed by the customary trail from St. Vrain’s Fort up to Fort Laramie; thence by the Oregon Trail west over the South Pass and on to the British Hudson Bay Company post of Fort Hall. The lieutenant and Kit Carson would take the rest of the company through by the short cut, and meet him at Fort Hall.
For his party the lieutenant chose Kit, and Charles Preuss the bristly-headed German, and Jacob Dodson the young colored man, and Louis Zindel the Prussian artillerist, Basil Lajeunesse and his brother François Lajeunesse, Baptiste Bernier, Louis Ménard, Raphael Proue, Baptiste Derosier, François Badeau, Auguste Vasquez a Spanish Creole, and Henry Lee. The Snake woman with her six packs (atop of one her two black-eyed, pretty little children) accompanied; and there were the Carson men.
The course from St. Vrain’s fort was northwesterly, across a rolling country. On the third day William New announced, to Oliver his partner:
“Thar she air.”
“What?”
“The Cache-à-la-Poudre, or Hide-the-Powder Creek. We follow her up, I reckon, into the mountains. Know why she has that name?”
“Trapper name,” hazarded Oliver.