Here, for the first two days, we met with scarcely anything. About noon on the third, I and Arnold were standing together. During the whole morning we had found no game, and were gazing around us with that sense of discomfort a continuously empty stomach is certain to produce in humanity, when we heard a shot in the distance. It was to the right of us. Almost immediately it was followed by another. As the two puffs of smoke drifted above the stunted pines which covered the unequally rough ground in that direction, I heard a sound which, faintly as it came to us, I immediately recognized, from the use of it by Brighton Bill. It was what he called:
"A 'onest British cheer."
"You know the voice, Mose?"
"Yes! Let's break for it."
We accordingly "broke" in its direction. Three more of the boys had already joined him and Ben Painter by the time we had arrived there. The two first mentioned had met with the good fortune of spotting a huge elk. The animal had been killed, and while still warm, the men were engaged in skinning him.
A fire was quickly kindled, and, by the time, portion of the elk was ready for our ravenous appetites, the remainder of the Rangers entered their names as partners in the welcome feast. For, that it was right welcome, my present remembrance of it unmistakably assures me.
Stopping here until we had jerked most of the meat on the elk's large carcass, we again started on our journey back.
Having travelled in an easterly course through a magnificently wooded country, we reached the Columbia River, near Fort Okimakane, and passing down it through the territory occupied by the Flat-head tribe of Indians, arrived at the Walla-Walla. Thence we crossed the Blue Mountains; and, after several days' more travelling through the rocky wilderness and broken cañons, arrived at the Owyhee, which, some distance higher up, we crossed and continued over the range of hills by the side of this stream, until we at length reached Surprise Valley.
We camped in this spot for two weeks, for the purpose of recruiting our horses and hunting up game. The jerked elk-flesh was already very nearly brought to an end.
It was, while we were in this neighborhood, that I met with an adventure which very nearly ended this volume before I had even written a page of it, if I may be pardoned the Irishism of this expression. But, for the opportune arrival of the Buckskin Rangers, my life would very certainly not have been worth an empty powder-can.