I did not sweeten at all before baking, but made the sauce sweet enough to sweeten all. I also made a fine sauce by cooking the currants only a very few minutes, and putting in the sugar after they were cooked. We will have currant dumplings for dinner to-morrow. We have picked a lot, enough to make sauce and pies and other good things for a week. The currants are a beautiful fruit, and some are as large as small cherries. We are waiting at Camp Plentiful, in the hope that some of the wagons from the train will drive in before night.
There are three wigwams within sight of our camp. Sim and Hillhouse went hunting to-day. On their way back they stopped at the wigwams and found them occupied by white men with squaws for wives. Ugh!
* * * * *
Wednesday, August 9.
Somehow I felt a little suspicious of those white men living with squaws, and feared some of our horses might be missing this morning, but my suspicions were groundless. Our horses and cattle were all here, well fed and ready for a long drive. We were off bright and early, without seeing any one from the train.
We passed the Bridger Road, where our friends going to California will turn off, so we are not likely to see them again, perhaps for years, perhaps never again in this life.
There is a very fine ranch at the junction of the roads, where we stopped at noon. Two men from this ranch visited our camp this evening. They were rather fine looking, genteel in appearance, dressed in civilization style, but for some unexplainable reason, I was afraid of them. They tried to be very cordial and polite. They engaged Sim in conversation, and plied him with pertinent questions, such as:
“Who owns those big American mares?” (referring to our horse team).
“They are the property of a widow.”
“Whose bay pony is that?”