With the first gray streaks of dawn they were again on their way, working over the ridge to the other fork of the creek which they reached a few hours later.
A couple of miles farther on we stopped to build a fire and warm ourselves. Davis showed signs of undue restlessness. We had to call him back from climbing the hillsides several times. While we were gathering wood for the fire, I found a section of sawed off timber blocks such as they use for the bottoms of flumes. It had been recently cut on one side with an axe. This satisfied me without farther evidence that the mines above were not old placers, now deserted. The men were not so sanguine, but were cheerful, and we soon moved on again. In a couple of hours we came to an old flume. Shortly after, Applegate declared he smelled the smoke of burning pine. In half an hour more we reached a miner’s cabin and were safe. We arrived at 3 pm. having been 80 hours without food in a temperature from 10 degrees to 40 degrees below zero, and after previously enduring privations as before detailed. Two old miners occupied the cabin and they were both at home, having returned from a little town above with a fresh stock of provisions. They at once produced some dry bread and made some weak tea, knowing well what to do. We had to force those things down. None of us felt hungry for anything but grease. About this time, to our unspeakable delight, Sergeant Server and Warren also arrived. They had passed the mouth of the creek on the 13th and gone below to the next stream which they had followed up fourteen miles without finding anything, and returning to meet us had found our trail and followed it, knowing that we had nothing to eat, while they had two horses and a mule with them. Mr. Bailey and his partner now gave us a bountiful supper of hot rolls, roast beef, and other substantial fare, and we all ate heartily in spite of our previous resolutions not to do so. Cold, dry bread had no charms, but hot and fatty food roused our stomachs to a realization that the season of famine was over. The change affected us severely. I had an attack of inflammation of the stomach which lasted several hours. All of the men suffered more or less, excepting Starr who seemed to be unaffected.
The next day the party moved upstream to the little town, Keenan City, which consisted of a store, saloon, post office, blacksmith shop, stable, and “a lot of miners’ cabins.” Doane found that they had followed McCoy Creek, and that the settlements were collectively known as the Caribou mining district. The Lieutenant records that his weight was down to 126 from a normal 190, and the others were similarly reduced.
A “jerky stage line” operated between Keenan City and the Eagle Rock Bridge on the Snake above Fort Hall, and Lieutenant Doane accordingly prepared the following telegram to be forwarded by the Post Adjutant at Fort Hall:
Commanding Officer, Fort Ellis, Montana. Arrived here yesterday. All well. Write today. Send mail to Fort Hall. (Signed) Doane.
It was the Lieutenant’s plan at this time to construct small sleds for the rations and bedding rolls, these to be drawn by the 2 horses and the mule left to the expedition, and thus proceed downriver to Fort Hall. All was in readiness by December 23, and the party set out, proceeding some 20 miles through Christmas Day. While in camp on the evening of December 26, voices were heard in the river bottom nearby, where a party of troops had just gone into camp.
It was Lieutenant Joseph Hall, 14th Infantry, with four men and a good little pack train. I shall never forget the puzzled expression on the face of this officer when he first met me. He conversed in monosyllables for a couple of minutes and then told us that he had been sent to arrest a party of deserters, half a dozen in number, which had been advertised for in the Montana papers, as having left Fort Ellis and were supposed to have gone through the Park and down Snake River. Thirty dollars each for apprehension and capture. The stage driver had read the papers it seems and denounced us to the Post Commander at Fort Hall. We first had a hearty laugh over the joke and he then placed himself and party at my disposal. We sat by the fire and talked nearly all night. (He was Post Adjutant at Fort Hall, and evidently knew something more than he felt at liberty to tell me, but he denounced Major Jas. S. Brisbin, 2d Cavalry, my Post Commander, in unmeasured terms, and told me that I was being made a victim of infamous treachery. This was a revelation but not a surprise.)[4]
Next day Sergeant Server and 4 men were sent with fresh animals to recover the boat and the bedding cached upriver. They returned the day following, reporting that it was only “fifteen miles by the trail on the other side of the river.” They brought with them the equipment but not the boat, which had been crushed to splinters by an ice jam which had piled up in masses 20 feet high.
This was a bitter disappointment as they found the river open all the way down, and we so found it afterwards below. Here was another strange occurrence. In exploring as in hunting there is an element of chance which cannot be provided against. No foresight will avail, no calculations will detect, no energy will overcome. Caution might prevent, but with caution no results will be obtained. Risks must be taken, and there is such an element in human affairs as fortune, good or bad. I decided at once to make all possible speed to Fort Hall, there refit and returning bring lumber to rebuild the boat on the ground where it had been lost, and continue to Eagle Rock Bridge on the Snake River, previously going back far enough beyond Jackson’s Lake to take a renewal of the system of triangulation and notes, lost in the river when the boat capsized. At Eagle Rock Bridge it would be necessary to rebuild the boat again in a different form and much larger, to run the heavy rapids of the lower rivers to Astoria, at the mouth of the great Columbia. The hardships and greater dangers we had already passed. With food for one day more we could have made the passage of “Mad River Canyon” despite the loss of all our weapons, instruments, and tools. We had run all the rapids but two, and these were easier than many others safely passed above. All the party enthusiastically endorsed this plan.
Lieutenant Doane was indeed a persevering and meticulously thorough individual, so much so that he not only planned to return to run the river from the point where he had been obliged to leave off, but to retrace his route to a point above Jackson Lake in order to bring his notes to completion. It is difficult to follow his thinking when he indicates his intention of running the Columbia to Astoria, since his orders were to “make exploration of Snake River from Yellowstone Lake to Columbia River.” His statement that the “greater dangers” had already been passed seems incompatible with the Hell’s Canyon of the Snake below, a section of the river about which Doane must have had some knowledge. Here indeed were “risks to be taken” with “bad fortune” certain, quite probably occurring beyond a point of no return.