The Saints in Far West had been so plundered by their enemies, that they had but little surplus to eat or wear.
I had on a very thin pair of pants. My wife took a sheet from the bed, and, with the assistance of some of the neighbors, hastily made me a pair of drawers. These I afterwards gave to my brother Phineas, as he seemed to suffer more with the cold than I did. Our bedding was as scanty as our clothing.
We left Far West that night, and took no food with us. We arrived about sunrise in the morning, at Adam-Ondi-Ahman, twenty-two miles from Far West. We needed some breakfast, and stopped in a clump of hazel brush, and sent one of the party to the house of Brother Gardiner Snow, to tell him our situation. He said he had not much to eat, but would do the best he could. He brought us a very good supply of stewed Missouri pumpkin and milk. Our keen appetites made this seem a very good breakfast.
There we obtained fifty pounds of chopped corn. With this meagre supply of food we continued on our journey. From the first, it was evident that we must be very saving of our food supply. We rationed on eight ounces of this meal, per man, each day. It was mixed with water, without any salt, baked in a cake before the fire, and carefully divided out.
The second day, as night was approaching, we struck the edge of a prairie, which was about four miles across. As our horses were weary, we stopped a short time to rest, when one Irvine Hodge overtook us. He informed us that General Clark, having learned of our departure, had sent a troop of sixty cavalrymen in pursuit; that they were only a few miles behind, and on our trail. Their orders were to bring us dead or alive. We had thought of camping on the spot, but concluded to cross the prairie at once. This we accomplished, and camped in the timber. In the night, snow commenced falling. It appeared to come down in sheets instead of flakes. In the morning it was about a foot and a half deep. Some of the company, at first, regretted this, but others saw and felt that the hand of the Lord was in it. My brother, Phineas, at once declared that it was the means of our deliverance. We started on and the wind began to blow. Our tracks were completely covered soon after they were made.
We afterwards learned that our pursuers camped on the opposite side of the prairie from us, where we had rested. In the morning they tried to find our trail, but finding it impossible to do so, gave up pursuit.
Thus we were saved from our enemies by a friendly interposition of the elements in our behalf.
We were fifteen days on our journey from Far West to the Des Moines River. The last three days we were without food. After the snow fell, our horses had to subsist on what they could find above it.
The brush had soon made my thin pants unavailable for covering my legs in the neighborhood of the knees. The fragments were tied up with small hickory withes. When we arrived near a house, on the Des Moines, I remained in the woods while one of my companions went to the house and obtained a pair of pants, that I might be presentable.
On this trip it seemed as though both men and animals had a wonderful power of enduring cold, hunger and fatigue. I am constrained, after more than forty years have passed away, to acknowledge a special providence in our deliverance.