My precious boy:
I trust you will excuse me for using this paper but I am up stairs, and no one [is] here to bring me any other. They tell me I need not wonder that we do not hear from you and I shall try not to be disappointed if we do not hear for a while. Nevertheless my dear boy, the uncertainty I feel in regard to your safety will make a letter very welcome indeed. Perhaps I would have more courage if I were strong. For five days I have been very uncomfortable. I am sitting up some today for the first [time] and hope soon to be well as usual.
We were exceedingly glad to hear from you from Grand Lake. I cannot, however, say that the account of your experience by stone slide [10] and river have lessened my anxiety. I am writing now, Thursday, in bed. I have been quite poorly again. We shall not look now for a letter from you but hope to see you face to face before many days. May God bless and keep you! Give our love to Mr. F. All join me in tenderest love to you.
At Walden we laid in a fresh supply of flour and bacon, and canned goods, especially canned fruit, to last us while we stayed with the wagon. We then pushed on to the west, striking camp on the West Fork of the North Platte, where we stayed two nights. Here we tried hard a third time for trout without success, but we turned off the water from an irrigating ditch and captured a large number of "squaw fish" (suckers).
From Camp Chew we made our way well up into the foothills of the Range of the Rabbit's Ear, and then packed our animals, minimum Jack and our pony, and pushed up the range over the worst trail we had yet encountered, through an absolute wilderness of fallen timber. Rain with fog set in as we approached timber line, and we were forced to go into camp early to wait for morning. Morning came with fog and rain, and we spent the entire day hunting trail, only to go into camp again towards evening. The next day, however, came clear and we made our way over the range, through Frying Pan Meadow, and reached camp down on Elk river towards evening without difficulty. We found good fishing here at last and great numbers of deer but no elk. After three rainy days in Elk River Camp, one of which was spent jerking venison of D.'s killing, we packed up and made the return trip over the range in one day of hard travel, going into camp by the shore of a shallow pond well out on the barren level of North Park. The next morning we parted company with Gould, and in two days we made sixty stage road miles across North Park and over the northern portion of the Medicine Bow Mountains to Woods post office at the edge of the Laramie plains, twenty-five miles from Laramie.
Looking North Across Specimen Mountain Stone Slide.
We had intended walking through to Laramie, but ninety miles and two mountain ranges in three days, not to mention the writer's terribly blistered feet, had temporarily taken some of the ambition out of us, and after some fine diplomacy D. and the writer each found that the other was willing to descend to stage coach riding. We accordingly sold our fine little pony for five dollars, packed our outfit in a compact bundle which we wrapped in our small tent (which had been used as a smoke-house for curing venison at Elk River Camp), and took the stage for Laramie.