Our little mules did not stop till they reached the middle of the river, and stuck their heads, ears and all, under the water. Luke's diminutive, snuff-colored beast was so overcome by the sight and feel of water that she lay down in it, with him astride, giving herself and her master the first real bath since the time that she did the same thing, in the Platte River, some three months previously. To us, the long-time sun-dried, thirsty emigrants; covered from head to foot with dust from the Black Hills, overlaid with alkali powder from the Humboldt, veneered with ashes of the desert; all ingrained by weeks of dermatic absorption, rubbed in by the wear of travel, polished by the friction of the wind--to us said the Truckee, flowing a hundred feet wide, transparent, deep, cool; rattling and singing and splashing over the rocks; and the sparkle of its crystal purity, the music of its flow and the joy of its song, repeated, "Come and take a drink." We filled our canteens and went back to meet the others. We found them in a line three miles long; and it was well into the afternoon when the last wagon reached the river. The train crossed to the farther shore, into the grateful shade of the pine forest and there made camp. What an enchanting spectacle was that scene of wooded hills, with its varying lights and shades, all about us! From as far as we could see, up the heights and down to the river bank, where their roots were washed in the cool water, the great trees grew. We were still within the confines of Nevada, but two men were there with a wagon-load of fresh garden stuff, brought over from the foothills of California to sell to the emigrants: potatoes, at fifty cents a pound, pickles, eight dollars a keg, and so on. We bought, and feasted. The camp that night by the Truckee River was the happiest of all. We had reached a place where green things grew in limitless profusion, where water flowed pure and free; and we were out of the desert and beyond the reach of the savage Redman. CHAPTER XIII. INTO THE SETTLEMENTS. HALT. Having begun the ascent of the lofty and precipitous east slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one night about the first of September the camp-site selected was at a spot said to be directly on the boundary line between Nevada and California.