About this time the second company of the Y. X. express, under Jet Stoddard, passed down. They had but little to spare us, but we were now out of danger. We got a little flour, salt and bacon. The word was that the next company would bring us flour. The most of us had got so we cared but little for bread if we could have plenty of meat. Our cattle were our pets now. We hauled up a lot of wood. The grass being quite good off toward the east, the cattle were taken out every day. At night someone went and brought them in and corraled them. Our horses were hoppled in sight of camp, where they ran day and night. One evening the boys who went for the oxen came in rather late without them, saying that they could not hear the bell. We supposed they had laid down for the night; still, we were anxious, as our meat was about out and we expected to soon butcher the fattest of them. Early next morning Brother Hampton and I saddled up and started out before breakfast to hunt the cattle, not expecting to be gone more than an hour. We soon struck their trail going east, most of the time showing they were on the move, not often feeding. At sundown we were about thirty miles from camp, still trailing and tolerably hungry; but that trail _could not be left_. We followed on, the tracks running almost parallel with the road but gradually nearing it. It now became too dark to see the trail. We were continually expecting to hear the bell, but no bell sounded. We continued in the same direction until we reached the main road. After following it a short distance Brother Hampton dismounted and felt for tracks. He soon decided that the cattle were now on the road as he could feel the tracks where the ground had been lately disturbed, the road being dry and soft in places. Thus we continued to travel for some four or five miles feeling for tracks. At length we came to a gulch crossing the road, several feet deep and full of snow. We could see where the cattle had crossed as the moon was now up and we could trail quite well; but on attempting to cross the drift, we sank down. At this season of the year these snow-drifts freeze in the night time, thawing out in the afternoon and gradually melting away so that from noon until after midnight it is impossible for a horse to cross them; men often crossing on hands and knees, or if the snow is quite soft lying down and rolling across. This we could have done but our horses did not feel as anxious as we did to go on; so when we proposed to them to roll across the drift, they pretended not to understand us.