The night after our arrival Hicklin sent back a man to where we were robbed. The man reported finding the wagon all right, with a sack of bacon and some horse feed; also the dead mules and some parts of the harness, all the light straps being taken. From all the signs we judged the robbers to be Mexicans. Hicklin offered to get the wagon for us, but we felt like getting home the quickest and best way, and thought best to take it muleback. So we told Hicklin to get the wagon and keep it. When we started on we had but little money and very poor clothes, as we were saving our good ones that we had bought in Santa Fe until we got home; but we had two first class mules, about as fine ones as are often seen, and we made up our minds to make as quick a trip home as possible. Our friends Dafney and companion were well mounted; they were going the same road as far as Denver. They got away with several hundred dollars, carried on their persons. Moore and I had expended our cash all but a few dollars. Our friends were liberal while we traveled together paying most of the expenses. The country was just being settled. There was but one house where Pueblo now is, besides the old shanties where the Mormon Company wintered in 1846-47. From Pueblo to Denver there were a few new farms just started. There were several cities by name but no one living in them. These were started to boom some mining camps, but the prospect failing the city also was abandoned. Some of these places are only remembered by a few of the old prospectors, never having been put upon record. We stopped one night with quite a pleasant, thrifty settler, on the Fountain Creek. During the evening he told us that he had lost quite a number of horses, some thirty or forty head, mostly good American mares and young stock; he had spent much time hunting them and finally given them up, supposing that they had been stolen, and taken entirely out of the country. The road from this place continued on up Fountain creek for some thirty miles then crossed over and down to Cherry creek; estimated eighty-five miles from this place to the next station, where we could find a stopping place. This looked like having to camp out. Something we were not prepared to do. Again, we still were timid not having recovered from our stampede. We felt much better when in a safe place. Our landlord told us of a more direct route, that he had recommended to different ones and tried to get opened through, that would shorten the distance about half from his place to Cherry City. There was no trail through, but the country looked open and favorable, and as our host had been kind to us and manifested quite a desire to have us go through, after receiving his directions and locating the points where the country showed best, we started out.