Poor Scott! We will not attempt to picture what his thoughts must have been after his cruel abandonment, nor harrow up the feelings of the reader, by a recital of what agonies he must have suffered before death put an end to his misery. The bones of a human being were found the spring following, on the opposite side of the river, which were supposed to be the remains of Scott. It was conjectured that in the energy of despair, he had found strength to carry him across the stream, and then had staggered about the prairie, till God in pity took him to Himself. Such are the sad chances to which the life of the Rocky Mountain adventurer is exposed. The Hiram Scott legend is mentioned by almost all early travelers who have left record of a journey up the North Platte Valley, but it would be fruitless to recite the many other varied, conflicting, and often quaint versions of how he died. There are differences of opinion as to the distance the poor fellow crawled, if any; whether the party traveled on foot or by horseback, muleback, bullboat, raft, or canoe; whether he was a victim of Indians, exposure, drowning, freezing, disease, or starvation; the location of his skeleton; the identity and number of his companions; whether their desertion was premeditated; whether it was justified; how their treachery was exposed; and, finally, whether the whole thing might not have been a grisly hoax! [Illustration: _Dome Rock from summit of North Bluff._] It was not a hoax. Though the legend has become hopelessly confused, research has proved that there was a Hiram Scott prominent in the Rocky Mountain fur trade from 1823 until 1827; and that he disappeared in 1828 and was never heard from thereafter, except through the faint echoes of the legend. His companions remain unidentified, but research strongly suggests that William Sublette was the leader of the 1828 caravan, who issued instructions to these men to remain with him; and it was William Sublette who led the springtime caravan of 1829 that discovered Scott’s skeleton, miles away from the spot where they reported he had died. Rufus B. Sage, who passed the bluff in 1841, was particularly impressed with the melancholy circumstances of Scott’s death, and was moved to impassioned poetry: No willing grave received the corpse of this poor lonely one;— His bones, alas, were left to bleach and moulder ’neath the sun! The night-wolf howl’d his requiem,— the rude winds danced his dirge; And e’er anon, in mournful chime sigh’s forth the mellow surge! The spring shall teach the rising grass to twine for him a tomb; And, o’er the spot where he doth lie, shall bid the wild flowers bloom. But, far from friends, and far from home, ah, dismal thought, to die! Ah, let me ’mid my friends expire, and with my fathers lie.