From the time Ogden crossed the sky line of the Blue Mountains for the headwaters of the Snake, his difficulties began. Hunters to the fore for the game that was to feed the camp, the cavalcade began zigzagging up the steep mountain sides. Here, windfall of pines and giant firs, interlocked twice the height of a man, scattered the wild Cayuse ponies in the forest. There, the cut rocks, steep as a wall and sharp as knives, crowded the pack horses to the edge of bottomless precipices where one misstep meant instant death for rider and horse. And the mountain torrents tearing over the rocks swept horses away at fording places, so that once Ogden was compelled to follow the torrent down its cañon to calmer waters and there build a canoe. In this way his hunters crossed over by threes and fours, but how to get the fractious horses across? It was too swift for men to swim, and the bronchos refused to plunge in. Getting two or three of the wise old bell-mares, that are in every string of packers, at the end of a long rope, the canoemen shot across the whirl of midstream and got footing on the opposite shore. Then by dint of pulling and yelling the frantic horses were half frightened, half-tumbled into the river, and came out right side up a hundred yards farther down. At other places, the cut-rocks--a local term that explains itself--were so steep and sharp, Ogden ordered all hands dismounted and half the packs carried up on the men’s backs. It was high up the mountain, and the snow that falls almost continuously in winter above tree line made the rocks slippery as ice. For a few days, owing to the altitude and cold, no beaver had been taken, no game seen. The men were toiling on empty stomachs and short tempers. Night fell with all hands still sweating up the slippery rocks. A slave Indian lost his self control and struck Jo. Despard, one of the freemen, on the back. Throwing down his load, Despard beat the rascal soundly, but when the battle was over and all the bad temper expended, the slave Indian was dead. Poor Despard was mad with grief, for no death was ever passed unpunished by the Hudson’s Bay. Sewing the murdered man in rolls of buffalo skin, they buried him with service of prayers on the lonely heights of the Blue Mountains. “It is not in my power,” writes Ogden, “to send Despard to Vancouver. Until we return to the headwaters, I will let the affair remain quiet. The poor fellow is wretched over the murder.” [Illustration: Peter Skene Ogden, who led the Hudson’s Bay Company Mountain Brigades of three and four hundreds through Idaho, Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona.]