It was now the seventh day of March, 1850, twenty-two days since they left their wagons, and four months since they entered Death Valley, and about a year since they left Wisconsin. It had been for them a year of wandering, struggle and terrible hardship. They took a long rest, the cattle eating their fill, and then slowly traveled to the home of the settler where Manley and Rodgers had obtained their supplies. The woman recognized them, and when the men came home they were handsomely treated. None of our travelers had a cent of money. Mr. Arcane sold his two steers, all the property he had in the world, to the Mexicans, and with the money obtained started for San Pedro, the post of Los Angeles; there he hoped to obtain a passage on a sailing vessel to San Francisco. The Bennetts, Manley and Rodgers leisurely went on to Los Angeles, some thirty miles away, and from there found their way to the mines. [Illustration: Once more the train faced the desert. _Page 115._] A FRONTIER DUEL EMERSON HOUGH 1848 From “The Covered Wagon.” Reprinted by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton and Company, New York.[12] Once more the train, now permanently divided into two, faced the desert, all the men and many women now afoot, the kine low-headed, stepping gingerly in their new rawhide shoes. Gray, grim work, toiling over the dust and sand. But at the head wagon, taking over an empire foot by foot, flew the great flag. Half fanatics? That may be. Fanatics, so called, also had prayed and sung and taught their children, all the way across to the Great Salt Lake. They, too, carried books. And within one hour after their halt near the Salt Lake they began to plow, began to build, began to work, began to grow, and made a country. The men at the trading post saw the Missouri wagons pull out ahead. Two hours later the Wingate train followed, as the lot had determined. Woodhull remained with his friends in the Wingate group, regarded now with an increasing indifference, but biding his time. Bridger held back his old friend Jackson even after the last train pulled out. It was midafternoon when the start was made. “Don’t go just yet, Bill,” said he. “Ride on an’ overtake ’em. Nothin’ but rattlers an’ jack-rabbits now fer a while. The Shoshones won’t hurt ’em none. I’m powerful lonesome, somehow. Let’s you an’ me have one more drink.” “That sounds reas’nable,” said Jackson. “Shore that sounds reas’nable to me.” They drank of a keg which the master of the post had hidden in his lodge, back of his blankets; drank again of high wines diluted but uncolored--the “likker” of the fur trade. They drank from tin cups, until Bridger began to chant, a deepening sense of his old melancholy on him. “Good-by!” he said again and again, waving his hand in general vagueness to the mountains.