There was still another condition in which the spirit of the buffalo made the pioneer show deference to it. This happened when a great horde of buffalo was on a stampede bearing down upon an emigrant train that happened to be passing across its trail. The moment was almost enough to bring dismay to the pioneer. Either the teams of the train were urged into something of a stampede to get out of line of the horde’s advance, or a corral was formed and volleys fired into the impending mass to divide it so as to leave the corral a safe island between a destructive flood rolling by on either hand. Distressing accidents must almost of necessity befall them from their carrying their loaded guns commingled with household goods on their wagons. It is not strange that at least half of the journals should have records of fatalities thus caused. Under the law of mathematical probabilities, with the frequent occasion there was to remove gun or blanket thus intermixed, while the members of the family were standing around the wagon, accidents must occur. The small boy of the family during this four or five months’ trip had very many occasions to clamber out of and into the wagon while it was in motion. He, too, would come to grief with a broken leg. Any ordinary fracture, however, even though there were no surgeon at hand, would be attended to, so that no deformity resulted. If the case was one seeming to require an amputation “a butcher knife and an old dull hand saw” were improvised as surgical instruments. But I have not found that a patient survived such an operation and got well. The other great epochal events of family life, marriages and births, were not infrequent on the trail, and seemed to cause little distraction. The experiences of the pioneers in crossing the rivers in the line of the trail were very diverse. It is reported of one of the migrations that they were not compelled to ferry until they reached the Des Chutes in Oregon. But the migration of 1844 had a serious time even with the Black Vermillion and Big Blue, tributaries of the Kansas. Where logs were available they were hollowed out and catamaran rafts made so as to fit the wheels of a wagon. Sometimes the best wagon boxes would be selected and caulked and used as flatboats. Where buffalo skins were plentiful they would be stretched around the wagon box to make it water-tight. In later stages of the journey, after their teams were more reliable, it was a common practice to raise the wagon beds several inches above the bolsters, if the depth of the stream required it, couple several teams into a train with the most reliable in front on a lead-rope, and drivers along the down-stream side of the other teams. They would then ford as trains. After the rush in 1849 ferries were established at the more important crossings, whose owners reaped rich harvests. [Illustration: 15.—The deeply worn Trail along the Sweetwater. ]