With cheerful assurance he replied that he was not afraid to die, but our time had not come. He knew he would find and kill, and we would escape all right. Then desisting from his useless effort to get me up, François, leaving his heavy snow-shoes behind, directed himself with weak and uneven steps down the little stream in the deep gorge of which our camp was made; and never expecting to see him again, my mind relapsed into an idle, vacuous condition, in which external circumstances were forgotten or disregarded. But scarcely a few minutes had elapsed, and as it afterwards appeared he had hardly traversed a couple of hundred yards when I heard his gun, which I knew never cracked in vain. I had thought myself unable to rise, but at that joyful sound promptly discovered my mistake. I found François in the spot from which he had fired, leaning against a tree in such deep excitement that he could speak with difficulty. On that rugged side hill apparently destitute of life, in that most improbable of all places, within sound and smell of our camp, he had seen, not a squirrel or a rabbit, but a deer. Attempting to climb for a better shot, the deer jumped, and with terrible misgivings he had fired at it running. He had heard it running after his shot but was sure he had made a killing hit. Scrambling with difficulty up the hill, we found a large clot of blood and a morsel of “lights” [_lungs_], which we divided and ate on the spot. After taking up the trail we soon found the animal.... After passing safely through that period of starvation, we were glad enough to get back to the old camp and make the best of it during the remainder of the season, which furnished little more of incident to vary the monotony of our solitary occupation. The Emigrants In the year that Parkman visited Wyoming, 1846, the Oregon Trail was a well-traveled route. Thousands of emigrants in covered wagons were moving westward from Independence or St. Joseph, Missouri, along the Platte River towards Wyoming and the South Pass over the Rockies. In the next selection Parkman describes an emigrant train he encountered near the point where the trail struck the Platte River in central Nebraska. Francis Parkman Encounters a Wagon Train About dark a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and splashing through the pool, rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in a huge cloak, and his broad felt hat was weeping about his ears with the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout, square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as leader of an emigrant party, encamped a mile in advance of us. About twenty wagons, he said, were with him; the rest of his party were on the other side of the Big Blue, waiting for a woman who was in the pains of childbirth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves.