At three o'clock in the morning, while the stars were still bright in the eastern sky, the little party of troopers, Dean at the irhead, had ridden away from the twinkling lights of camp, and long before sunrise had crossed the first divide to the north, and alternating trot, lope and walk had put miles between them and Fort Emory before the drums of the infantry beat the call for guard mounting. At ten o'clock the party halted under some spreading willows, deep in a cleft of the bold, high hills that rolled away toward the Sweetwater valley. Horses were unsaddled and picketed out to graze. A little cook fire was started close to the spring that fed the tiny brook, trickling away down the narrow ravine, and in a few moments the aroma of coffee and of appetizing slices of bacon greeted the welcoming nostrils of the hungry men. The sun that had risen clear and dazzling was now obscured by heavy masses of clouds, and time and again Dean cast anxious eyes aloft, for a storm seemed sweeping eastward from the distant Wahsatch range, and long before the little command had dived downward from the heights into the depths of this wild, romantic and contracted valley, all the rolling upland toward Green River, far to the west, lay under the pall of heavy and forbidding banks of hurrying vapor. Coffee and breakfast finished, Dean climbed the steep bluff overhanging the spring, a faithful sergeant following, and what he saw was sufficient to determine immediate action. "Saddle up. We'll push ahead at once." For an instant the veteran trooper looked dissent, but discipline prevailed. "The lieutenant knows that Carey's not in yet," he ventured to say, as he started back down the narrow game trail which they had climbed. "Yes; but yonder he comes and so does the storm. We can't be caught in this canon in case of a hard rain. Let Carey have some coffee and a bite, if he feels well enough. Then we'll push on."