On the morning of the 23rd, the camp enjoyed some diversion in one of those practical jokes which characterize men traveling under similar circumstances. Some of the guards during the {268} night had fallen asleep, and when awakened, found their guns taken. Col. Markham had lost his hat. Fatigue from their duties and arduous labors made it difficult for men to remain awake when nature so persistently demanded sleep. As the company made its way along Loup Fork River, a fording place was sought, as the purpose of the pioneers was to follow up the Platte into which Loup Fork emptied. In the evening a Pawnee missionary station was reached--a station which had been abandoned. There were several good log houses and considerable land under cultivation. Here they found large lots of old and new iron, all apparently left to ruin. A quarter of a mile below the missionary village was a government station where Father Chase had been employed as a government farmer at a salary of $300 a year. When, however, Major Harvey learned that Father Chase had joined the Mormons, he was dismissed from service. The Sioux had burned the government station houses and blacksmith shop, but had spared the missionary village. Some of the hay and fodder was used by the pioneers, but none of it was carried away. Some of the plows were taken on an account which Father Chase held against the government for arrears in wages, but a strict report to the government was ordered and the things taken were regarded as the property of Father Chase. The crossing of Loup Fork was a mile-post on the journey; and the 23rd was a day of great anxiety to those who had been looking carefully for a suitable fording place from which they might drop down again on to the banks of the Platte. "In the morning twelve of us started on horseback to search out a ford across the dangerous and troublesome Loup Fork of the Platte River. We went down the river some distance when several men waded across. They found the water so deep, and so much quicksand that we came to the conclusion to drive up to the old Pawnee village. So we returned to the camp and harnessed up our horses. My gray horse named Titus was sick, yet I started out with him, and the camp drove up with some difficulty to the old Indian village, or a little below it. "The men commenced searching out a ford and found the {269} whole bed of the river one body of quicksand into which if a horse or wagon stopped it would begin to sink. We had two channels to cross and a sand-bar in the middle. The deepest water was from three to four feet and very rapid and about three hundred yards across. At some places the quicksand sank both man and beast instantly; and the more they struggled to get out, the more they would sink. Of course, we avoided such places as much as possible.