We did not see any more Indians or any sign of them on the trip.

On reaching headquarters we found Jim Beckwith awaiting our arrival.  He had been out with three other men whom he had hired to help him blaze a road across the mountains through his new pass.  He had finished his work on the road and returned to Col.  Elliott’s camp, knowing that if he could get one train to go his way it would be a great help toward getting the tide of immigration turned in that direction the following season.

Here Beckwith took charge of the train, Col.  Elliott recommending him very highly, and telling the emigrants that if they would only obey his orders he would pilot them through in safety.

Before starting, Jim asked me to come over and spend the winter with him, saying that he was going to build a cabin on the other side of the mountains, lay in a big supply of provisions, and as after that he was going to do nothing, he wanted me to help him.

I promised to go and winter with him if it was possible for me to do so, as at this time I did not know but what I might have to go to San Francisco to have my leg treated the coming winter.

From here the emigrants were to pay Jim to pilot them across the mountains to a little mining camp called Hangtown, which was about one hundred and twenty miles east of Sacramento.  They made the trip without any trouble.  I saw one of the emigrants the next spring and they spoke in very high terms of Jim Beckwith.

CHAPTER XII.

Col.  Elliott kills his first deer, and secures A fine pair of horns as A present for his father.—­Beckwith’s Tavern.—­Society.

Two weeks after the incidents related in the previous chapter, Capt.  Mills came in with another train of emigrants, not having seen an Indian on the trip, and from this time on there was no danger of such trains going from that region through Beckwith Pass, and as the road was now broken by the other train, these emigrants could cross the Sierra Nevadas without a guide.

About this time four men with pack animals came along who claimed to be from Salt Lake.  They reported that they had seen Indians one day traveling east of headquarters.  I took two men and started out and was gone about a week, but did not see an Indian, or a track or sign of one, and when we returned the Colonel concluded that he had been misled by the packers.

Col.  Elliott now ordered me to take fifty men, with two weeks’ provisions, and go as far as we could with that amount of rations, or until we should meet some emigrants.  We were gone about three weeks, but did not see either Indians or emigrants.  The fact is, that it was getting so late in the fall that the Indians had all gone south, and the emigrants were not moving on the desert at that season.