I must abruptly leap to the overland stage again.

From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man.  For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last obstinate vidette of vegetation, the wild-sage brush.  Its springs are far between, and, without a single exception, mere receptacles of a salt, potash, and sulphur hell-broth, which no man would drink, save in extremis.  A few days of this beverage within, and of wind-drifted alkali invading every pore of the body without, often serve to cover the miserable passenger with an erysipelatous eruption which presently becomes confluent and irritates him to madness.  Meanwhile he jolts through alkali-ruts, unable to sleep for six days and nights together, until frenzy sets in, or actual delirium comes to his relief.  I look back on that desert as the most frightful nightmare of my existence.

As if Nature had not done her worst, we were doomed, on the second day out from Salt Lake, to hear, at one station, where we stopped, horrid rumors of Goshoots on the war-path, and, ere the day reached its noon, to find their proofs irrefragable.  Every now and then we saw in the potash-dust moccasin-tracks, with the toes turned in, and presently my field-glass revealed a hideous devil skulking in the mile-off ledges, who was none other than a Goshoot spy.  How far off were the scalpers and burners?

The first afternoon-stage that day was a long and terrible one.  The poor horses could hardly drag our crazy wagon, up to its hubs in potash; and yet we knew our only safety, in case of attack, was a running fight.  We must fire from our windows as the horses flew.

About four o’clock we entered a terrible defile, which seemed planned by Nature for treachery and ambush.  The great, black, barren rocks of porphyry and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over, loop-holed with chinks to fire through.  There were ten rifles in our party.  We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick perdition.  Our six-shooters lay across our laps, our bowie-knives were at our sides, our cartouch-boxes, crammed with ready vengeance, swung open on our breast-straps.  We sat with tight-shut teeth,—­only muttering now and then to each other, in a glum undertone, “Don’t get nervous,—­don’t throw a single shot away,—­take aim,—­remember it’s for home!” Something of that sort, or a silent squeeze of the hand, was all that passed, as we sat with one eye glued to the ledges and our guns unswerving.  None of us, I think, were cowards; but the agony of sitting there, tugging along two miles an hour, expecting to hear a volley of yells and musketry ring over the next ledge, drinking the cup of thought to its miscroscopic dregs,—­that was worse than fear!