Allen Porter lived near the first crossing, on the farther side, and as this was the last settler I would see and the last place I could get feed for my pony, other than grass or browse, I put up for the night under his roof. He said I was going on a "Tom fool's errand," for my folks could take care of themselves, and tried to dissuade me from proceeding on my journey. But I would not be turned back and the following morning cut loose from the settlements and, figuratively speaking, plunged into the deep forest of the mountains.
The road (if it could be properly called a road) lay in the narrow valley of White River, or on the mountains adjacent, in some places (as at Mud Mountain) reaching an altitude of more than a thousand feet above the river bed. Some places the forest was so dense that one could scarcely see to read at midday, while in other places large burns gave an opening for daylight.
During the forenoon of this first day, while in one of those deepest of deep forests, where, if the sky was clear, and one could catch a spot you could see out overhead, one might see the stars as from a deep well, my pony stopped short, raised his head with his ears pricked up, indicating something unusual was at hand. Just then I caught an indistinct sight of a movement ahead, and thought I heard voices, while the pony made an effort to turn and flee in the opposite direction. Soon there appeared three women and eight children on foot, coming down the road in blissful ignorance of the presence of any one but themselves in the forest.
"Why, stranger! Where on earth did you come from? Where are you going to, and what are you here for?" was asked by the foremost woman of the party, in such quick succession as to utterly preclude any answer, as she discovered me standing on the roadway holding my uneasy pony. Mutual explanations soon followed. I soon learned their teams had become exhausted, and that all the wagons but one had been left, and this one was on the road a few miles behind them; that they were entirely out of provisions and had had nothing to eat for twenty hours, except what natural food they had gathered, which was not much. They eagerly inquired the distance to food, which I thought they might possibly reach that night, but in any event the next morning early. Meanwhile I had opened my sack of hard bread and gave each a cracker, in the eating of which the sound resembled pigs cracking dry, hard corn.