"The road is rough and the day is cold, And the landscape's sour and bare, And the milestones, once such charming friends, Half-hearted welcomes wear. There's trouble before and trouble behind, And a troublesome present to mend, And the road goes up and the road goes down, _But it all comes right in the end._"
We decided to remain in this place another day, thereby giving ourselves and the stock time to secure the rest which we so greatly needed. It was during our stay here that in loading my rifle for a duck the stock broke in two. In making this little book, I cannot pass the incident by without a few parting words in memory of my faithful old friend and protector.
In make and style the gun was known as a Kentucky rifle, with curled maple stock the entire length of the barrel, underneath which was a "patch box," set lock, and a brass plate. Since we began to pack I had carried it continually on my shoulders, exposed to weather and elements, hot air and desert heat, until the varied exposures had so weakened it that it broke while being loaded. I had carried it on my shoulders for such a long time that my shirt and vest became worn through, and the brass plate, heated by the scorching sun, did a remarkable piece of pyro-sculpture by burning into my bare shoulders a pair of shoulder straps that continued with me more than a year.
Carson valley, through which our route lay, seemed to be twenty or more miles wide when we first entered it, but it narrowed as it continued toward the Sierras until it became not more than a mile in width at the point where it pushed itself far into the mountain range. Upon the morning of our departure, we were early astir, and, turning to the right, left the valley that had been to us a Mecca of rest and replenishment, and entered the Dark Cañon, which is but a few rods wide, with perpendicular sides of rock so high that daylight seemed to be dropped down from overhead. Through this cañon flowed a rushing, roaring torrent of water, and as the bed of the cañon is very steep and made up mostly of round stones and boulders ranging in size from a marble to a load of hay, one can imagine something of the difficulties we had to encounter during the first four miles of our ascent.