2
His positive manner, his honest face gave them confidence.
"He has led us right so far," they said. "He has been over the road. He lives here. These Injuns know him. They have come to meet him. We will follow Dr. Whitman."
As the groups closed round their leader again, Captain Grant expostulated.
"You Americans are running an awful risk. There 's not a particle of pasturage on the Snake; your cattle will all die. All I have seen convinces me 'tis a beggarly country. The buffalo starves there, even the wolves are so thin you can count their ribs. As for wagons, the pack-trails are of sharp, cut rock, and narrow and steep. You will be stranded in some lonely gorge, if you persist in this attempt to take them through the tangled woods and rocky cliffs and canyons of the Blue Mountains. But I wash my hands of your destruction."
It was not the last effort of the Hudson's Bay Company to divert immigration away from Oregon.
Dr. Whitman gave the whole of the provisions brought by the Cayuses to the immigrants, reserving only scraps and bones for himself, and with a body-guard of axemen and his trusty Indians, set on ahead. He tacked up notices at every difficult place, and set up guidepoles in the dusty desert. Night by night tents were set at oases of buffalo-grass, and the Indian guides by day became night guards and herders. The Snake was forded at Salmon Falls, then over the future battleground of the Chief-Joseph-Nez-Perce-War, through the deep sand and tough sage, thirteen miles a day, they came to the Burnt River canyon. On every side lay tangled heaps of burnt and fallen trees, but with t
