forced to wait until the last of the month before he could proceed.
In the interim, between the seventeenth and the twenty-third, Jesse Applegate, who had been with Kearney exploring for a new and better road through the Umpqua country, and ex-Governor Lane, who had just been elected delegate to congress, were in the recruiting service. Applegate had been unable to remain where Kearney had left him, and had drifted down on his crusade to the ferry on Rogue river when he met a company of miners returning from Josephine creek, and going to Yreka. To these he suggested that they might be of service in assisting the regulars and volunteers, already at that time assembling. Thirty men of this company proceeded to Willow springs, where they waited to be called on to join the regulars, or to be used to intercept the Indians, who it was thought would flee before the troops in this direction.
Lane's election being secured, he was returning to the gold fields of Shasta to look after his mining interests be fore he should set sail for Washington, and had arrived at the Umpqua canon on the twenty-first, where he first heard, from a party traveling north, of the battle of the seventeenth, and the death of Captain Stuart. With his party of about forty men he pushed on, and by the night of the twenty-second had reached the foot of Rogue-river mountains, where he was met by an express rider who informed him that Kearney would make a march that night with the intention of striking the Indians at break of day on the twenty-third.
Governed by this news he set out early on the morning of the twenty-third to join Kearney, but failed to discover him, though he rode hard all day; and the next day he fell back to Camp Stuart to wait for further intelligence. During the evening G. W. T Vault and Levi Scott, with a party from Kearney's command, came in for supplies, and with them Lane returned, riding until two o clock in the morning, his arrival being joyfully welcomed by regulars and volunteers to the army.
