A Woman Tenderfoot | Page 8

to sleep on the south side of a sage brush, and
honestly say in the morning, "It is wonderful how well I am feeling."
But to begin:--

III.
THE FIRST PLUNGE OF THE WOMAN TENDERFOOT.
It was about midnight in the end of August when Nimrod and I tumbled
off the train at Market Lake, Idaho. Next morning, after a comfortable
night's rest at the "hotel," our rubber beds, sleeping bags, saddles, guns,
clothing, and ourselves were packed into a covered wagon, drawn by
four horses, and we started for Jackson's Hole in charge of a driver who
knew the road perfectly. At least, that was what he said, so of course he
must have known it. But his memory failed him sadly the first day out,
which reduced him to the necessity of inquiring of the neighbours. As
these were unsociably placed from thirty to fifty miles apart, there were
many times when the little blind god of chance ruled our course.
We put up for the night at Rexburgh, after forty long miles of alkali
dust. The Mormon religion has sent a thin arm up into that country, and
the keeper of the log building he called a hotel was of that faith. The
history of our brief stay there belongs properly to the old torture days
of the Inquisition, for the Mormon's possessions of living creatures
were many, and his wives and children were the least of them.
Another day of dust and long hard miles over gradually rising hills,
with the huge mass of the Tetons looming ever nearer, and the next day
we climbed the Teton Pass.
There is nothing extraordinary about climbing the Teton Pass--to tell
about. We just went up, and then we went down. It took six horses half
a day to draw us up the last mile--some twenty thousand seconds of
conviction on my part (unexpressed, of course; see side talk) that the
next second would find us dashed to everlasting splinters. And it took
ten minutes to get us down!
Of the two, I preferred going up. If you have ever climbed a greased
pole during Fourth of July festivities in your grandmother's village, you
will understand.
When we got to the bottom there was something different. Our driver
informed us that in two hours we should be eating dinner at the ranch
house in Jackson's Hole, where we expected to stop for a while to
recuperate from the past year's hard grind and the past two weeks of
travel. This was good news, as it was then five o'clock and our midday
meal had been light--despite the abundance of coffee, soggy potatoes,

salt pork, wafer slices of meat swimming in grease, and evaporated
apricots wherein some nice red ants were banqueting.
"We'll just cross the Snake River, and then it'll be plain sailing," he said.
Perhaps it was so. I was inexperienced in the West. This was what
followed:--Closing the door on the memory of my recent perilous
passage, I prepared to be calm inwardly, as I like to think I was
outwardly. The Snake River is so named because for every mile it goes
ahead it retreats half way alongside to see how well it has been done. I
mention this as a pleasing instance of a name that really describes the
thing named. But this is after knowledge.
About half past five, we came to a rolling tumbling yellow stream
where the road stopped abruptly with a horrid drop into water that
covered the hubs of the wheels. The current was strong, and the horses
had to struggle hard to gain the opposite bank. I began to thank my
patron saint that the Snake River was crossed.
Crossed? Oh, no! A narrow strip of pebbly road, and the high willows
suddenly parted to disclose another stream like the last, but a little
deeper, a little wider, a little worse. We crossed it. I made no
comments.
At the third stream the horses rebelled. There are many things four
horses can do on the edge of a wicked looking river to make it
uncomfortable, but at last they had to go in, plunging madly, and
dragging the wagon into the stream nearly broadside, which made at
least one in the party consider the frailty of human contrivances when
matched against a raging flood.
Soon there was another stream. I shall not describe it. When we
eventually got through it, the driver stopped his horses to rest, wiped
his brow, went around the wagon and pulled a few ropes tighter, cut a
willow stick and mended his broken whip, gave a hitch to his trousers,
and remarked as he started the horses:
"Now, when we get through the Snake River on here a piece, we'll be
all right."
"I thought we