At the same time, Pike and Robinson started, determined not to return at all unless they could bring back meat.

Pike wrote that they had resolved to stay out and die by themselves, rather than to go back to camp "and behold the misery of our poor lads." All day they tramped wearily through the heavy snow.
Towards evening they came on a buffalo, and wounded it; but faint and weak from hunger, they shot badly, and the buffalo escaped; a disappointment literally as bitter as death.

That night they sat up among some rocks, all night long, unable to sleep because of the intense cold, shivering in their thin rags; they had not eaten for three days.
But they were men of indomitable spirit, and next day trudging painfully on, they at last succeeded, after another heart-breaking failure, in killing a buffalo.

At midnight they staggered into camp with the meat, and all the party broke their four days' fast.

Two men lost their feet through frost-bite, and had to be left in this camp, with all the food.
Only the fact that a small band of buffalo was wintering in the valley had saved the whole expedition from death by starvation.
Pike Reaches the Rio Grande.
After leaving this valley Pike and the remaining men of the expedition finally reached the Rio Grande, where the weather was milder and deer abounded.