These were the pride of the train.

The trains were most of them organized, and all along the river bottom one was hardly ever out of sight of some of the wagons, all going west.

Buffalo and antelope were plenty and in great droves, followed always by wolves great and small, who were on the lookout for crippled or dead animals with which to fill their hungry stomachs.

Buffalo meat was plenty and much enjoyed while passing this section of the road and this opportunity of replenishing, enabled the stock to last them over more desolate regions where game was scarce.
After Bennett had told his stories, and I had related more of our own close escapes I began to ask him why he went this way which seemed to be very circuitous and much longer than the way they had first intended to go.

He said that it was too late in the season to go the straight-road safely, for there was yet 700 miles of bad country to cross and do the best they could it would be at the commencement of the rainy season before the Sierra Nevada mountains could be reached and in those mountains there was often a snow fall of 20 feet or more, and anyone caught in it would surely perish.