The third morning it stopped raining about daylight, and the
sun came out clear and warm. We made scaffolds and spread our meat all
out, hung up our blankets and clothing on lines, and by keeping up fires
and with the help of the sun, we managed to get everything dry by night.
The next morning we packed up and started on until we came to a little
valley, where we found some grass for our horses. We stayed there that
night. The next day we got to Steep Hollow Creek, one of the branches of
Bear River. This stream was not more than a hundred feet wide, but it
was about twenty feet deep, and the current was very swift. We felled a
large pine tree across it, but the center swayed down so that the water
ran over it about a foot deep. We tied ropes together and stretched them
across to make a kind of hand railing, and succeeded in carrying over
all our things. We undertook to make our horses swim the creek, and
finally forced two of them into the stream, but as soon as they struck
the current they were carried down faster than we could run. One of them
at last reached the bank and got ashore, but the other went down under
the tree we had cut, and the first we saw of him he came up about twenty
yards below, heels upward. He finally struck a drift about a hundred
yards below, and we succeeded in getting him out almost drowned.
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