216   FROM   THE  WEST  TO   THE  WEST
and half a mile to the left of the main travelled road. We were all packed, ready to start, when Shorty and Limpy came into camp, bringing about half of the cattle, and reported all the others missing. So we are compelled to await the morning with such forebodings as no pen can portray; mine at least will not make the attempt.
"August 13. The missing cattle were found and brought in at an early hour this morning; and after a hurried breakfast we started for the promised feeding-grounds, where we found good grass and water, but no fuel. We halted for a couple of hours, and then came on seven miles farther, when we once more reached Snake River.
" The dust throughout the day has been almost unbearable. It is as fine as the finest flour, and, being impregnated with alkali, is very irritating to nostrils, throats, and lungs.
" August 14. This has been the hardest day yet upon the cattle, — poor starved and wretched creatures! And I might add, poor alkalied and used-up people!
" Not a person in our company is well. We are a fretful, impatient, and anxious lot, and no wonder. And yet our journeyings even now have their amusing side. Susannah sings like a nightingale, and ' Geo'die Wah,' as her lisping coon calls himself, leads the chorus. Scotty quotes poetry by the yard, and the Little Doctor seeks diversion in every incident. Mrs. Benson continues amiable and obliging, showing a side to her nature wholly unlike the waspish way she had when we first knew her. The men often clear away the sagebrush from a level plat of ground after their chores are finished for the night, and hold dancing carnivals among themselves (daddie draws the line at dancing, so we don't participate). Sawed-off makes tolerable music on a fairly good violin. The humble jotter of these chronicles finds her chief diversion in the fact that we are every day drawing nearer to the Oregon City Post-office."