to go to war in a bad cause ; that that would ruin
all concerned, and establish nothing.
From the first I had tried to get Klamat to go with me to the scene of the massacre. He refused, and the Indians put up their hands in horror at the recklessness of the proposition.
Somehow, the picture of these two men struggling through the snow, pursued, wretched, lost, half- famished, kept constantly before me. If they were making way to Yreka, I could cut across the spurs of Mount Shasta and intercept them. My camp was not thirty miles from the road leading to that city from Pit River. I resolved to go at least that far and see what could be discovered, and what I could do to assist them.
With this view I got two young strong Indians, and set out early on the hard snow, carrying snow- shoes and a little bag of ground elk meat and grass seed.
Before night, I came upon and followed the road by the high blaze on the pines for some distance, and toward the valley, but found no trace of the fugitives. I camped under a broad, low-boughed fir tree that stood almost a perfect pyramid of snow, over a dry grassy plat down about the trunk and roots of the tree.
Early in the morning we went on a few paces to the summit overlooking the valley. The sun was rising in our faces. The air was so rich and pure we seemed to feed upon it. The valley se
