III.

THE FIRST PLUNGE OF THE WOMAN TENDERFOOT.


It was about midnight in the end of August when Nimrod and I tumbled off
the train at Market Lake, Idaho. Next morning, after a comfortable
night's rest at the "hotel," our rubber beds, sleeping bags, saddles,
guns, clothing, and ourselves were packed into a covered wagon, drawn by
four horses, and we started for Jackson's Hole in charge of a driver who
knew the road perfectly. At least, that was what he said, so of course he
must have known it. But his memory failed him sadly the first day out,
which reduced him to the necessity of inquiring of the neighbours. As
these were unsociably placed from thirty to fifty miles apart, there were
many times when the little blind god of chance ruled our course.

We put up for the night at Rexburgh, after forty long miles of alkali
dust. The Mormon religion has sent a thin arm up into that country, and
the keeper of the log building he called a hotel was of that faith. The
history of our brief stay there belongs properly to the old torture days
of the Inquisition, for the Mormon's possessions of living creatures
were many, and his wives and children were the least of them.

Another day of dust and long hard miles over gradually rising hills, with
the huge mass of the Tetons looming ever nearer, and the next day we
climbed the Teton Pass.

There is nothing extraordinary about climbing the Teton Pass--to tell