and eaten, before it was discovered that the number of “deer” corresponded exactly with the number of colts that were missing.
Anyone who has made the rail trip between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles can appreciate the references made in the diary to the rough and stony trails, the dust, the days without water or food for the animals, to sage-brush and cactus, and can but wonder how it was possible to get flocks across the desert country at all.
On the earlier part of this trail, where there was still some noticeable vegetation, they lost many sheep through the eating of poison weeds. They lost others through the drinking of poor water or the entire lack of it for many weary miles.
At one place they had trouble with quicksands, at another the sheep balked at crossing the Rio Virgin and father and two helpers spent a whole afternoon packing on their backs one sheep at a time across a hundred-foot ford.
On the fifth of December, the Flint-Bixby train and the Hollister train started together on the hardest portion of the whole trip—about a hundred miles without water, except for the meager Bitter Water Springs. Most of the wagons and the cattle went on ahead, and, after three days, reached the springs, where they waited for the other men with the sheep. On the fourth day the first of the Hollister sheep came in; on the fifth, in the morning, came Ben and father, and in the afternoon Hub Hollister. Dr. Flint men
