Hunger pressing upon them, they were seized with anxiety to reach their destination and made many sallies into the forest, only to retrace their steps and try again. Reaching a place where a dim trail skirted the foot of a mountain, Stockman proposed that LaDow should follow the trail while he would go over the mountain and from the high ground survey the country beyond and trace out their route. They were unable to get together again, and Stockman, after searching in vain for his partner, undertook, after several days of wandering, to find his way out. In his famished condition he became so weak that he could make but very slow progress. While moving over a mountain side from which he expected to right his bearings, a white man down on the Columbia at the mouth of the Okanogan, spied him with a glass, and suspecting from his actions that something was wrong, sent an Indian up to bring him in. Under the care of this man he was enabled in a few days to regain his usual vigor, and departed again for the mines. On reaching Rock Creek, he was surprised to find Dr. LaDow, whom he had supposed to be dead, already there, and the doctor was no less surprised at the appearance of Stockman.
In the fall of 1860 Mr. Stockman again returned to Walla Walla, and found the conditions of the town being rapidly transformed. Many new buildings had been erected and the population had increased amazingly. A reckless element of citizenship dominated. Gamblers and desperate characters from the various mining camps came to winter there. A large dance house was running full blast. A "restricted district," inhabited by a mottled nationality, flourished, and the town was indeed run upon a wide-open basis.
During this sojourn in Walla Walla, he came to know many of the characters who afterward, in Montana and other parts of the Northwest, became notorious. Among these gentry were "Cherokee" Bob, an avowed desperado; Boone Helm, otherwise known as "Old Tex"; "Red" Yager, "California" Jim, and many others whose careers were finally ended by
