In the way of sleeping there was a general spread-out up stairs. By assuming a confidential tone with the proprietor I contrived to get a mattress and a pair of blankets. The Jew slept alongside on his pack, with a covering of loose coats. Nature's balmy restorer quickly put an end to all the troubles of the day, notwithstanding the incessant noise kept up throughout the night.
In the morning I awoke much refreshed. It was about seven o'clock, and time to start. I turned to arouse my friend Israel, but, to my surprise, found that he had already taken his departure. A horrible suspicion seized me. Had he also taken--Yes, of course; my boots were gone too! And the security? The watch? I looked under my pillow. Miserable wretch! he had also taken the watch. I might have known it! I was a fool for trusting him. When I picked up the old pair of boots bequeathed to me as a token of remembrance by this depraved man--when I held them up to the light and examined them critically--when I reflected upon the journey before me, it was enough to bring tears to the sternest human eye.
No matter; I would catch the dastardly wretch on the trail. If ever I laid hands upon him again, so help me--But what is the use of swearing. No man ever caught another in this world with such a pair of boots on his feet--and here I examined them again--never! One might as well attempt to walk in a pair of condemned fire-buckets.
There was no help for it but to await some chance of getting over on horseback. Fortunately, a saddle-train which had passed down to Genoa during the previous day returned a little after daylight. For the sum of $30, cash in advance, I secured an unoccupied horse--the poorest animal, perhaps, ever ridden by mortal man. There is no good reason that I am aware of why people engaged in the horse-business should always select for my use the refuse of their stock; but such has invariably been their practice. I have never yet been favored with a horse that was not lame, halt, or blind, or otherwise physically afflicted.
I had not ridden more than a mile from Woodford's before I discovered that the miserable hack upon which I was mounted traveled diagonally, like a lugger beating against a head wind. His fore feet were well enough--they traveled on the trail; but his hind feet were continually undertaking to luff up a little to windward. When it is borne in mind that the trail was over a bank of snow from eight to ten feet deep, and not more than a foot wide, the inconvenience of that mode of locomotion will at once be perceived. Every few hundred yards the hind feet got off the trail, and went down with a sudden lurch that kept me in constant apprehension of being buried alive in the snow. Another serious difficulty was, that my horse, owing perhaps to the defect in his hind legs, had no capacity for short turns, so that whenever the trail suddenly diverged from its direct course, he invariably brought up against a rock, stump, or bank of snow.