After a few days the boat was launched, but was upset in the canyon, and all provisions and ammunition were lost. The three men reached the shore, however, and after some difficulty reached Laramie's fork. While searching for food, Roi and Bissonette came upon the fresh trail of LeClerc and party, and abandoned Scott in the wilderness. On reaching the big bluff, they found that the others had not waited as agreed, so they pushed onward. When overtaking the party, they improvised the story that Scott had died from exposure and fever.

The following year Bissonette, Gonneville and Roubideaux were returning from civilization, and they found a skeleton at the spring, on the mountain, which the former declared was that of Hiram Scott. He had walked or crawled seventy miles, before his resolute spirit took its flight. The Bissonette here mentioned was a son of Antoine Bissonette and one of his many Indian wives. Antoine was with Manuel Lisa in 1807, and deserted. With Lisa's order to retake him dead or alive, Drouillard shot and mortally wounded him. The mongrel son, who inherited his father's penchant for deserting a companion, lived to a ripe old age, and is mentioned by Francis Parkman, who visited this village on Horse Creek in 1846. He had married a squaw -- several of them in fact -- and was the chief of a small band when visited by Parkman. They were camped near the present site of La Grange, and were miserably poor. Their principal food consisted of choke berries crushed with stones and dried on buffalo robes in the sun. They had journeyed in from the south, and on the trip had lived for the most part on huge wingless grasshoppers, which clumsily fell about their moccasins as they walked.