In April, 1831, seventy men under Zenas Leonard for Gant & Blackwell, left St. Louis, and on the first of August, arrived at the forks of the Platte. The next month was spent in the North river country between the forks and the Laramie river. The slow progress was made because of side trips hunting and trapping, on Gonneville creek, and over on Blue Water, and to L'Eau qui court, and in the chalk mountains from the present Court House Rock to Signal Buttes.

At the Laramie, the party divided for the fall trapping campaign. Many of them were never heard from again, some found their way to Santa Fe, and others to Gant & Blackwell's fort on the Arkansas. Twenty-one men under A. K. Stevens, a grandson of Daniel Roone. worked up towards the Laramie mountains. During the winter they lost all their horses, and after an ineffectual attempt to reach Santa Fe, returned to the Laramie rendezvous in April, 1832. stripped of nearlv

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

everything of value, as they were on the line of clashes between the northern and southern tribes.

In the early summer of 1832, a general

i rendezvous of all the fur companies and trappers had been arranged for at Pierre's Hole, some six hundred miles to the northwest.

Fitzpatrick and Bridger were to be there with supplies which William Sublette was to bring from St. Louis. To hurry him along Fitzpatrick took two of their fleetest horses and went to meet him.