The stronger of them helped the men to gather more whortleberries, as it was easy to see that the food they had with them would never last until they reached Fort Penn, should they ever reach it.
The condition of the country into which they had entered steadily grew worse.

They were well into the mountains, a region exceedingly wild and rough, but little known to the settlers, who had gone around it to build homes in the fertile and beautiful valley of Wyoming.

The heavy forest was made all the more difficult by the presence everywhere of almost impassable undergrowth.

Now and then a woman lay down under the bushes, and in two cases they died there because the power to live was no longer in them.

They grew weaker and weaker.