Not a great while after we had crossed the Platte, dissatisfaction arose.  Men gathered around in little groups and grumbled to each other.  They pretended to have lost confidence in our guide.  They said that they did not believe he was a "mountain man" at all, or knew anything whatsoever about the country that we were passing through.  So they eyed him sullenly and followed the directions that he gave us in a halfhearted fashion.  In order to follow the water courses, we had traveled considerably out of our way.  That may have been why they thought he was misleading  us.

     In order to prove his thorough knowledge of the country, he took Father and several others to a high knoll and pointing to a deep ravine a few miles ahead, said: "That is ash hollow, and along the banks of the stream that runs through it, you will find an abundance of wild currents."

     When we reached the place, sure enough, there they were, exactly as he had said, and they  were juicy and good too.  We children were delighted.  Fresh fruit of any kind was a great luxury.  This incident established faith in our guide and the doubting, grumbling ones, accepted his directions without further question.

     I do not remember where the hack berries grew, but I remember eating them. I remember eating them, in spite of the fact that they put my teeth terribly "on edge" that I could hardly eat other things without crying.  Someone told me to bite as hard as I could on a black felt hat.  I looked  about for several days before I saw one that I felt sure was black enough.  It belonged to Dave Lenox, a man whom I knew pretty well, and he let me bite on it.  He had worn it all the way through weeks of sun and rain so it was not so terribly black even at that.  It did not help me any and I used to wish that I could borrow a coal black hat from someone.

     I believed anything that an older person told me, so I had implicit faith in the curative properties of a coal black felt hat, if one's teeth were on edge from hack berries.