William L. Manly (1820-1903)They had been given fifteen days to find help—or something to eat, or at the very least a decent trail—and then return to camp. They set off, their packs filled with with "seven-eighths of all the flesh of an ox... a couple spoonfuls of rice and about as much tea... [and] all the money there was in camp."

"They crossed a gap south of Telescope Peak, staying on the mountain that night," wrote historian W.A. Chalfant in Death Valley: The Facts (1930). "They descended to the pool in the Panamint Valley, only to find its brine a literally bitter disappointment. On the next range they found the Jayhawker trail, and near it holes dug by that party in the vain hope of finding water. Near the summit they came upon the body of Fish ["a Mr. Fish of Indiana"], lying as he had fallen."

They descended the west flank of the Argus Range, across what is now the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, and from the Cosos, by the light of the moon, made a beeline for the snow in the Sierra Nevada.