A few months later, Robert's family moved south to Spanish Fork, where Robert's mother died suddenly. The cause was attributed to her exposure in the river when their wagon had overturned. Robert continues- "In the spring of 1859 my father, two sisters, and two other couples and I moved to Mendon, Cache Valley, and settled there. After our crops were planted I got a desire to see Logan, so I took a four-horse team and a crowd of young folks and went to the settlement, and was quite disappointed as there were just a few wagons with no kind of a town. Providence consisted of several families camped in the brush hiding from Indians.
As soon as there were enough settlers in the valley, there was organized a Minute Company for protection to the citizens. We would take turns standing picket guard watching for Indians and in case there was any, our duty was to arouse the other Minutemen and all go to protect the settlement upon which the Indians were preying. One night, as some of us were standing picket guard, we saw what we thought was a cloud of dust in the valley. We were just getting ready to sound the alarm when we discovered it was just the moon shining through the clouds. It was a good thing we discovered our mistake, because if we had once started we would not have stopped until we had the whole valley aroused."