Who could be braver or tenderer than she, as she prepared us to
go forth with strangers and live without her? While she, without
medicine, without lights, would remain and care for our suffering
father, in hunger and in cold, and without her little girls to kiss
good-morning and good-night. She taught us how to gain friends among
those whom we should meet, and what to answer when asked whose children
we were.
Often her eyes gazed wistfully to westward, where sky and mountains
seemed to meet, and she told us that beyond those snowy peaks lay
California, our land of food and safety, our promised land of
happiness, where God would care for us. Oh, it was painfully quiet some
days in those great mountains, and lonesome upon the snow. The pines
had a whispering homesick murmur, and we children had lost all
inclination to play.
The last food which I remember seeing in our camp before the arrival of
the Second Relief was a thin mould of tallow, which mother had tried
out of the trimmings of the jerked beef brought us by the First Relief.
She had let it harden in a pan, and after all other rations had given
out, she cut daily from it three small white squares for each of us,
and we nibbled off the four corners very slowly, and then around and
around the edges of the precious pieces until they became too small for
us to hold between our fingers.
CHAPTER XII
ARRIVAL OF SECOND RELIEF, OR REED-GREENWOOD PARTY--FEW SURVIVORS STRONG
ENOUGH TO TRAVEL--WIFE'S CHOICE--PARTINGS AT DONNER CAMP--MY TWO
SISTERS AND I DESERTED--DEPARTURE OF SECOND RELIEF PARTY.
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