The first Monday in October was a veritable red-letter day. Aglow with
bright anticipations, we hurried off to public school with Frances. Not
since our short attendance at the pioneer school in Sonoma had Georgia
and I been schoolmates, and never before had we three sisters started
out together with books in hand; nor did our expectations overreach the
sum of happiness which the day had in store for us.
The supposition that grandpa and grandma had passed out of our lives
was soon disproved; for as I was crossing our back yard on the Saturday
of that first week of school, I happened to look toward Seventeenth
Street, and saw a string of wagons bringing exhibits from the fair
grounds. Beside the driver of a truck carrying a closed cage marked,
"Buffalo," stood grandpa. He had risen from his seat, leaned back
against the front of the cage, folded his arms and was looking at me.
My long black braids had been cut off, and my style of dress changed,
still he had recognized me. I fled into the house, and told Elitha what
I had seen. She, too, was somewhat disquieted, and replied musingly,
"The old gentleman is lonely, and may have come to take you girls back
with him."
His presence in Sacramento so soon after our reaching there did seem
significant, because he had bought that buffalo in 1851, before she was
weaned from the emigrant cow that had suckled and led her in from the
great buffalo range, and he had never before thought of exhibiting her.
Pages:
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293