When I gave up this illusion,
I still prayed that Keseberg would send for me some day, and let me
know her end, and give me a last message. I wanted his call to me to be
voluntary, so that I might know that his words were true. These hopes
and prayers were sacred, even from Georgia.
On the twenty-fourth of March, 1856, brother Ben took us all to pioneer
quarters on Rancho de los Cazadores, where their growing interests
required the personal attention of the three brothers. There we became
familiar with the pleasures, and also the inconveniences and hardships
of life on a cattle ranch. We were twenty miles from town, church, and
school; ten miles from the post office; and close scrutiny far and wide
disclosed but one house in range. Our supply of books was meagre, and
for knowledge of current events, we relied on _The Sacramento Union_,
and on the friends who came to enjoy the cattleman's hospitality.
My sweetest privilege was an occasional visit to cousin Frances Bond,
my mother's niece, who, with her husband and child, had settled on a
farm about twelve miles from us. She also had grown up a motherless
girl, but had spent a part of her young ladyhood at our home in
Illinois. She had helped my mother to prepare for our long journey and
would have crossed the plains with us had her father granted her wish.
She was particularly fond of us "three little ones" whom she had
caressed in babyhood.
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