WATCHING FOR THE SECOND RELIEF PARTY--"OLD NAVAJO"--LAST FOOD IN CAMP.
After the departure of the First Relief we who were left in the
mountains began to watch and pray for the coming of the Second Relief,
as we had before watched and prayed for the coming of the First.
Sixteen-year-old John Baptiste was disappointed and in ill humor when
Messrs. Tucker and Rhodes insisted that he, being the only able-bodied
man in the Donner camp, should stay and cut wood for the enfeebled,
until the arrival of other rescuers. The little half-breed was a sturdy
fellow, but he was starving too, and thought that he should be allowed
to save himself.
After he had had a talk with father, however, and the first company of
refugees had gone, he became reconciled to his lot, and served us
faithfully. He would take us little ones up to exercise upon the snow,
saying that we should learn to keep our feet on the slick, frozen
surface, as well as to wade through slush and loose drifts.
Frequently, when at work and lonesome, he would call Georgia and me up
to keep him company, and when the weather was frosty, he would bring
"Old Navajo," his long Indian blanket, and roll her in it from one end,
and me from the other, until we would come together in the middle, like
the folds of a paper of pins, with a face peeping above each fold. Then
he would set us upon the stump of the pine tree while he chopped the
trunk and boughs for fuel. He told us that he had promised father to
stay until we children should be taken from camp, also that his home
was to be with our family forever. One of his amusements was to rake
the coals together nights, then cover them with ashes, and put the
large camp kettle over the pile for a drum, so that we could spread our
hands around it, "to get just a little warm before going to bed."
For the time, he lived at Aunt Betsy's tent, because Solomon Hook was
snow-blind and demented, and at times restless and difficult to
control. The poor boy, some weeks earlier, had set out alone to reach
the settlement, and after an absence of forty-eight hours was found
close to camp, blind, and with his mind unbalanced. He, like other
wanderers on that desolate waste, had become bewildered, and,
unconsciously, circled back near to the starting-point.
Aunt Betsy came often to our tent, and mother frequently went to hers,
and they knelt together and asked for strength to bear their burdens.
Once, when mother came back, she reported to father that she had
discovered bear tracks quite close to camp, and was solicitous that the
beast be secured, as its flesh might sustain us until rescued.
As father grew weaker, we children spent more time upon the snow above
camp. Often, after his wound was dressed and he fell into a quiet
slumber, our ever-busy, thoughtful mother would come to us and sit on
the tree trunk. Sometimes she brought paper and wrote; sometimes she
sketched the mountains and the tall tree-tops, which now looked like
small trees growing up through the snow. And often, while knitting or
sewing, she held us spell-bound with wondrous tales of "Joseph in
Egypt," of "Daniel in the den of lions," of "Elijah healing the widow's
son," of dear little Samuel, who said, "Speak Lord, for Thy servant
heareth," and of the tender, loving Master, who took young children in
his arms and blessed them.
With me sitting on her lap, and Frances and Georgia at either side, she
referred to father's illness and lonely condition, and said that when
the next "Relief" came, we little ones might be taken to the
settlement, without either parent, but, God willing, both would follow
later. 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.