me in a large buckskin, with one leg on each side of
her body, and then supporting the weight by a broad
leather strap passed across her brow. This was not
uncomfortable, all things considered. In fact, it was
by far the best thing that could be done.
The first half day the old woman was u sulky," as the men called it ; possibly the wrinkled old creature could feel, and was thinking of her dead.
In the afternoon I began to rally, and spoke to her in her own tongue. Then she talked and talked, and mourned, and would not be still. " You," she moaned, u have killed all my boys, and burnt up my home."
I ventured to protest that they had first robbed us.
u No," she said, " you first robbed us. You drove us from the river. We could not fish, we could not hunt. We were hungry and took your provisions to eat. My boys did not kill you. They could have killed you a hundred times, but they only took things to eat, when they could not get fish and things on the river."
We reached the Sacramento in safety, and pitched camp on the bank of the river under some small cedars about a mile below the site of the present hotel on the Lower Soda Spring ranch. Here I lay a long long time, till able to travel. Those beautiful trees were still standing when I returned there in 1872.
It was necessary to go to San Francisco to recover my health; but I tired of the city soon, and longed for the mountains and my Indian com
