I was never a morbid child, and the days that I did not find a sunbeam in life, I was apt to hunt for a rainbow.  But there, in sight of the Sierras, the feeling again haunted me that perhaps my mother did not die, but had strayed from the trail and later reached the settlement and could not find us.  Each middle-aged woman that I saw ahead of me on the street would thrill me with expectation, and I would quicken my steps in order to get a view of her face.  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.  She related many pleasing incidents connected with those days, and spoke feelingly, yet guardedly, of our experiences in the mountains.  Like Elitha, she hoped we would forget them, and as she watched me cheerfully adapting myself to new surroundings, she imagined that time and circumstances were dimming the past from my memory.

She did not understand me.  I was light-hearted because I was old enough to appreciate the blessings that had come to me; old enough to look ahead and see the pure, intelligent womanhood opening to me; and trustful enough to believe that my expectations in life would be realized.  So I gathered counsel and comfort from the lips of that sympathetic cousin, and loved her word pictures of the home where I was born.

Nor could change of circumstances wean my grateful thoughts from Grandpa and Grandma Brunner.  At times, I seemed to listen for the sound of his voice, and to hear hers so near and clear that in the night, I often started up out of sleep in answer to her dream calls.  Finally I determined to disregard her parting words, and write her.  Georgia was sure that I would get a severe answer, but Elitha’s ready permission made the letter easier to write.  Weeks elapsed without a reply, and I had about given up looking for it, when late in August, William, the youngest Wilder brother, saddled his horse, and upon mounting, called out,