Sullen and dejected, he cached the contents of his wagons, and with a meagre supply of food in a pack on his back, he and his wife, each carrying a child, set forth to finish the journey on foot.  To add to their discomfort, they saw Indians on adjacent hills dancing and gesticulating in savage delight.  In relating the above occurrence after the journey was finished, Mr. Eddy declared that no language could portray the desolation and heartsick feeling, nor the physical and mental torture which he and his wife experienced while travelling between the sink of Ogden’s River and the Geyser Springs.[3]

It was during that trying week that Mr. Wolfinger mysteriously disappeared.  At the time, he and Keseberg, with their wagons, were at the rear of the train, and their wives were walking in advance with other members of the company.  When camp was made, those two wagons were not in sight, and after dark the alarmed wives prevailed on friends to go in search of their missing husbands.  The searchers shortly found Keseberg leisurely driving toward camp.  He assured them that Wolfinger was not far behind him, so they returned without further search.

All night the frantic wife listened for the sound of the coming of her husband, and so poignant was her grief that at break of day, William Graves, Jr., and two companions went again in search of Mr. Wolfinger.  Five or six miles from camp, they came upon his tenantless wagon, with the oxen unhooked and feeding on the trail near-by.  Nothing in the wagon had been disturbed, nor did they find any sign of struggle, or of Indians.  After a diligent search for the missing man, his wagon and team was brought to camp and restored to Mrs. Wolfinger, and she was permitted to believe that her husband had been murdered by Indians and his body carried off.  Nevertheless, some suspected Keseberg of having had a hand in his disappearance, as he knew that Mr. Wolfinger carried a large sum of money on his person.

Three days later Rhinehart and Spitzer, who had not been missed, came into camp, and Mrs. Wolfinger was startled to recognize her husband’s gun in their possession.  They explained that they were in the wagon with Mr. Wolfinger when the Indians rushed upon them, drove them off, killed Wolfinger and burned the wagon.  My father made a note of this conflicting statement to help future investigation of the case.

At Geyser Springs, the company cached valuable goods, among them several large cases of books and other heavy articles belonging to my father.  As will be seen later, the load in our family wagon thus lightened through pity for our oxen, also lessened the severity of an accident which otherwise might have been fatal to Georgia and me.

On the nineteenth of October, near the present site of Wadsworth, Nevada, we met Mr. Stanton returning from Sutter’s Fort with two Indian herders driving seven mules, laden with flour and jerked beef.  Their arrival was hailed with great joy, and after a brief consultation with my father, Stanton and his Indians continued toward the rear, in order to distribute first to those most in need of provisions, also that the pack animals might be the sooner set apart to the use of those whose teams had given out, or had been destroyed by Indians.