arrived on the thirteenth, and at once began searching for the abandoned wagon and provisions which Reed and McCutchen had cached the previous Autumn, after their fruitless attempt to scale the mountains.  The wagon was found under snow ten feet in depth; but its supplies had been destroyed by wild beasts.  Warned by this catastrophe, the First Relief decided to preserve its supplies for the return trip by hanging them in parcels from ropes tied to the boughs of trees.

The ten kept together courageously until the fifteenth; then Mr. M.D.  Richey, James Curtis, and Adolph Brenheim gave up and turned back.  Mr. Tucker, fearing that others might become disheartened and do likewise, guaranteed each man who would persevere to the end, five dollars per diem, dating from the time the party entered the snow.  The remaining seven pushed ahead, and on the eighteenth, encamped on the summit overlooking the lake, where the snow was said to be forty feet in depth.

The following morning Aguilla Glover and Daniel Rhodes were so oppressed by the altitude that their companions had to relieve them of their packs and help them on to the cabins, which, as chronicled in a previous chapter, the party reached on the nineteenth of February, 1847.

[Footnote 9:  Of the Forlorn Hope.]

CHAPTER XI

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.”