CHAPTER XII

ARRIVAL OF SECOND RELIEF, OR REED-GREENWOOD PARTY—­FEW SURVIVORS STRONG ENOUGH TO TRAVEL—­WIFE’S CHOICE—­PARTINGS AT DONNER CAMP—­MY TWO SISTERS AND I DESERTED—­DEPARTURE OF SECOND RELIEF PARTY.

It was the first of March, about ten days after the arrival of the First Relief, before James Reed and William McCutchen succeeded in reaching the party they had left long months before.  They, together with Brit Greenwood, Hiram Miller, Joseph Jondro, Charles Stone, John Turner, Matthew Dofar, Charles Cady, and Nicholas Clark constituted the Second Relief.

They reported having met the First Relief with eighteen refugees at the head of Bear Valley, three having died en route from the cabins.  Among the survivors Mr. Reed found his wife, his daughter Virginia, and his son James F. Reed, Jr.  He learned there from his anxious wife that their two younger children, Martha J. and Thomas K. Reed, had also left the cabin with her, but had soon given out and been carried back and left at the mountain camp by Messrs. Glover and Moutrey, who then retraced their steps and rejoined the party.

Consequently this Reed-Greenwood party, realizing that this was no time for tarrying, had hurried on to the lake cabins, where Mr. Reed had the happiness of finding his children still alive.  There he and five companions encamped upon the snow and fed and soothed the unfortunates.  Two members continued on to Aunt Betsy’s abode, and Messrs. Cady and Clark came to ours.

This Relief had followed the example of its predecessor in leaving supplies at marked caches along the trail for the return trip.  Therefore, it reached camp with a frugal amount for distribution.  The first rations were doled out with careful hand, lest harm should come to the famishing through overeating, still, the rescuers administered sufficient to satisfy the fiercest cravings and to give strength for the prospective journey.

While crossing Alder Creek Valley to our tent that first afternoon, Messrs. Cady and Clark had seen fresh tracks of a bear and cubs, and in the evening the latter took one of our guns and went in pursuit of the game which would have been a godsend to us.  It was dark when he returned and told my mother that he had wounded the old bear near the camp, but that she had escaped with her young through the pines into a clump of tamarack, and that he would be able to follow her in the morning by the blood-stains on the snow.

Meanwhile, the two men who had come to Aunt Betsy’s with food thought it best not to tell her that her son William had died en route to the settlement with the First Relief.  They selected from among her children in camp, Solomon, Mary, and Isaac, as able to follow a leader to the lake cabins, and thence to go with the outgoing Second Relief, across the mountains.  Hopefully, that mother kissed her three children good-bye, and then wistfully watched them depart with their rescuers on snowshoes.  She herself was strong enough to make the journey, but remained because there was no one to help to carry out her two youngest children.