We did not see Mr. Clark, but he had peered in, taken observations, and returned by nightfall and described to her our condition.

John Baptiste had promised to care for father in her absence.  She left our tent in the morning as early as she could see the way.  She must have stayed with us over night, for I went to sleep in her arms, and they were still around me when I awoke; and it seemed like a new day, for we had time for many cherished talks.  She veiled from us the ghastliness of death, telling us Aunt Betsy and both our little cousins had gone to heaven.  She said Lewis had been first to go, and his mother had soon followed; that she herself had carried little Sammie from his sick mother’s tent to ours the very day we three were taken away; and in order to keep him warm while the storm raged, she had laid him close to father’s side, and that he had stayed with them until “day before yesterday.”

I asked her if Sammie had cried for bread.  She replied, “No, he was not hungry, for your mother saved two of those little biscuits which the relief party brought, and every day she soaked a tiny piece in water and fed him all he would eat, and there is still half a biscuit left.”

How big that half-biscuit seemed to me!  I wondered why she had not brought at least a part of it to us.  While she was talking with Mrs. Murphy, I could not get it out of my mind.  I could see that broken half-biscuit, with its ragged edges, and knew that if I had a piece, I would nibble off the rough points first.  The longer I waited, the more I wanted it.  Finally, I slipped my arm around mother’s neck, drew her face close to mine and whispered,

“What are you going to do with the half-biscuit you saved?”

“I am keeping it for your sick father,” she answered, drawing me closer to her side, laying her comforting cheek against mine, letting my arm keep its place, and my fingers stroke her hair.

The two women were still talking in subdued tones, pouring the oil of sympathy into each others’ gaping wounds.  Neither heard the sound of feet on the snow above; neither knew that the Third Relief Party was at hand, until Mr. Eddy and Mr. Foster came down the steps, and each asked anxiously of Mrs. Murphy, “Where is my boy?”

Each received the same sorrowful answer—­“Dead.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE QUEST OF TWO FATHERS—­SECOND RELIEF IN DISTRESS—­THIRD RELIEF ORGANIZED AT WOODWORTH’S RELAY CAMP—­DIVIDES AND ONE HALF GOES TO SUCCOR SECOND RELIEF AND ITS REFUGEES; AND THE OTHER HALF PROCEEDS TO DONNER LAKE—­A LAST FAREWELL—­A WOMAN’S SACRIFICE.

It will be remembered that Mr. Eddy, being ill, was dropped out of the First Relief at Mule Springs in February, and sent back to Johnson’s Ranch to await the return of this party, which had promised to bring out his family.  Who can realize his distress when it returned with eighteen refugees, and informed him that his wife and little Maggie had perished before it reached the camps, and that it had been obliged to leave his baby there in care of Mrs. Murphy?