Before our short stay at the Johnson Ranch ended, we little girls had a peculiar experience.  While standing in a doorway, the door closed with a bang upon two of my fingers.  My piercing cry brought several persons to the spot, and one among them sat down and soothed me in a motherly way.  After I was myself again, she examined the dress into which Messrs. Thompson and Eddy had stitched so much good-will, and she said: 

“Let me take off this clumsy thing, and give you a little blue dress with white flowers on it.”  She made the change, and after she had fastened it in the back she got a needle and white thread and bade me stand closer to her so that she might sew up the tear which exposed my knees.  She asked why I looked so hard at her sewing, and I replied,

“My mother always makes little stitches when she sews my dresses.”

No amount of pulling down of the sleeves or straightening out of the skirt could conceal the fact that I was too large for the garment.  As I was leaving her, I heard her say to a companion, “That is just as good for her, and this will make two for my little girl.”  Later in the day Frances and Georgia parted with their silks and looked as forlorn as I in calico substitutes.

Oh, the balm and beauty of that early morning when Messrs. Eddy, Thompson, and Miller took us on horseback down the Sacramento Valley.  Under the leafy trees and over the budding blossoms we rode.  Not rapidly, but steadily, we neared our journey’s end.  Toward night, when the birds had stopped their singing and were hiding themselves among bush and bough, we reached the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Sinclair on the American River, thirty-five miles from Johnson’s Ranch and only two and a half from Sutter’s Fort.

That hospitable house was over-crowded with earlier arrivals, but as it was too late for us to cross the river, sympathetic Mrs. Sinclair said that she would find a place for us.  Having no bed to offer, she loosened the rag-carpet from one corner of the room, had fresh straw put on the floor, and after supper, tucked us away on it, drawing the carpet over us in place of quilts.

We had bread and milk for supper that night, and the same good food next day.  In the afternoon we were taken across the river in an Indian canoe.  Then we followed the winding path through the tules to Sutter’s Fort, where we were given over to our half-sisters by those heroic men who had kept their pledge to our mother and saved our lives.

CHAPTER XVI

ELITHA AND LEANNA—­LIFE AT THE FORT—­WATCHING THE COW PATH—­RETURN OF THE FALLON PARTY—­KESEBERG BROUGHT IN BY THEM—­FATHER AND MOTHER DID NOT COME.

The room in which Elitha and Leanna were staying when we arrived at Sutter’s Fort was part of a long, low, single-story adobe building outside the fortification walls, and like others that were occupied by belated travellers, was the barest and crudest structure imaginable.  It had an earthen floor, a thatched roof, a batten door, and an opening in the rear wall to serve as window.