After many days, Mexican drivers brought a band of wild mares to help with the work.  A thick layer of unthreshed grain was pitched on to the bare space surrounding the stack and the mares were driven around and around upon it.  From time to time, fresh material was supplied to meet the needs of the threshers.  And, at given signals from the men on the stack, the mares were turned out for a short rest, also in order to allow the Indians a chance to throw out the waste straw and to heap the loose grain on the winnowing ground.  So they did again and again, until the last sheaf had been trodden under foot.

When the threshing was finished, the Indians rested; then prepared their fires, and feasted on the head, feet, and offal of a bullock which grandpa had slaughtered.

Like buzzards came the squaws and papooses to take what was left of the food, and to claim a share from the pile of worn-out clothes which grandma brought out for distribution.  Amid shouts of pleasure, gesticulations, and all manner of begging, the distribution began, and when it ended, our front yard looked as though it were stocked with prize scarecrows.

One big fellow was resplendent in a battered silk hat and a tattered army coat; another was well dressed in a pair of cast-off boots and one of grandma’s ragged aprons.  Georgia and I tried to help to sort the things as they should be worn, but our efforts were in vain.  Wrong hands would reach around and get the articles, and both sexes interchanged suits with apparent satisfaction.  Grandma got quite out of patience with one great fellow who was trying to put on a petticoat that his squaw needed, and rushed up to him, jerked it off, gave him a vigorous push, and had the garment on his squaw, before he could do more than grunt.  In the end they went away caring more for the clothes that had been given them than for the money they had earned.

Before the summer waned, death claimed one of our own brave women, and immigrants from far and near gathered to do her honor.  I do not recollect her name, but know that she was tall and fair, and that grandma, who had watched with her through her last hours, told Georgia and me that when we saw the procession leave the house, we might creep through our back fence and reach the grave before those who should walk around by the road.  We were glad to go, for we had watched the growth of the fresh ridge under a large oak tree, not far from our house, and had heard a friend say that it would be “a heavenly resting place for the freed sufferer.”

Her family and nearest neighbors left the house afoot, behind the wagon which carried the plain redwood coffin.  At the cross-road several fell in line, and at the grave was quite a gathering.  A number came in their ox wagons, others on horseback; among them, a father afoot, leading a horse upon whose back sat his wife with an infant in arms and a child behind clinging to her waist; and several old nags, freighted with children, were led by one parent, while the other walked alongside to see that none should lose their balance and fall off.