Woman on the American Frontier | Page 9

were running. In all this desolate scene there was no
sign of a living thing. While they were tethering their horses and
preparing for the night, the sharp eyes of the Indian guide caught sight
of a gleam of light at the bottom of a deep gorge beneath them.
Descending the declivity, they reached a cabin rudely built of dead

wood, which seemed to have been brought down by the spring rains
from the hill-sides to the west. Knocking at the door, it was opened by
a woman, holding in her arms a child of six months. The woman
appeared to be fifty years of age, but she was in reality only thirty.
Casting a searching look upon the traveler and his companion, she
asked them to enter.
The cabin was divided into two apartments, a kitchen, which also
served for a store-room, dining-room, and sitting-room; the other was
the chamber, or rather bunk-room, where the family slept. Five children
came tumbling out from this latter apartment as the traveler entered,
and greeted him with a stare of childlike curiosity. The woman asked
them to be seated on blocks of wood, which served for chairs, and soon
threw off her reserve and told them her story, while they awaited the
return of her husband from the nearest village, some thirty miles distant,
whither he had gone the day before to dispose of the gold-dust which
he had "panned out" from a gulch near by. He was a miner. Four years
before he had come with his family from the East, and pushing on in
advance of the main movement of emigration in the territory, had
discovered a rich gold placer in this lonely gorge. While he had been
working in this placer, his wife had with her own hands turned up the
soil in the valley below and raised all the corn and potatoes required for
the support of the family; she had done the housework, and had made
all the clothes for the family. Once when her husband was sick, she had
ridden thirty miles for medicine. It was a dreary ride, she said, for the
road, or rather trail, was very rough, and her husband was in a burning
fever. She left him in charge of her oldest child, a girl of eleven years,
but she was a bright, helpful little creature, able to wait upon the sick
man and feed the other children during the two days' absence of her
mother.
Next summer they were to build a house lower down the valley and
would be joined by three other families of their kindred from the East.
"Have you never been attacked by the Indians?" inquired the traveler.
"Only three times," she replied. "Once three prowling red-skins came to
the door, in the night, and asked for food. My husband handed them a

loaf of bread through the window, but they refused to go away and
lurked in the bushes all night; they were stragglers from a war-party,
and wanted more scalps. I saw them in the moonlight, armed with rifles
and tomahawks, and frightfully painted. They kindled a fire a hundred
yards below our cabin and stayed there all night, as if they were
watching for us to come out, but early in the morning they disappeared,
and we saw them no more.
"Another time, a large war-party of Indians encamped a mile below us,
and a dozen of them came up and surrounded the house. Then we
thought we were lost: they amused themselves aiming at marks in the
logs, or at the chimney and windows; we could hear their bullets rattle
against the rafters, and you can see the holes they made in the doors.
One big brave took a large stone and was about to dash it against the
door, when my husband pointed his rifle at him through the window,
and he turned and ran away. We should have all been killed and
scalped if a company of soldiers had not come up the valley that day
with an exploring party and driven the red-skins away.
"One afternoon as my husband was at work in the diggings, two
red-skins came up to him and wounded him with arrows, but he caught
up his rifle and soon made an end of them.
"When we first came there was no end of bears and wolves, and we
could hear them howling all night long. Winter nights the wolves
would come and drum on the door with their paws and whine as if they
wanted to eat up the children. Husband shot ten and I shot six, and after
that we were troubled no more with them.
"We have no schools here, as you see," continued she; "but I have
taught my three oldest children to read