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The train took the trail early next morning, expecting to cross the summit of the Sierras and reach California in less than two weeks. The following circumstances, which parted us forever from the train which father had led through so many difficulties, were told me by my sister, Mrs. Elitha C. Wilder, now of Bruceville, California: Our five Donner wagons, and Mrs.
After many fruitless trips to the post-office, we were one day handed a letter for grandma. It was not from our aunt, however, but from our sister Elitha, and bore the sad news that her husband, while on the range, had been thrown from his horse, and lived but a few moments after she reached him.
It came out a few days later when Elitha began making a black and a white uniform which would fit no one except me. Friends who had religious prejudices advised Ben against putting us under Catholic influence, but he replied good-naturedly: "The school is excellent, the girls are Protestants, and I am not afraid.
There we caught the first breath of spring-tide, touched the warm, dry earth, and saw green fields far beyond the foot of that cold, cruel mountain range. Our rescuers exclaimed joyfully, "Thank God, we are at last out of the snow, and you shall soon see Elitha and Leanna, and have all you want to eat."
Empty-handed, but happy, they at length returned, and though I could not understand anything they were saying, their looks and actions betokened what a good time they had had. Years later, I described the scene to Elitha, who assured me that I had been highly favored by those Indians for they had permitted me to witness their annual "Grub Feast."
While they thus anxiously awaited the return of their soldiers, we kept watch of the cow-path by which we had reached the Fort; for Elitha had told us that we might "pretty soon see the relief coming." She did not say, "with father and mother"; but we did, and she replied, "I hope so."
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.
My father had two sons and eight daughters when she became his wife; but their immediate family circle consisted only of his aged parents, and Elitha and Leanna, young daughters of his second marriage, until July 8, 1840, when blue-eyed Frances Eustis was born to them.
Leaning over the edge of the door, he gazed at me standing there as if I were nailed to the floor. I was speechless with amazement, and it seemed a long while before he remarked lightly, "You don't seem to know me." "Yes, you are Mr. Wilder, my brother-in-law," I stammered. "Where is Elitha?"
Elitha admonished us to forget the past, and prepare for the future. She forbade Georgia and me to use the German language in speaking with each other, giving as a reason that we should take Frances into our confidence and thoughts as closely as we took one another. I was never a morbid child, and the days that I did not find a sunbeam in life, I was apt to hunt for a rainbow.
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