Eddy, now conscious that his feet were
giving out, promised the stranger tobacco, if he would go with them and
help to lead him to the "white man's house."

And so that long, desperate struggle for life, and for the sake of
loved ones, ended an hour before sunset, when Mr. Eddy, leaning heavily
upon the Indians, halted before the door of Colonel M.D. Richey's home,
thirty-five miles from Sutter's Fort.

The first to meet him was the daughter of the house, whom he asked for
bread. Thornton says:

She looked at him, burst out crying, and took hold of him to assist
him into the room. He was immediately placed in bed, in which he lay
unable to turn his body during four days. In a very short time he
had food brought to him by Mrs. Richey, who sobbed as she fed the
miserable and frightful being before her. Shortly, Harriet, the
daughter, had carried the news from house to house in the
neighborhood, and horses were running at full speed from place to
place until all preparations were made for taking relief to those
whom Mr. Eddy had left in the morning.

William Johnson, John Howell, John Rhodes, Mr. Keiser, Mr. Sagur,
Racine Tucker, and Joseph Varro assembled at Mr. Richey's
immediately. The females collected the bread they had, with tea,
sugar, and coffee, amounting to as much as four men could carry.
Howell, Rhodes, Sagur, and Tucker started at once, on foot, with the
Indians as guides, and arrived at camp, between fifteen and eighteen
miles distant, at midnight.

Mr. Eddy had warned the outgoing party against giving the sufferers as
much food as they might want, but, on seeing them, the tender-hearted
men could not deny their tearful begging for "more." One of the relief
was kept busy until dawn preparing food which the rest gave to the
enfeebled emigrants. This overdose of kindness made its victims
temporarily very ill, but caused no lasting harm.

Early on the morning of January 18, Messrs. Richey, Johnson, Varro, and
Keiser, equipped with horses and other necessaries, hurried away to
bring in the refugees, together with their comrades who had gone on
before. By ten o'clock that night the whole of the Forlorn Hope were
safe in the homes of their benefactors. Mr. Richey declared that he and
his party had retraced Mr. Eddy's track six miles, by the blood from
his feet; and that they could not have believed that he had travelled
that eighteen miles, if t