h a frugal amount for distribution. The
first rations were doled out with careful hand, lest harm should come
to the famishing through overeating, still, the rescuers administered
sufficient to satisfy the fiercest cravings and to give strength for
the prospective journey.

While crossing Alder Creek Valley to our tent that first afternoon,
Messrs. Cady and Clark had seen fresh tracks of a bear and cubs, and in
the evening the latter took one of our guns and went in pursuit of the
game which would have been a godsend to us. It was dark when he
returned and told my mother that he had wounded the old bear near the
camp, but that she had escaped with her young through the pines into a
clump of tamarack, and that he would be able to follow her in the
morning by the blood-stains on the snow.

Meanwhile, the two men who had come to Aunt Betsy's with food thought
it best not to tell her that her son William had died _en route_ to the
settlement with the First Relief. They selected from among her
children in camp, Solomon, Mary, and Isaac, as able to follow a leader
to the lake cabins, and thence to go with the outgoing Second Relief,
across the mountains. Hopefully, that mother kissed her three children
good-bye, and then wistfully watched them depart with their rescuers on
snowshoes. She herself was strong enough to make the journey, but
remained because there was no one to help to carry out her two youngest
children.

Thirty-one of the company were still in the camps when this party
arrived, nearly all of them children, unable to travel without
assistance, and the adults were too feeble to give much aid to the
little ones upon the snow. Consequently, when my father learned that
the Second Relief comprised only ten men, he felt that he himself would
never reach the settlement. He was willing to be left alone, and
entreated mother to leave him and try to save herself and us children.
He reminded her that his life was almost spent, that she could do
little for him were she to remain, and that in caring for us children
she would be carrying on his work.

She who had to choose between the sacred duties of wife and mother,
thought not of self. She looked first at her helpless little children,
then into the face of her suffering and helpless husband, and tenderly,
unhesitatingly, announced her determination to remain and care for him
until both should be rescued, or death should part them.

[Illustration: From an old drawing