iation of Latin languages, I essayed to call for warm
water and various other necessary articles needed around a sick bed.
Sometimes I succeeded in getting an idea through her impervious brain,
but more often she would stand dazed and immovable and I would let the
dictionary drop from my tired hands and fall back upon the pillow in a
sweat of exhaustion. Then Bowen would be called in, and with the help of
some perfunctory language and gestures on his part, this silent creature
of the mountains would seem to wake up and try to understand.

And so I worried through those dreadful days--and the nights! Ah! we had
better not describe them. The poor wild thing slept the sleep of death
and could not hear my loudest calls nor desperate shouts.

So Jack attached a cord to her pillow, and I would tug and tug at that
and pull the pillow from under her head. It was of no avail. She slept
peacefully on, and it seemed to me, as I lay there staring at her, that
not even Gabriel's trump would ever arouse her.

In desperation I would creep out of bed and wait upon myself and then
confess to Jack and the Doctor next day.

Well, we had to let the creature go, for she was of no use, and the
Spanish dictionary was laid aside.

I struggled along, fighting against odds; how I ever got well at all is
a wonder, when I think of all the sanitary precautions taken now-a-days
with young mothers and babies. The Doctor was ordered away and another
one came. I had no advice or help from any one. Calomel or quinine are
the only medicines I remember taking myself or giving to my child.

But to go back a little. The seventh day after the birth of the baby, a
delegation of several squaws, wives of chiefs, came to pay me a formal
visit. They brought me some finely woven baskets, and a beautiful
pappoose-basket or cradle, such as they carry their own babies in. This
was made of the lightest wood, and covered with the finest skin of
fawn, tanned with birch bark by their own hands, and embroidered in blue
beads; it was their best work. I admired it, and tried to express to
them my thanks. These squaws took my baby (he was lying beside me on the
bed), then, cooing and chuckling, they looked about the room, until they
found a small pillow, which they laid into the basket-cradle, then put
my baby in, drew the flaps together, and laced him into it; then stood
it up, and laid it down, and laughed again in their gentle manner, and
finally soothed him to sleep