162 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



bottom of the empty barrel and turned homeward with 

 his empty bag. The knife had scraped the last bone 

 for breakfast, and the next resource was a small bag of 

 wheat bran, which made very palatable batter (not bet- 

 ter) cakes, though they would have been better, but that 

 the lard was gone, and butter was, in those days, among 

 the unknown things. Bran cakes and cranberries, sweet- 

 ened with honey, then were sweet diet. Although the 

 owner of a gun that rarely failed to perform good serv- 

 ice, it seemed that every living thing in the shape of 

 game had hid up in winter quarters. 'Tis true, that I 

 suffered a degree of nervousness, that might have ren- 

 dered my hand too unsteady to endanger the life of game, 

 if it had come in the way ; not that I heard one word of 

 repining or fear, nor that there was any immediate dan- 

 ger of actual starvation ; yet the thought was not a pleas- 

 ant one, to think I had brought a wife and children into 

 a wilderness to suffer, even through fear of want. 



On the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth days, anxious 

 and watchful eyes scanned the prairie by day, and tended 

 beacon fires by night, for this precaution was necessary, 

 as there was nothing to guide the expected teamster 

 home, should he undertake the perilous passage of the 

 prairie just at night fall. It was about midnight of the 

 last day, and I had tired of watching, and had lain down, 

 but not to sleep. The question of "what is to be done?" 

 was working up some horrid visions before me, when my 

 ear, which had grown remarkable quick of late, caught 

 a faint sound like steps upon the frozen ground. Sen- 

 tinel upon his post never started quicker than I. The 

 sounds grew more and more perceptible, but there was 

 nothing like the rumbling of wheels. For the first time, 

 then, did the deep seated anxiety of the good wife and 

 mother show itself. Hope was fast sinking, when the 

 well-known voice of the ever cheerful teamster was borne 

 along the midnight air. How little do we know how to 

 appreciate trifles, until placed in trying situations. What 

 joyful sounds! But the joy was soon damped, as it be- 



