yet shy about moving onward or speaking. I,
being the larger, finally asked,

"What's your name?"

To my great delight, he answered, "Name, Billy."

While we were slowly getting accustomed to each other, a good-natured
elderly squaw passed. She wore a tattered petticoat, and buttons,
pieces of shell, and beads of bird bones dangled from a string around
her neck. A band of buckskin covered her forehead and was attached to
strips of rawhide, which held in place the water-tight basket hanging
down her back. Billy now left me for her, and I followed the two to
that part of our yard where the tall ash-hopper stood, which ever after
was like a story book to me.

The squaw set the basket on the ground, reached up, and carefully
lifted from a board laid across the top of the hopper, several pans of
clabbered milk, which she poured into the basket. Instead of putting
the pans back, she tilted them up against the hopper, squatted down in
front and with her slim forefinger, scraped down the sides and bottom
of each pan so that she and Billy could scoop up and convey to their
mouths, by means of their three crooked fingers, all that had not gone
into the basket. Then she licked her improvised spoon clean and dry;
turned her back to her burden; replaced the band on her forehead; and
with the help of her stick, slowly raised herself to her feet and
quietly walked away, Billy after her.

Next day I was on watch early. My kind friend, the choreman, let me go
with him when he carried the lye from the hopper to the soap fat
barrel. Then he put more ashes on the hopper and set the pans of milk
in place for the evening call of Billy and his companion.

[Illustration: PAPOOSES IN BICKOOSES]

[Illustration: SUTTER'S MILL, WHERE MARSHALL DISCOVERED GOLD, JANUARY
19, 1848]

He pointed out the _rancheria_ by the river where the Indian herders
lived with others of their tribe, among them, Billy and his mother.
He also informed me that the squaws took turns in coming for the milk,
and that Billy came as often as he got the chance; that he was a nice
little fellow, who had learned a few English words from his white papa,
who had gone off and left him.

Billy and I might never have played together as we did, if my
brother-in-law had not taken his wife to San Francisco and left me in
the care of Mr. and Mrs. Packwood. Their chief aim in life was to
please their baby. She was a dear little thing when awake, but the
house had to be kept v