eat them. She had admitted to us that the
one thing she had in the house was saleratus, and she had used this
ingredient with an unsparing hand. When the meal was eaten she broke the
further news that there were no beds.

"The old woman can sleep with me," she suggested, "and the girls can
sleep on the floor. The boys will have to go to the barn."

She and her bed were not especially attractive, and mother decided to
lie on the floor with us. We had taken our bedding from the wagon, and
we slept very well; but though she was usually superior to small
annoyances, I think my mother resented being called an "old woman." She
must have felt like one that night, but she was only about forty-eight
years of age.

At dawn the next morning we resumed our journey, and every day after
that we were able to cover the distance demanded by the schedule
arranged before we started. This meant that some sort of shelter usually
awaited us at night. But one day we knew there would be no houses
between the place we left in the morning and that where we were to
sleep. The distance was about twenty miles, and when twilight fell we
had not made it. In the back of the wagon my mother had a box of little
pigs, and during the afternoon these had broken loose and escaped into
the woods. We had lost much time in finding them, and we were so
exhausted that when we came to a hut made of twigs and boughs we decided
to camp in it for the night, though we knew nothing about it. My brother
had unharnessed the horses, and my mother and sister were cooking
dough-god--a mixture of flour, water, and soda, fried in a pan--when two
men rode up on horseback and called my brother to one side. Immediately
after the talk which followed James harnessed his horses again and
forced us to go on, though by that time darkness had fallen. He told
mother, but did not tell us children until long afterward, that a man
had been murdered in the hut only the night before. The murderer was
still at large in the woods, and the new-comers were members of a posse
who were searching for him. My brother needed no urging to put as many
miles as he could between us and the sinister spot.

In that fashion we made our way to our new home. The last day, like the
first, we traveled only eight miles, but we spent the night in a house I
shall never forget. It was beautifully clean, and for our evening meal
its mistress brought out loaves of bread which were the largest we had
ever seen.