r Mary,--I am afraid you will go nearly crazy when you
read my letter. If Jerry" (the writer's eldest brother) "has not written
to you before now, you will be surprised to heare that we are in
California, and that poor Thomas" (another brother, of fifteen) "is
dead. We started from -------- in July, with plenty of provisions and
too yoke oxen. We went along very well till we got within six or seven
hundred miles of California, when the Indians attacked us. We found
places where they had killed the emigrants. We had one passenger with
us, too guns, and one revolver; so we ran all the lead We had into
bullets (and) hung the guns up in the wagon so we could get at them in a
minit. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon; droave the cattel a
little way; when a prairie chicken alited a little way from the wagon._

_"Jerry took out one of the guns to shoot it, and told Tom drive the
oxen. Tom and I drove the oxen, and Jerry and the passenger went on.
Then, after a little, I left Tom and caught up with Jerry and the other
man. Jerry stopped for Tom to come up; me and the man went on and sit
down by a little stream. In a few minutes we heard some noise; then
three shots (they all struck poor Tom, I suppose); then they gave the
war hoop, and as many as twenty of the red skins came down upon us. The
three that shot Tom was hid by the side of the road in the bushes._

_"I thought the Tom and Jerry were shot; so I told the other man that
Tom and Jerry were dead, and that we had better try to escape, if
possible. I had no shoes on; having a sore foot, I thought I would not
put them on. The man and me run down the road, but We was soon stopt by
an Indian on a pony. We then turend the other way, and run up the side
of the Mountain, and hid behind some cedar trees, and stayed there till
dark. The Indians hunted all over after us, and verry close to us, so
close that we could here there tomyhawks Jingle. At dark the man and me
started on, I stubing my toes against sticks and stones. We traveld on
all night; and next morning, Just as it was getting gray, we saw
something in the shape of a man. It layed Down in the grass. We went up
to it, and it was Jerry. He thought we ware Indians. You can imagine how
glad he was to see me. He thought we was all dead but him, and we
thought him and Tom was dead. He had the gun that he took out of the
wagon to shoot the prairie Chicken; all he had was the load that was in
it._

_"We traveld on till