While we were eating our dinner the following day, some Indians came to us--one was a chief of another tribe. He was an educated chief and could talk our language. We had just gotten out of the tribe's territory where we had the time the night before. He told my uncle and my brother, Crawford, that those chiefs, whom Joel and I had taken, were bad men, and if we had brought them with us, they would have fixed them for us and that those bad chiefs had no more idea of our men going out and jumping onto them, than nothing in the world, and that that was all that saved us. He also stated that the bad Indians did not care how many of their men they lost, just so they accomplished the killing of the white people and got their stock. Joel kept his word in reference to the wine. He drove the ox team and wagon in which was the wine, also the bedding for uncle's family. He would claim he was sleepy, get the girls to drive for him, get the drinking cup, fill it two-thirds full when their backs were turned, and then come running and holloing for me to hold up, for he wanted a drink, as I had a keg of water in the hind end of my wagon. He would never spill a bit of it. I would drink part of it and Joel never let the rest go to waste. Joel was the prettiest runner I ever saw. He could run so level, that his head looked like it was sailing through the air. I never saw him outrun, and I had seen him run with some who were counted fast. He brought me wine several times. I asked him one day, how much wine there was in that keg. "O! There's right smart of it," he replied. I told him not to bring me any more, and that was the last he brought me, but I heard it was dry before we got through. CHAPTER IV OVER THE MOUNTAINS INTO CALIFORNIA While we were going down the Humbolt River, several days before we got to the sink or desert, six of our men got tired going so slow, and went on and left us. Uncle tried to get them to stay with us, but when they would go, he offered them provisions to take along. Four of them were so gritty that they would not take any. Two of them did. These four thought they would come to what were called "trading posts," but they had all gone back to California, as we afterwards found. The men had nearly starved to death. They had to shoot birds and they used everything they could find for food. These "trading posts" were kept by men who had brought on pack mules, provisions from California, to sell to emigrants and bought up weak stock and herded them on the grass until they got strong enough to drive across the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California.