California--magic word! Not one of those who were hurrying to wish the travelers God-speed, nor any of the band who were leaving their homes, but felt the thrilling promise and the presage of that new country toward which the emigrants were about to turn their faces. The crowd of friends gathered at the Reeds' home, where their great prairie-wagons and those of the Donners were drawn up in a long line before the door; the provision wagons, filled to overflowing with necessities and luxuries, the family wagons waiting for their human freight. Mr. James F. Reed, who had planned the trip, was one of Springfield's most highly respected citizens, and the Donner brothers, who lived just outside of the town, had enthusiastically joined him in perfecting the details of the journey, and had come in to town the night before, with their families, to be ready for an early start. And now they were really going! All through the previous winter, in the evening, when the Reeds were gathered before their big log fire, they had talked of the wonderful adventure, while Mrs. Reed's skilful fingers fashioned such garments as would be needed for the journey. And while she sewed, Grandma Keyes told the children marvelous tales of Indian massacres on those very plains across which they were going to travel when warmer days came. Grandma told her breathless audience of giant red men, whose tomahawks were always ready to descend on the heads of unlucky travelers who crossed their path--told so many blood-curdling stories of meetings between white men and Indian warriors that the little boys, James and Thomas, and little black-eyed Patty and older Virginia, were spellbound as they listened. To Virginia, an imaginative girl, twelve years old, the very flames, tongueing their way up the chimney in fantastic shapes, became bold warriors in mortal combat with emigrants on their way to the golden West, and even after she had gone to bed it seemed to her that "everything in the room, from the high old-fashioned bedposts down to the shovel and tongs, was transformed into the dusky tribe in paint and feathers, all ready for a war-dance" as they loomed large out of shadowy corners. She would hide her head under the clothes, scarcely daring to wink or breathe, then come boldly to the surface, face her shadowy foes, and fall asleep without having come to harm at the hands of the invisibles. Going to California--oh the ecstatic terror of it! And now the day and the hour of departure had come!