She said, 'I am bound to go to my children.'
She seemed very cold, and her clothes were like ice. I think she had got
in the creek in coming. She said she was very hungry, but refused the
only food I could offer. She had never eaten the loathsome flesh. She
finally lay down, and I spread a feather-bed and some blankets over her.
In the morning she was dead. I think the hunger, the mental suffering,
and the icy chill of the preceding night, caused her death. I have often
been accused of taking her life. Before my God, I swear this is untrue!
Do you think a man would be such a miscreant, such a damnable fiend,
such a caricature on humanity, as to kill this lone woman? There were
plenty of corpses lying around. He would only add one more corpse to the
many!"
"Oh! the days and weeks of horror which I passed in that camp! I had no
hope of help or of being rescued, until I saw the green grass coming up
by the spring on the hillside, and the wild geese coming to nibble it.
The birds were coming back to their breeding grounds, and I felt that I
could kill them for food. I had plenty of guns and ammunition in camp. I
also had plenty of tobacco and a good meerschaum pipe, and almost the
only solace I enjoyed was smoking. In my weak condition it took me two
or three hours every day to get sufficient wood to keep my fire going.
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