Harrington had made a trip few men could have made. He had risked his
life to save mine. All alone he had brought a yoke of oxen over a
country where the trails were all obscured and the blinding snow made
every added mile more perilous.

I was still unable to walk, and he had to do all the work of packing up
for the trip home. In a few days he had loaded the pelts on board the
wagon, covered it with the wagon-sheet we had used in the dugout, and
made me a comfortable bed inside. We had three hundred beaver and one
hundred otter skins to show for our work. That meant a lot of money
when we should get them to the settlements.

On the eighth day of the journey home we reached a ranch on the
Republican River, where we rested for a couple of days. Then we went on
to the ranch where Harrington had obtained his cattle and paid for the
yoke with twenty-five beaver skins, the equivalent of a hundred dollars
in money.

At the end of twenty days' travel we reached Salt Creek Valley, where I
was welcomed by my mother and sisters as one returned from the dead.

So grateful was my mother to Harrington for what he had done for me
that she insisted on his making his home with us. This he decided to
do, and took charge of our farm. The next spring, this man, who had
safely weathered the most perilous of journeys over the Plains, caught
cold while setting out some trees and fell ill. We brought a doctor
from Lawrence, and did everything in our power to save him, but in a
week he died. The loss of a member of our own family could not have
affected us more.