Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1875 — Adventurous Children. [ARTICLE]

Adventurous Children.

A correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle, who writes from Lower Lake, Lake County, Cal., tells the adventures of two juveniles in that locality: There is good stuff in those youngsters of Dr. Baker’s—every one of them; but my yam only concerns the two younger of the lot. Last Sunday the little one, Jenny, a girl of six or seven years, made her appearance in her mother’s room, demanding permission to go out deer-hunting with her brother. Claude is twelve years old, and killed a deer about the size of a buck rabbit one day last week, since when he can’t rest a moment in tlie daytime, and scarcely sleeps of night. It was ten o’clock when the children started, taking a dog with them. The mother thought no more of them until dinner-time in the evening. Then she became alarmed. Night approaching she was half wild. All hands, consisting of some ten or twelve miners, started out, some on horseback and some on foot. Night came; darkness settled down on the still valley w-ith a quiet that seemed like death. The mother became frantic. She heard an occasional gun fired off and knew that it was the doctor and men in pursuit of the lost children. She could not remain in the house another moment. She took the direction of the guns’ report as well as she could apd started after tlie crowd. It was uftlnight w-hen she came up to them. There was scarcely a half garment of any kind on her body. She seemed to have passed through a dozen deaths—all but the dying. From the time she joined her husband and the other men she led the crowd until, about three o’clock in the morning, they heard a dog bark, and in another moment were with the children, who were instantly wakened by the noise. Then it w-as. “ Howd’e do, mamma?” and “Howd’e do, papa?” and “Ain’t this a splendid tree to keep house under?” “We had to fight for it, though,” said Claude. “See here—we had to kill the first settler,” and sure enough there lay a California lion, one of the largest size, with a ball through his brain. Claude had shot him after dark. They had been lost, but the boy imagined he had struck the home trail and kept running on until he met the lion and shot him. Jenny says he was crouched down like a cat and not further aw-ay than across the room when they shot him. He sprang right into the air and tumbled at their very feet. Before starting from the house one of the men had put some biscuits in his pocket thinking the children would be hungry, and these he offered to them. “ No, thank you,” said Jenny, “we had quails for supper.” They had taken matches and Claude had shot the quails; these they had roasted on a stick, and of course they were not hungry. It w-as an elder sister of these two plucky youngsters who was out on horseback in a very wild tract of country. She was about twelve years old at that time, and had been hunting stock. All at dace she saw a pair of bright eyes looking at her from a tuft of tall grass. “ I’m going to see what you are, anyhow,” she said. She got down from her horse, and soon found that the»eyes belonged to “ the prettiest little darling she ever saw.” There were more of them, but she only captured one specimen and climbed back to her saddle. She had not gone a half mile before she heard something loping behind her. She turned around and saw a lion. She put her horse to his best speed and almost flew, she says, but the horrid thing gained on her. “Of course I knew what she wanted,” said the child, “but I didn’t intend to humor her selfishness. I didn’t take but one, and I left her two, and that’s as generous as anyone need be. But she couldn’t seem to see it. Anyhow, she just flew after us; and old Phil—talk about his being a fast horse —I wanted to break his neck. The lion gained on us at every step, till at last I took her baby and threw it at her. ‘ Now take it and leave, yop stingy- old thing,’ I said; and she did; she just grabbed him up in her mouth and put off, and I came home”. The mother says that nothing would give her more comfort than to know that her children were all afraid of their own shadows. But not one of them has ever shown a particle of cowardice in their lives, nor their father before them.