Oliver’s heart swelled into his throat, choking him.
“If――if you think best, sir,” he stammered. “But there’s that other dog. Mine――mine sleeps with me. He’s――a――good――dog; an awful good dog.”
“I know it, Oliver,” replied Lieutenant Frémont. “I know just how you feel. But he may be the means of saving our lives; he couldn’t die in better cause, could he? That Tlamath dog is only a pup; we must save him, to grow. Probably we’ll have to eat him later. But now――――” and hesitating, the lieutenant with his piercing blue eyes examined Oliver anxiously. “We wouldn’t ask it if it wasn’t necessary. It will be a little sacrifice, on your part, for the general good.”
“Well――――” faltered Oliver, his voice so weak that he was ashamed of it. “I remember――you and Kit told me I might have to eat dog; but I won’t eat _him_. I won’t! The rest can.” And quickly turning away, for fear that he was going to cry, he stumbled off among the trees.
Soon he heard a shot. That was it. Now his dog never again would nose his hand, or chase rabbits, or snuggle upon his feet, at night.
When Oliver sidled back to camp, trying to appear unconcerned, as befitted a mountain-man, suspicious pieces of fat meat already were laid out upon the snow in anticipation of the pot.
Now was it the dawn of a sharp, clear winter morning, February 2, 1844, in the Frémont and Carson rude camp of one skin lodge and several tents, on the upper water of the Carson River, at the Nevada-California line. Oliver awakened early, under his buffalo-robe brought from Taos: awakened to the crackle of camp fire, the stir of stiff figures, and the sight of Jacob the colored youth hurrying with a tin cup of steaming coffee for the lieutenant in the skin lodge. Jacob always tried to do this――to get the coffee there before the lieutenant his master was dressed. He explained that such was the custom in the south: the members of the family had coffee served to them before they were up.
Oliver awakened to another knowledge. This was the day when the main range of the Sierras was to be assaulted. Everywhere the fresh snow lay deep and trackless; the eastern sky was pink, and about the white peaks of the Sierras, high and close in the west, the clouds were breaking into filaments.