caught for support, as I discovered that I could not stand alone. Mother now looked over at me, but I straightened up and made a great effort to appear in fair condition as usual. When she took her eyes off me I caught hold of the front of the wagon box, and thus supporting myself, managed to reach the wagon tongue and straighten up just as mother looked at me again. My last desperate effort was to walk along the wagon tongue, having it for a support. But my scheme failed, for at that moment mother rose quickly to her feet and uttering some cry of alarm, caught me in her arms. Oblivion claims the balance, for of this day, this accident, and this encampment, memory fails to recall another thought or impression.
Having found it convenient to mention George Beale in my story, I will say further of him that he came to Oregon, but I do not remember seeing him after the day I had the misfortune to supercede him as teamster of the meat wagon. However, about twenty-five years after arriving in Oregon, George Beale and a confederate named Baker (not Andy) were convicted of the murder of an old man by the name of Delaney, who crossed the plains in 1843. The murder was committed for money, and Beale and Baker were hanged for the crime in Salem, Oregon. This man Beale taught a little school near our house in Missouri when I was about four years old, and had struck me with a switch because I could not distinguish between the letters "B," "P," "Q," and "D." When he struck me I was very much frightened, and grabbed the stick, broke it, jumped out at the door, ran home and never returned to that school. This was the only time I was ever struck in school, and I don't remember that I was ever insulted in school by a teacher but this one time. After the hanging of Beale I sometimes remarked that the only teacher that ever dared to strike me was hanged. My children when they were attending school heard me say this, and one day while we were living in Salem, one of my little boys, who had heard me say this while we were at supper, spoke up and said, "Pa, why don't they hang my teacher; she struck me today with a ruler, and you said that the teacher that struck you was hung?"
We descended a long steep hill into Grande Ronde Valley, so late in the evening that we had no view of the valley as we
