One incident among many serves to show her unfaltering courage; an Indian reached into her wagon to take the gun hung up inside: Mrs. Mary A. Denny pluckily seized a hatchet and drew it to strike a vigorous blow when the savage suddenly withdrew, doubtless with an increased respect for white squaws in general and this one in particular.
The great journey ended, at Portland her third child, Rolland H., was born. If motherhood be a trial under the most favorable circumstances, what must it have been on the long march?
On the stormy and dangerous trip from Portland on the schooner Exact, out over the bar and around Cape Flattery to the landing at Alki Point, went the little band with this brave mother and her babe.
On a drizzly day in November, the 13th, 1851, she climbed the bank at Alki Point to the rude cabin, bare of everything now considered necessary to begin housekeeping. They were imperfectly protected from the elements and the eldest child, Catharine, or Kate as she was called, yet remembers how the rain dropped on her face the first night they slept in the unfinished cabin, giving her a decided prejudice against camping out.
The mother’s health was poor and it became necessary to provide nourishment for the infant; as there were no cows within reach, or tinned substitutes, the experiment of feeding him on clam juice was made with good effect.
Louisa Boren Denny, her sister, then unmarried, relates the following incident:
“At Alki Point one day, I stood just within the door of the cabin and Mary stood just inside; both of us saw an Indian bob up from behind the bank and point his gun directly at my sister Mary and almost immediately lower it without firing.”
Mary A. Denny, when asked recently what she thought might have been his reason for doing so replied, “Well, I don’t know, unless it was just to show what he could do; it was Indian Jim; I suppose he did it to show that he could shoot me if he wanted to.”
Probably he thought to frighten her at least, but with the customary nerve of the pioneer woman, she exhibited no sign of fear and he went his way.
They afterward learned that on the same evening there had been some trouble with the Indians at the Maple Place and it was thought that this Indian was one of the disaffected or a sympathizer.