Led on by the ever-fleeing hope of the great "strike" that might lie just ahead, the two men penetrated so far into the depths of this rugged mountain country that they were for some time out of the reach of mails, causing their friends to finally give them up as dead. Running out of funds, they were obliged to take work at what they could get, and Osbourne sold tickets in a theatre at Helena, Montana, and later took a job in a sawmill at Bear Gulch. At one place he and another man bought up all the coffee to be had, and, after grinding it up, sold it in small lots at an advanced price.
Failing in their quest for the elusive treasure, Osbourne and Orr, not being able to cash the cheques with which they were paid for their work, were at last compelled to borrow the money with which to make their way back to civilization and their families.
About this time the silver-mining boom in Nevada began to ebb, and there was an exodus of men and women, mostly discouraged and "broke," to San Francisco. As Mrs. Osbourne had arranged to meet her husband in that city, she decided to join some of her friends in their removal to the coast, and began to make preparations for the long, hard journey. In those days little girls wore very short dresses, with several white petticoats, like ballet dancers, and long white stockings. This dress seemed peculiarly unsuitable for the dusty stage trip across the desert, and Mrs. Osbourne, meeting the situation with her usual common sense, bought a boy's suit and dressed her little girl in it. The passengers called her "Billy," and a sensation was created among them when, after arrival at the Occidental Hotel in the bustling city of San Francisco, the child appeared in her own little ballet costume.
At this date, 1866, San Francisco was no longer a mere resting-place for the birds of passage on their way to the mines, but had become a settled town, with an air of permanency and solidity. It was then compactly built, for it was only the advent years later of the cable-cars that enabled it to spread out over its many hills. The glamour of the days of the first mad rush for gold, with their feverish alternations of mounting hope and black despair, was gone, but in its stead had come safety and comfort, and there were few places in the world where one could live more agreeably, or even more luxuriously, than in San Francisco in the '60's.
Here word was brought that Osbourne had been killed by the Indians, and life began to bear heavily upon the young wife and mother, stranded without means in a strange city. She put on widow's weeds and looked about for employment with which to eke out her fast diminishing store. When she was a little girl she had learned to do fine sewing on the ruffles for her father's shirts, and had always made her own and her child's dresses. This talent, which proved exceedingly useful at various times in her life, now served her in good stead. She secured a situation as fitter in a dressmaking establishment, where, on account of her foreign looks, she was thought to be French.
Friends were not lacking, for many looked with pity upon the supposed widow struggling to keep her head above water in a land so far from her own home and family. During her absence at work she left the child in the care of the kind-hearted landlady of the boarding-house and her young son, Michael, still gratefully remembered as "Mackerel" by Isobel. In the same boarding-house John Lloyd, the young Englishman of the Reese River days, had also established himself. On Sundays, no doubt to give the tired mother a long rest, he would take little Bel to the beach out by old Fort Point, where he made swords for her out of driftwood, played at Jack the Giant-Killer, and told stories about Mr. and Mrs. Sea-Gull and what they said to each other. He even borrowed fairy-tale books from the public library in order to learn stories to tell his little friend on these Sunday outings. There came a birthday, with very little to make it gay, but the kind-hearted young man bought a small jointed doll with his meagre earnings, and the mother made a set of beautiful clothes for it out of bits of bright-coloured silks she had saved from her sewing. This, with a little table whittled out of a cigar-box and a ten-cent set of dishes, made a glorious day for the happy child. This friendship was maintained in later years, and when the once poor clerk became a bank president, Fanny Stevenson put her money in his bank.
So life went on for the mother and child until one eventful day, when a tall, handsome man in high boots and a wide hat suddenly appeared at the door, and crying out, "Is this my little girl?" caught her up in his arms. As one risen from the dead, the husband and father had returned, and, to the child's amazement, they immediately moved into what seemed to her a very fine house, and she had a wax doll for Christmas.
For a few succeeding years happiness seemed to have returned to dwell with the little family. Osbourne soon made his way in the busy city and all went well. They lived in San Francisco for several years. There a son was born to them, and they named him Lloyd, after their good friend, John Lloyd, now a successful lawyer.
Those peaceful days were brought to an end when Mrs. Osbourne discovered that her husband had again betrayed her, and she returned to her father's house in Indiana. After nearly a year she yielded to entreaties and promises of reform, and again journeyed to California, taking Cora Van de Grift, one of her younger sisters, with her.
A little while after their return to San Francisco, in 1869, Osbourne bought a house and lot for his family in East Oakland, then known as Brooklyn, at the corner of Eleventh Avenue and East 18th Street. Settled under their own rooftree in the golden land of California, the family for a time were measurably happy. Mrs. Osbourne, who is described as being then "a young and slender woman, wearing her hair in two long braids down her back," was evidently making a strong effort to forget past differences and to make home a pleasant place for her children. Though she cared little for society in the general sense of the word, yet she contrived to gather about her in East Oakland a little intimate circle of clever, talented, and agreeable people. Among them were Judge Timothy Rearden, a well-known attorney and littérateur of San Francisco; Virgil Williams, director of the San Francisco School of Design, and his wife; Yelland, Bush, and other distinguished artists; the musician Oscar Weil, and many more whose names do not now come to mind.