To maintain the secrecy which the commodore had
enjoined on us, McLane and I agreed to keep up the delusion by
pretending to be on a marketing expedition to pick up chickens,
pigs, etc., for the mess of the Columbus, soon to depart for home.
Leaving the midshipman and four sailors to guard the boat, we
started on foot with the other four for Sonoma Town, which we soon
reached. It was a simple open square, around which were some
adobe-houses, that of General Vallejo occupying one side. On
another was an unfinished two-story adobe building, occupied as a
barrack by Bracken's company. We soon found Captain Brackett, and
I told him that I intended to take Nash a prisoner and convey him
back to Monterey to answer for his mutinous behavior. I got an old
sergeant of his company, whom I had known in the Third Artillery,
quietly to ascertain the whereabouts of Nash, who was a bachelor,
stopping with the family of a lawyer named Green. The sergeant
soon returned, saying that Nash had gone over to Napa, but would be
back that evening; so McLane and I went up to a farm of some
pretensions, occupied by one Andreas Hoepner, with a pretty Sitka
wife, who lived a couple of miles above Sonoma, and we bought of
him some chickens, pigs, etc.
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