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magnanimously.
    "The man who rode up with the
message yesterday —will he be traveling back with us?"
    "The mountain man? No. He left early
this morning for Fort Laramie. Lansford Hastings will be our guide."
    Elizabeth
thanked him and returned to the wagon. She felt like a fool.
    On July 19, with the going easier each
passing hour, they camped at the waters of the Little Sandy. Under the willows
that lined the creek, a vote was taken. A few California-bound wagons elected
to follow the Oregon Trail to Fort Hall and then cut southwest on the proven
route. All twenty wagons under the influence of James Reed and George Donner
voted to follow the freshly cut tracks of the Bryant-Russell party and the
Young-Harlan contingent ahead of them. They had cut off here toward Fort
Bridger, Lansford Hastings, and the new, shorter route.
    Elizabeth was surprised when George
Donner was elected leader of the party rather than James Reed. But she knew the
wealthy sixty-two-year-old farmer and Reed were the closest of friends, and
that Reed's judgment, however much the less affluent voters of the party might
resent him, would be no small factor in any decisions Donner made. For all
James Reed's somewhat lofty, slightly patronizing manner, she felt secure with
him, safe. He was forty-six, in splendid physical health, and he had already
displayed his fatherly protectiveness of her.
    Handsome, blond, strapping Lewis Keseberg
had found excuses to visit the Palace Car , obviously smitten with
Elizabeth. James Reed had finally put a halt to it, extricating Elizabeth from
what had become an awkward situation and sending Keseberg permanently back to
the wife he beat regularly in the privacy of their wagon.
    George Donner's tiny forty-five-year-old
wife, Tamsen, was
the only one in the party who seemed disappointed with the choice of the new,
shorter route. Normally gregarious and high-spirited, she walked along beside
her wagon now, gloomy and dejected as the wheels, oxen, and small clusters of
beef and dairy cattle raised a thin cloud of dust around the train. It was
relatively easy going over this arid tableland, and everyone else was happy.
Elizabeth was content. She had long since dismissed her fears after the nightmare
as the foolish reaction of a young girl alone with her baby far from home.
Holding John Alexander in her arms and rocking him as she stood in the well of
the wagon behind Reed's driver, she gazed westward over scattered sagebrush to
the point where the earth fell away under a sky dotted with buttermilk clouds.
Four hundred miles shorter was four hundred miles sooner. Four hundred miles
less before she saw her beloved Alex again.
    The next ten days were a series of almost
leisurely rides between campsites and campfires. Night meals had a festive air.
During the day several men, Reed among them, rode out and returned with kills.
Antelope, rabbit, and bighorn sheep dressed and cured in the Rockies, sizzled
over blazing logs in the cool, early evening. Later the fiddles and banjos were
broken out, and there was dancing under the brightest moon Elizabeth had ever
seen. Accustomed to the howling of wolves and the gargled yipping of coyotes in
the dis tance, she
and John Alexander slept without stirring each night.
    They crossed the Big Sandy, then followed
its north bank to the Green River. On their left a small cluster of low bluffs
broke the monotony of the flat, barren country, and there seemed to be
mountains a long way ahead. But for now all they had to do was follow the fresh
tracks of the two parties traveling ahead of them and let the beasts of burden
do the rest. Occasionally deep sand and boulders slowed their progress and
stirred the men to brief bursts of intense effort. But for the most part their greatest
difficulty was staying awake. They crossed the Green and then wove back and
forth across Black's Fork Creek, washing their feet in less than six inches of
deliciously cool water. A drowsy, lulling contentment settled over