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everyone.
    On July 28, two log cabins surrounded by
a log fence took shape in the distant afternoon haze. The sight was
disappointing. They had expected more—a fort rather than a twin-structure
trading post and corral. As they drew closer, their disappointment grew to
apprehension. The wagons of the Bryant-Russell and Young-Harlan parties were
nowhere to be seen. Except for the two grizzled mountain men waving their hats
at the gate, Fort Bridger looked deserted.

Six
    Mary's
River
    September 30, 1846
    Praise God we have finally rejoined the California Trail
somewhere West of the Great Salt Lake. We are at a point, exactly how far from
California we do not know, that we likely would have reached weeks ago had we
not taken the short cut. Shortcut indeed! There is not a body among us who does
not wish we never listened to that man Hastings. And it is a miracle that only
one person has died after all we have been through in the past two months.
    If is hard to understand why Hastings would lead us into such an
ordeal, why he was not there at Fort Bridger in the first place as he promised.
How could he just leave word to follow the tracks of the two parties he went
off with? Why, Lord, would Bridger and his partner, Vazquez, praise the route
we have just taken, knowing what was involved?
    Weber Canyon was well nigh impassable, even after the two groups
with Hastings laid down a road, if you can call it that. When I think of
Hastings leaving a note on a berry bush for one of our party to ride ahead and
parlay with him, it makes me want to wring the man's neck! Bad enough, all of
it, but he had never seen the canyon route himself! He had relied on the
information of one of his illiterate scouts... My God, what gall. And then to
suggest that we cut through the mountains instead of the canyon, a suggestion
followed, I hate to say, more out of James Reed's concern for keeping the Palace Car in one
piece than anything else. How could these men be so blind? We had already
yielded four days resting and repairing at Fort Bridger. By the time Reed got back
from his ride to overtake Hastings and gain his hollow advice, five more days
were lost. Anyone here would pay dearly for those days now. But they were too
blind to see we should have doubled back then toward Fort Hall and the proven
way! Spilt milk, as Father used to say.
    Hastings would not even come back to guide us through the
mountains. I believe they are called the Wasatch, and none of us will ever
forget them. When dark the moon itself must look no more forbidding to the
angels. Underbrush and alder so thick along the streams the men could scarcely
hack their way through with broadaxes. Terrain so rocky and steep it is a
wonder we did not all slide to our doom. Twenty-one days to travel thirty-six
miles! Then, beyond the Salt Lake Valley and the desert, a veritable parade of
low-mountain chains running north and south. Praise God for the streams on the
Western side of each of those intervening valleys!
    It becomes obvious that George Donner is no leader of men. He is
too old, too soft, and does not have the manner. Thank God, unpopular as James
Reed has become because of his decision to cross the Wasatch, that he is with
us. No one else in the party, save William Eddy, is cut out for such
extremities as we have experienced. Most are but a degree better than
greenhorns and tenderfeet, and some lack the spines of men.
    Upon reading the last line I almost move to strike it out, for
the labors through the mountains—and Lord knows, across that Salt Desert—would
sorely tax even the strongest man. But the shirking—not by all, but by many—the
loafing and malingering and unwillingness to learn lessons that need be learned
quickly, have been inexcusable.
    By the time we reached the desert, we had lost many precious
days. Heaped on all that, Hastings's claim that the dry drive was but only
thirty-five or forty miles, and would take but two days and two nights, was
criminally