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preposterous. It was more like eighty miles! Almost a week without
water to replenish with, broiled by day and frozen stiff at night. It is a miracle
we have it behind us.
    Looking around me, I want to weep. We have lost many precious
weeks. Eight wagons are strewn across the desert, dry-rotted or axle-deep in
sand and alkaline sink slush. Countless oxen, cattle, and horses dead and
bloated under the broiling sun. Untold possessions—bureaus, trunks full of
clothes, dishes, silks, silver—the objects of a lifetime scattered or buried in
mounds the scurrilous Indians will surely strip away. All because of Hastings.
    No, I give him too much credit. There were those in this train
who were warned, I now know. Warned as early as Fort Laramie by the mountain
man named Clyman. And by pilgrims traveling with them until the Little Sandy.
And again, unbeknownst to me, by another mountain man just outside Fort Bridger.
Joseph Walker is his name, and, I am told, he is among the most knowledgeable
men in these God-forsaken parts. And of those forewarned who insisted on this
"nigher" way was James Reed himself! I cannot believe it.
    But I also cannot but feel pity for him now. All his possessions
save one wagon and two horses and the money belt he carries are gone. He is
lucky his family has survived, reduced as they are. As for me, I walk a lot.
The Eddys and the Breen family kindly let John
Alexander ride with them often. Poor young Mr. Halloran is dead of consumption,
and would have been anyway even had we been traveling smoothly up there on the
zephyrs and the clouds. It would take an entire book to fully describe the
agony this party has already gone through. Mr. Stanton and Mr. McCutchen have
been sent on ahead by horse and mule to California to bring back help and
supplies. But how far California is I cannot even hazard a guess. If they do
not soon return God knows what further horrors we will endure, for the company
is torn asunder in dissension and the food we have may not be sufficient.
    It is a comfort, as we rest up here by the Mary's, to recall the
news learned at Fort Bridger that the Grigsby-Ide Party—and therefore my dear
Husband Alexander—reached a place in California called Sutter's Fort a year ago
this coming month. But as I gaze at his son, John Alexander, who seems so
healthy, so miraculously unaffected by this ordeal, I find myself wondering if
we will ever see his father again. I weaken and must not think thus. But dear
God, the sun does loop over us further and further to the South each day, and
the days grow shorter.

Seven
    The Great Salt Desert and the mountains
that had nearly broken their backs were behind them now, as they worked their
way northwest, then west, then southwest along the Mary's River to its
sinkhole. Behind them as well, scattered across the mountains and salt desert,
were major portions of their will, spirit, and rationality. Their bodies cried
out for respite, but there was no time to rest. Pushing forward in their twelve
surviving wagons, their oxen and cattle, their few horses and dogs emaciated,
the emigrants strained to put twenty miles behind them each day. Normally, in
this high, rolling basin-land dotted with greasewood and sagebrush, it would
have been hard work and no more. But they were spiritually and physically
exhausted now, terrified by the time they had lost, and each day took a little
more of the life, strength, and humanity out of them.
    By chance, the Donners' oxen were the
least weakened by the torturous days in the Wasatch and the desert. They soon
pulled ahead of the rest of the train by a full day's ride. No one thought to
keep the wagons more tightly knit. Indians crept in one night and killed two
oxen, knowing they would be left behind. Two mornings later a horse was
missing. The losses, and the knowledge that Indians were watching their every
move, pushed all of them further toward the breaking point.
    Everyone walked now. It was easier on the
weakened animals.