[He finishes his drink and makes himself another caipirinha.]

† October 5, 1846

Civility began to run as low in supply as other provisions. The teamsters, any of whom could have made it across on a horse, but none of whom could have afforded one, were the first to crack.

At Iron Point, the temperature easily north of 100, Nevada, the Reed's team of oxen became entangled with those belonging to the Graves family, another large, relatively moneyed clan on the trail. Milt Elliott, the Reed's man, a trusted farmhand from back in Illinois, got into an altercation with John Snyder, the Graves' hired man.

James Frazier Reed—the Polish viscount himself—deigned to get involved, at which point Milt Elliott stepped aside as ordered, but John Snyder would not budge.

And this, Dear Reader, is where our story seriously gets dark:

John Snyder kept screaming obscenities and James Frazier Reed kept barking orders but neither of the two would budge. Men in either wagon yelled and women began protesting and Milt Elliott tried to intervene again, but James Frazier Reed would not allow it.

Neither he nor John Snyder would move and John Snyder, who had been whipping the oxen in earnest—both oxen that were his boss's and oxen that were not, which might have been the original bone of contention if anyone actually could have remembered—John Snyder turned his whip on James Frazier Reed himself, striking him about the face and shoulders so that he bled.

Just as the argument took a turn toward the physical, Margaret Reed, the invalid wife, had alighted from her viscountess throne or whatever she sat on in the palace wagon; she intervened just in time to receive one of the bullwhip's opening blows and get punched squarely in the face, resulting in what might have been her first legitimate migraine headache on the Westward journey.

Whether Reed registered that his wife was hurt or in danger or falling by the side of the trail in her petticoats, bleeding from her nose and mouth, or whether blind instinct had already started him toward his own weapon, no one will ever know.

In an instant, with a ghastly crunch of cartilage, James Frazier Reed drove his Bowie knife straight through John Snyder's sternum, just below the clavicle and so deeply that it penetrated the hired man's heart and killed him almost immediately, though Snyder managed one, final blow with his bullwhip that felled Reed to his knees—whereupon Reed at once threw his Bowie knife over the pinion juniper and into the Humboldt River below, and, empty-handed and sobbing with remorse, he watched John Snyder die, as the oxen around them were continually spattered by their blood. All of this took perhaps two minutes, if even that.

How quaint, James Frazier Reed! Whoa-ho-ho, Sir James! What HONOR! What ARISTOCRATIC BEARING!

Need I mention that the great man dug his inferior's shallow grave? Need I mention Snyder was an orphan so there would be no one to inform?

He was—

He was—

Just like Charlotte.

[Suddenly, he is completely cowed and ashamed by his derision, undoubtedly certain what Charlotte might have thought of it.

Just as suddenly, he flies into a rage:]