[He finishes his drink, taking as long as necessary, most likely savoring it.]

Reinhardt confessed to the murder about a year later. [He makes another caipirinha.]

Spitzer did not need to wait nearly so long to meet his maker...but more on that in a bit.

† October 16, 1846

[He holds up his fresh cocktail as the fiddler begins to once again play "Loop #9: Strange Land."]

Perhaps you may recall, Dear Reader, that I began my tale with a bit of etymology regarding my beverage of choice. Allow me to regale you with another choice story of words and their meanings:

The Paiute tribe, a people lately not beloved by our protagonists (or whatever we may call them at this point), have an expression, roughly pronounced, "Tro-kay."

Upon first seeing White men, their great chief shouted it multiple times across a mountain meadow. The White men, for one reason or another, assumed the great chief was shouting his name, "Tro-kay! Tro-kay!"

However, the great chief was simply calling out, "Everything is okay!" in what is perhaps the closest natural cognate to pig Latin that I—an amateur Classicist—have ever heard. Of course, White men being White men, the chief was henceforth known to them as Tro-kay, but the pronunciation was bastardized to "Truckee."

The selfsame chief later became Fremont's guide—the very surveyor who said my shortcut would probably work.

That mountain meadow where the great Paiute chief first received his moniker now bears that name in his honor and still does today.

However, the mountain pass to which the meadow leads is today called Donner Pass—for it is where the Donner-Reed Party labored to cross the Sierra Nevadas all winter long.

[He drinks.]

In mid-October, the party arrived at the Truckee River, which led them straight to the mountains as they pursued its source. The closer they came to that meadow, the taller and finer the pine trees grew with the majesty that attends all things arboreal in California, but one cannot help but notice, even in the finest summer weather, that the forests that line the Truckee River and ring the Truckee meadow are worlds of right angles, formed by the weaker trees that have been rendered lean-tos by snow that can fall more than two feet in under an hour.

John Breen would later say that the heavy, winter clouds were hanging.

[The fiddler's playing fades.

His breathing starts growing erratic and, with violence, he snaps out of the nearly numb narration he has favored since John Snyder's death:]

GO!!!!

GODDAMMIT, GO! GO! GO! GO!

What more warning do you need? Oh, do not rest your cattle! Are you mad? Do you not understand winter is no trifling matter?

Did I not tell you—above all—to make good time? Why would I have turned you toward a cut-off if I thought it wise to dally? Had you not suffered for your speed enough to understand its importance?

For the love of Christ, GO!

[He stops yelling, but is still frantic as he recounts the following:]