Imagine, now, a missive from your favorite author—a man of some renown, his renown based exclusively on his helpfulness, his usefulness—imagine, now, that author places a handwritten note—at his own, not insignificant expense—for YOU. He is intimately familiar with your plight in the (literal) desert and fawningly eager to help! Is this not manna? Is not His Word the one you followed West?? And, how, Dear Reader, does this emigrant react? What, Dear Reader, might this torn and famished soul declare?

"How'm I supposed to read THAT? Why'd he have to put it up so HIGH? Anyone ever teach him proper penmanship?!"

Cassandra Tamsen, I'm sure, led the choir of complaint! This is the same woman who first bought my guide, lent it to her husband, induced her brother-in-law to buy his own copy, and even induced her literary SAH-lon read it! Such shabby treatment from so a loyal reader! Oh, how I pray to the heavens that you, Dear Reader, shall not thus forsake me!

Accordingly, on the 6th of August, James Frazier Reed and two other men rode ahead of their wagons to overtake me in the flesh. I watched them ride up from the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake.

Well, I'll be damned, James Frazier Reed!

After camping with them that night, I accompanied them back partway, to point out the route I thought they ought to travel, which I told them should take about a week. Yes: I understand I had volunteered to take the full journey. I understand what was not delivered in my actions, but someone had to ride ahead to guide effectively! Could I expect an emigrant in the wagon train ahead to ride back to warn of trails that were not fully working? No, I could very well not!

Besides, Dear Reader, besides...A man does not knowingly get on a sinking ship nor does he casually send one off to sea! Similarly, a man does not know when he might have the chance to play the part of the hero—if he did, there would be nothing so heroic about it. The crux of heroism is valor despite utter unpreparedness—or at least some element of surprise or disadvantage.

I had absolutely no reason at all to think anything was out of the ordinary! I was quite simply imparting the best knowledge I could and carrying on as planned. That is all! Perhaps you think that is not enough, but I was not of that opinion at the time! And now? Well now that is just a ludicrous question to ask me—unless you think me utterly a monster!

When I parted ways with Reed after pointing out the way, this was what was on my mind, if you must know: of the roughly 2,700 emigrants that year, roughly—let's say approximately—2,611 had gone on ahead in the maximum amount of safety that life in the West could at that time afford; exactly 87 were behind me.

† August 11, 1846

Reed and I had parted ways the day before; on August 11th, the Donner-Reed Party began blazing an entirely new trail so that their wagons might make the trip West. The brush of the Wasatch Mountains proved even less forgiving than the raked and boulder-strewn floor of Weber Canyon: in only 18 days, the party traveled a mere 39 miles through the Salt Lake Valley, emerging where the mountains turn purple.

At the end of those 39 miles, neither James Frazier Reed nor I had a friend in his eponymous wagon train.

[He looks as though he might lose his composure as he has a number of times already, but he manages to take a different tack:]