Over the next ten days, Spitzer, the murderer, and Baylis Williams, one of Reed's teamsters succumbed to malnutrition. There was yet food enough, but the lack of anything save lean meat had too taxed bodies far gone after a two-thousand-mile journey that featured 200 miles of roads they made as they went. The simple lack of salt in a diet can induce extreme fatigue—the combination of factors was too much to bear.

Although their demises were predictable, they opened the floodgates of absolute panic: surely the strongest would go first, for the strongest had spent the most along their Westward journey—yet this upended logic perhaps portended something utterly unnatural had come home to roost.

I imagine this revelation was perhaps what spurred on the showshoers of mid-December, whose members had decided to turn away and wait out milder storms only ten days prior: the hand of Death was finally apparent. Hell had made its presence known. They Christened their party accordingly: "The Forlorn Hope."

On Christmas Eve, Patrick Breen noted in his journal, "Rained all night & still continues to rain...Poor prospect for any kind of Comfort, spiritual or temporal"

The following day, however, Margaret Reed engineered a minor Christmas miracle: she had effectively hoarded tripe, a cup of white beans, a little rice, a few dried apples, and a two-inch-square piece of bacon—in an environment such as this, such meager fare spread amongst five might be considered prodigal! Yet, the joy was such that the great strain on the family's food stores was even welcomed.

The snowshoers supped on a different kind of Christmas dinner.

They started out with 15, but Stanton, the bachelor who had ridden ahead to Fort Sutter and ridden back to bring aid and two Indian guides, went snow-blind. Stanton, who had found and forsaken his very own safety, who hadn't a family of his own to save, was the first to drop off The Forlorn Hope.

As the others told it, he simply sat down against a rock on the snow-covered trail. As the wind howled and the gales raged, he calmly lit a pipe and smoked—and exhorted the others to carry on without him. He was never heard from again.

A couple of the others turned back, but the rest plunged ahead into utter darkness, the storms growing so severe on Christmas that even their fire went out and for a time could not be re-ignited. After three days without food, some wanted to go back, but the Indian guides vowed to go ahead, and a critical mass concurred. There was now no turning back.