The answer came back as quick as a flash, "I'm going to stay with you without asking."
And he did, too, though my brother was almost a total stranger to him.
We nursed the sick man for four days amidst scenes of death and excitement such as I hope never again to see. On the fifth day we were able to proceed and to take the convalescent man with us.
The experience of our camp was the experience of hundreds of others: there were countless incidents of friends parting; of desertion; of noble sacrifice; of the revelation of the best and the worst in man.
In a diary of one of these pioneers, I find the following: "Found a family consisting of husband, wife, and four small children, whose cattle we supposed had given out and died. They were here all alone, and no wagon or cattle in sight." They had been thrown out by the owner of a wagon and left on the road to die.
From a nearby page of the same diary, I read: "Here we met Mr. Lot Whitcom, direct from Oregon. Told me a great deal about Oregon. He has provisions, but none to sell; but gives to all he finds in want, and who are unable to buy."
DURING the ox-team days a mighty army of pioneers went West. In the year that we crossed (1852), when the migration was at its height, this army made an unbroken column fully five hundred miles long. We knew by the inscribed dates found on Independence Rock and elsewhere that there were wagons three hundred miles ahead of us, and the throng continued crossing the river for more than a month after we had crossed it.
How many people this army comprised cannot be known; the roll was never called. History has no record of a greater number of emigrants ever making so long a journey as did these pioneers. There must have been three hundred and fifty thousand in the years of the great rush overland, from 1843 to 1857. Careful estimates of the total migration westward from 1843 to 1869, when the first railroad across the continent was completed, make the number nearly half a million.
The animals driven over the Plains during these years were legion. Besides those that labored under the yoke, in harness, and under saddle, there was a vast herd of loose stock. A conservative estimate would be not less than six animals to the wagon, and surely there were three loose animals to each one in the teams. Sixteen hundred wagons passed us while we waited for Oliver to recover. With these teams must have been nearly ten thousand beasts of burden and thirty thousand head of loose stock.