Daniel James Brown

That night, his stepdaughter, Virginia Reed, sneaks out of camp,

goes ahead and finds her stepfather, gives him a gun and some biscuits, and that's the only resource that she has to give him.

So he heads off on his own on what looks like it will be a death march because he has no resources at all.

But he heads off towards California on foot, although.

And that'll turn out to be important later in the story because he actually does eventually, just barely, but he makes it through the mountains before the snows close him.

The reality is he was an older man.

He was 60-something, which to me doesn't seem so old.

But he was one of the oldest people, and he was a Belgian immigrant.

And as his feet were swelling up and getting worse and worse, he kept begging different families to take him in their wagon so he could ride in the wagon.

Most of these people did not ride these wagons.

Most of these people walked a thousand miles across the continent.

They used the wagons for hauling provisions, but they walked.

Hardcoop got to the point where he couldn't walk anymore.

And finally, they just left him sitting by the roadside.

The day came when nobody else would take him in the wagon, and the party just proceeded without him.

And that was the end of Mr. Hardcoop.

So the party is becoming very fractious at this point.

People, tempers are running very short.

The whole thing with John Snyder has happened.

hard coop thing happens one of the young men is killed by an accidental discharge of a weapon another young man dies of tuberculosis all this while they're crossing nevada and those things are really unwinding before they ever get to the mountains right and they have run into native americans there are contentious moments so they chase away their their animals some shot some of the horses and