Don Wildman

It also takes a big toll on the wagons.

The wagons get stuck in the muck because there's moisture underneath the surface, right?

Yeah, this sort of classic scenario of the really, really hot days and then the really cold nights, all the conditions that that causes.

They're losing their animals.

How many days does it take to get over this desert?

Because they've run out of water, right?

And all of this has the consequence of delaying this trip further and further.

What was supposed to take just, I guess, two days.

This was supposed to be a 40 mile trip on this in the shortcut takes 80 miles of desert in six days, which, you know, it doesn't sound overwhelming, but they start to pile up these days and it's going to all become this problem of having been late leavers.

And then also these delays along the way.

At some point, they rejoin the original trail at Humboldt River, and that Hastings cutoff has cost them by that point a month of time.

Fateful.

There's a moment, a sort of personality thing that happens here when two wagons become entangled and all the tensions that have been going on sort of

They reach a boiling point.

And out of frustration, one of the hired help who's trying to work on these wagons, a guy named John Snyder, I think, began to beat the oxen of Reed's.

And James Reed intervenes.

And Snyder, they have a huge fight.

You know, he pummels him with his whip handle.

This has a chain reaction of sorts, right?

Wow.