Impatient With Desire Read Online Free Page B

hump, and a welcome addition to the monotonous baked beans and pickles, but not worth the danger to me.
    Unlike her older sister, Elitha, who rides elegantly and is one with the horse, Leanna rides as she does everything: powerfully, pell-mell, full-out.
    No one spoke of her beloved Rouser, whom we had to leave behind, Leanna sobbing at the back wagon cover as she watched her pony growing small, smaller, until it was gone.

December 8th 1846
    Y esterday, Milt Elliott came over from the lake camp, and I cannot tell you what a tonic it was for us to see that dear open face. Milt has been with us since Springfield, ever faithful to his employer, James Reed, and to us. George has known Milt since he was a little boy, and though they’re not blood relatives, Milt was only one of many young men in Springfield who would do anything for his “Uncle George.”
    Milt says Mrs. Reed and the children and Mrs. McCutchen are doing as well as can be expected. More than two months now since James Reed was banished and rode off on one horse with Walter Herron, and nearly that long since Mr. Stanton brought back word that “Big Bill” McCutchen was recovering at Sutter’s Fort.
    When the weather breaks, Milt and Charles Stanton and William Eddy and others are going to try again to cross. We wrote out a list of things for Milt to bring back for us. Unable to rouse Jacob to sign the promissory note, George signed for him.
    We have requested horses, mules, and flour, promising to pay for them in California. Outside, I privately asked Milt to also bring back unguent, bandages, and whiskey.
    “You hankering for a drink, Mrs. Donner?” he teased, and I laughed and said, “Strictly medicinal purposes, Milt.”

December 11th 1846
    B efore we could hardly start counting the days, Milt appeared at our door again. Due to soft snow and drifts, he and the others didn’t get as far as the last attempt. “Don’t worry, Uncle George,” he said, “we have another plan. We’re making snowshoes. Graves saw them in Vermont and Stanton in upstate New York.”
    He handed me a letter from Mr. Stanton—addressed to “Donnersville,” which made George and me smile wryly. Charles Stanton traveled in our wagons from Independence on, and a more congenial traveling companion there never was. He was as keen on botanizing as I, and we spent many a pleasant nooning together on the prairies with their vast grasslands and profusion of wildflowers. One day we found wild peas, and my sister-in-law, Elizabeth, was ecstatic.
    In his letter, Mr. Stanton asked if we had any tobacco and if he could borrow my compass. “Graves is coming right back for his family,” he wrote, “and he’ll bring your compass back to you.”
    I can’t lend him my compass, I thought wildly, I’ll need it…
    “Mrs. Donner?” Milt said, and I realized he was waiting for my answer. George was looking at me too. I couldn’t think what to say.
    “We can spare some tobacco,” George said and got up to get it.

Dec 21st 1846
    A storm prevented Milt from leaving. He was with us nine days, staying in the teamsters’ hut. He sat at Jacob’s bedside with us all night long, George holding his brother’s hand until Jacob died, and he helped us bury Jacob in the whirling snow. He was there when our teamster Samuel Shoemaker died.
    Night before last, poor Milt, shaken and scared by the almost simultaneous deaths of Jacob and Samuel, and the moribund condition of our other teamster James Smith, wanted to leave for the lake camp immediately. It was with some difficulty that George persuaded him to wait until daybreak.
    We sat by the fire, and when I handed him a cup of coffee, his hands shook uncontrollably. I had to hold it for him to drink. “Sammy won the calf-lifting contest four years straight,” he said. “Nobody could beat Sammy.”
    “We don’t understand it either, Milt,” I said. “Young, healthy men like yourself, and we have been unable to rally them. They don’t seem to