he did the best he could with little help, manpower having been depleted by recruitment for earlier rescue parties and the absence of men who were fighting in the war with Mexico. Detractors claim Woodworth moved too slowly, perhaps from incompetence, perhaps indolence, perhaps even cowardice. Billy Graves, who was capable of getting things wrong, claimed that he saw Woodworth lollygagging around camp drunk.
Whatever the cause, the delay was over now. It had stopped snowing, and Woodworth and a precariously small party—just two or three other men—were on their way at last.
AT STARVED CAMP, THE BREENS suffered through the cold and isolation. The history of the Donner Party owes much to Patrick Breen's diligence as a diarist, for his chronicle of the long months at the lake cabins is a unique and invaluable record. But once Breen and his family left the lake, Patrick abandoned his journalistic role entirely. Peggy Breen, on the other hand, is a silent figure at the lake but one who takes center stage during the rescue.
At Starved Camp, both before Reed's departure and after it, she appears to have been among the more energetic adults, attending to the children, including her own, with far more vigor than her husband. This heroic role eventually caught the eye of a writer named Eliza Farnham, who interviewed Peggy Breen about the sad days at Starved Camp. It is to Peggy Breen's account that we largely owe our knowledge of what happened.
The remnant faded toward death almost as soon as Reed and the others walked away. Elizabeth Graves died first, followed by her son Franklin. Almost as bad, the fire kept melting the snow, and the platform of green logs began to sink, so that with each passing hour the flames were a little farther from the skeletal figures in need of the heat. Without the chance to warm themselves, they would all surely perish.
JAMES REED PITCHED FORWARD INTO THE SNOW like a man felled by a gunshot. His snow-blindness had returned, and he stumbled along insensible to his surroundings, an incapacitated man who somehow kept moving. His feet were bleeding, the result of bad frostbite suffered during the storm.
Walking away from Starved Camp, Patty had done the best she could, but eventually she succumbed to her weariness and could go no farther. She was no toddler. At nine, she was heavy enough to constitute a substantial load for a man in good condition, let alone one who had almost died the night before. But there was no other choice, so her father bent down to a knee and took her on his back. To keep his hands free, he drew a blanket around her, then pulled the ends across his chest and tied them to a sturdy stick.
Soon Reed began to fall, although the indestructible Miller, who was already carrying Tommy Reed, heaved him back to his feet and sent him along the way. Even on her father's back, Patty weakened, until at last Reed realized that his daughter was dying, that she was almost gone already. At camp, Reed had taken a frozen, empty sack that once contained dried meat and held it over the fire. When it softened, he carefully scraped the inside seam, where a few tiny crumbs had clung to the fabric. He produced a teaspoonful, perhaps less, but even this was a treasure to be prized. Like a miser hiding a nugget of gold, he placed the tiny serving in the end of the thumb of one of his mittens, literally the last bite of food they possessed.
Now it was needed, so Reed carefully peeled off the mitten, plucked the frozen speck from its unorthodox storage bin, and placed it in his mouth to thaw. When it seemed edible, he took it from his lips and gently fed it to Patty by hand. She revived, and they went on, without even the smallest morsel in reserve.
PEGGY BREEN CHECKED ON THE SLEEPING CHILDREN one by one, holding a hand before every mouth and nose to wait for the soft exhale of breathy fog. But when she came to her James, who had been doing poorly, she felt nothing. Panic rose in her chest like a rush of rage. She called to her husband that his son was dying, pleading for his help.
'Let him die,' Patrick replied. 'He will be better off than any of us.'
Even decades later, the memory of that instant was etched sharply in Peggy's mind. She said her heart stood still when she heard her husband's words. She sat stunned for a moment, then set to work, rubbing her son's chest and hands, trying to generate some circulation and breath once more. As she had when her eldest son, John, fainted and nearly fell into the fire, she broke off a piece of lump sugar and forced it into James's lips. He swallowed, moved his arms and legs a little, and then at last opened his eyes.
26
A Broken Promise
From the beginning of the relief effort, the rescuers marching into the mountains carried along motives as varied as their own lives. Some men strove to save their families. Some worked to fulfill a vow to old traveling companions. Some volunteered to save utter strangers. Some asked about the pay.
As time went on, intentions grew murkier, especially for Charles Cady and Charles Stone, two of the men whom Reed had detailed to stay at the camps and care for the survivors. The day after the main relief party walked away, Stone left his post at the lake cabins and hiked over to Alder Creek, where Cady had been stationed. Nicholas Clark, the third rescuer left at the camps, was out hunting.
Provisions were still plentiful, and there was every reason to believe help was on the way, but Stone and Cady decided they would flee. They struck a deal with Tamzene Donner, whose three little girls were still healthy enough to make it out. Stone and Cady agreed that in return for a fee, perhaps as much as five hundred dollars, they would take the girls. It was an offer that Tamzene had apparently already proposed to the members of Reed's now-departed relief party, who were too over-burdened with survivors to accept.
When the deal was done, Stone and Cady took the three little girls up the steps and stood them on the snow. Tamzene emerged and put on their cloaks—red and white for Eliza and Georgia, blue and white for Frances —then pulled the matching hoods up around their ears.
'I may never see you again,' she told them, 'but God will take care of you.' Georgia thought her mother seemed to be talking more to herself than to them. and chilled them. In the morning, it had to be scraped off their covers before they could get up.
But once they were out of bed, Stone and Cady made a shocking and shameful announcement. They had no intention of taking the girls over the pass, as they had promised Tamzene. Instead, they were leaving the youngsters in the cabin and going on without any survivors at all. Their decision to flee, suspect from the beginning, was revealed as a disgrace. They were supposedly there on a rescue mission, but now they were leaving without rescuing a soul. They would not stay and care for the sick. They would not carry out a child. They were just leaving.
TWO DAYS LATER, THE DESERTERS HAD CROSSED the pass and were walking through Summit Valley when they passed Starved Camp. Cady and Stone noticed the site, for Cady said later that they passed it at about two in the afternoon, something he would not have been able to pinpoint if they had walked by unknowingly.
But amazingly, neither man offered to help. They did not stop and share their provisions. They did not offer to carry a child or lead a sick adult. They gathered no firewood. So far as we know, they did not even stop to offer words of hope or encouragement. Both were in relatively good condition; they were two of the three self-described 'young spry men' who had gone ahead of the second relief party to reach the lake camps early. (To be fair, at some point Cady suffered frostbite on his feet, but that was a comparatively minor matter.) They had been in the mountains a relatively short time, and thus were hardly in the late stages of starvation. They had not even spent a night in the open, since the previous day when they first left Truckee Lake they had been turned back by the blizzard and retreated to the relative safety and warmth of the cabins.
Cady and Stone had once displayed the admirable courage of all the rescuers, perhaps more. Their willingness to forge ahead of the rest of the party on the way into the mountains showed both physical stamina and personal bravery. But at some point, both men lost their moorings. Perhaps the horrors they saw at the camps overwhelmed them. For whatever reason, the same tenacity with which they first rushed into the wilderness on an errand of mercy was now displayed as they rushed out in a desperate bid for self-preservation. Maybe the real surprise is that the other rescuers didn't do the same.
