A few members of the party died even as the first relief team guided them over snow up to 25 feet deep in the mountain passes. Yet Margaret Reed and her two oldest children held on and one day they heard a voice ring out in the blistering wind—Reed had spotted the eldest girl at a distance and started running; he was with the second party of men to enter the mountains from Sutter's Fort.

Margaret Reed collapsed instantly so that her husband had to raise her up out of the snow. In the journal he was compelled to keep so that he might detail the use of the funds he received for the purposes of the rescue, Reed wrote that everyone begged him miserably for bread, which he had. He crossed out an aside that his wife was the only one who did not request her fair share so that the children of the party could eat more.

Charlotte—Charlotte would have done the same—and she likewise would have wanted no mention of her heroism, but Charlotte did not survive the desert...

Reed found his wife, Reed found his children and when he reached the camp at Truckee, Reed saw the youngest two, including his heroic eight-year-old little girl, were safe as well, if severely underfed.

Reed personally rescued them all.

His daughter displayed a similar gumption: though told to carry along absolutely nothing, she nonetheless hid her doll so that she might "rescue" it, too. No one realized she had taken on this ever-so-slight extra burden until they camped on the way back over the mountains to Sutter's and she took the little dolly out to talk to it of the day's adventures. The hardened men who had come to retrieve her were awe-struck at what would have been such a normal sight in almost any other set of circumstances.

And so Reed, Great American Sisyphus in his PALACE WAGON, miraculously pushed the rock over to the other side of the hill. To top if off, his wife was somehow cured of her migraine headaches! Imagine such a thing! Imagine such a tale! What would the Ancients have said of Reed's sudden defiance of gravity! Of Divine Order and Natural Law! What would they have thought of the cattle thieves who had wandered through life without the slightest grudge from even the lowest god on their blasted totem pole!

Just what, Dear Reader, had my classical education prepared me for? Certainly not the American Frontier!