with each
other in giving away their property. There was no chance to sell, and
they disliked to destroy their goods.

Long after the end of the mania for getting rid of goods to lighten
loads, the abandonment of wagons continued, as the teams became weaker
and the ravages of cholera among the emigrants began to tell. It was
then that many lost their heads and ruined their teams by furious
driving, by lack of care, and by abuse. There came a veritable
stampede--a strife for possession of the road, to see who should get
ahead. It was against the rule to attempt to pass a team ahead; a wagon
that had withdrawn from the line and stopped beside the trail could get
into the line again, but on the march it could not cut ahead of the
wagon in front of it. Yet now whole trains would strive, often with bad
blood, for the mastery of the trail, one attempting to pass the other.
Frequently there were drivers on both sides of the team to urge the
poor, suffering brutes forward.

[Illustration: _United States Geological Survey_

The Platte River. Along this old stream the Oregon Trail wound its way
for nearly five hundred miles.]

We were on the trail along the north side of the Platte River. The
cholera epidemic struck our moving column where the throng from the
south side of the Platte began crossing. This, as I recollect, was near
where the city of Kearney now stands, about two hundred miles west of
the Missouri River.

"What shall we do?" passed from one to another in our little family
council.

"Now, fellers," said McAuley, "don't lose your heads, but do jist as
you've been doing. You gals, jist make your bread as light as ever, and
we'll take river water the same as ever, even if it is most as thick as
mud, and boil it."

We had all along refused to dig little wells near the banks of the
Platte, as many others did; for we had soon learned that the water
obtained was strongly charged with alkali, while the river water was
comparatively pure, except for the sediment, so fine as seemingly to be
held in solution.

"Keep cool," McAuley continued. "Maybe we'll have to lay down, and maybe
not. Anyway, it's no use frettin'. What's to be will be, 'specially if
we but help things along."

This homely yet wise counsel fell upon willing ears, as most of us were
already of the same mind. We did just as we had been doing, and all but
one of our party escaped unharmed.

We had then been in the buffalo country for several days.