But what about going to Oregon when springtime came? An interesting event was pending that rendered a positive decision impossible for the moment, and not until the first week of April, 1852, when our first-born baby boy was a month old, could we say that we were going to Oregon in 1852.
I have been asked hundreds of times how many wagons were in the train I traveled with, and what train it was, and who was the captain?—assuming that, of course, we must have been with some train.
I have invariably answered, one train, one wagon, and that we had no captain. What I meant by one train is, that I looked upon the whole emigration, strung out on the plains five hundred miles, as one train. For long distances the throng was so great that the road was literally filled with wagons as far as the eye could reach. At Kanesville where the last purchases were made, or the last letter sent to anxious friends, the congestion became so great that the teams were literally blocked, and stood in line for hours before they could get out of the jam. Then, as to a captain, we didn't think we needed one, and so when we drove out of Eddyville, there was but one wagon in our train, two yoke of four-year-old steers, one yoke of cows, and one extra cow. This cow was the only animal we lost on the whole trip—strayed in the Missouri River bottom before crossing.
And now as to the personnel of our little party. William Buck, who became my partner for the trip, was a man six years my senior, had had some experience on the Plains, and knew about the outfit needed, but had no knowledge in regard to a team of cattle. He was an impulsive man, and to some extent excitable; yet withal a man of excellent judgment and as honest as God Almighty makes men. No lazy bones occupied a place in Buck's body. He was so scrupulously neat and cleanly that some might say he was fastidious, but such was not the case. His aptitude for the camp work, and unfitness for handling the team, at once, as we might say by natural selection, divided the cares of the household, sending the married men to the range with the team and the bachelor to the camp. The little wife was in ideal health, and almost as particular as Buck (not quite though) while the young husband would be a little more on the slouchy order, if the reader will pardon the use of that word, more expressive than elegant.