The strong, healthy men
composing the relief parties frequently could travel but five or six
miles in a day. If she made the journey, and found her husband was dead,
she could have no hope of returning on the morrow. She had suffered too
long from hunger and privation to hope to be able to return and overtake
the relief party. It was certain life or certain death. On the side of
the former was maternal love; on the side of the latter, wifely
devotion. The whole wide range of history can not produce a parallel
example of adherence to duty, and to the dictates of conjugal fidelity.
With quick, convulsive pressure of her little ones to her heart; with a
hasty, soul-throbbing kiss upon the lips of each; with a prayer that was
stifled with a sob of agony, Tamsen Donner hurried away to her husband.
Through the gathering darkness, past the shadowy sentinels of the
forest, they watched with tearful eyes her retreating form. As if she
dared not trust another sight of the little faces - as if to escape the
pitiful wail of her darlings - she ran straight forward until out of
sight and hearing. She never once looked back.
There are mental struggles which so absorb the being and soul that
physical terrors or tortures are unnoticed. Tamsen Donner's mind was
passing through such an ordeal.
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