It all started about 400 years ago. My father had married off all of his children but me, I was 18 and I lived with my parents on a very tiny farm in Pennsylvania. My 8 brothers and sisters were all wed to other fine men and women, but not I.

      Why? There was no one for me out there. I had plenty of suitors, but they all weren’t to my liking. Some were too flirtatious; I couldn’t trust them around others if we married. Others were too dumb; I intended conversations in my home to be somewhat interesting most of the time. One girl thought we were close enough that she could boss me around, so I rejected her and she went immediately to another man. Another girl I had my eye on was very shy, it took a lot to get her to talk to me. I savored the little words she did utter, but she never respected me enough to tell me she was seeing another man until the day before her wedding. There were lots of women in my town, but they had irritating laughs, crooked teeth, unpleasant moles, or personality flaws.

      Most would say I was too picky, I complained about the smallest flaw. The say no girl is perfect, but I just knew that I hadn’t met my ‘someone’ yet. I never felt my heart pound out of my chest, I never experienced being only able to think about the girl. Courtship seemed all too mediocre back then. I was young; I had nothing to worry about quite yet, or so I thought.

      Back in those days, the lands were overcrowded. Farms were the size of one home’s gardens. City’s spilled out, growing larger and filling into the countryside. Many people just packed away everything and headed for Oregon Territories, because they were promised free land.

      My parent’s were skeptical at first; they feared that there was no free land. Assuming it was probably a lie, or there was some catch to it that you wouldn’t know about until too late, we just stayed put. We never considered it until my sister went with her husband’s family as a Pioneer. Before she left, we told her to promise to write to us the full details of her journey and what was promised at the end of the trail.

      Nearly a year later we got a letter from the Pony Express. Annabelle told us the journey was easy on them considering, and that there actually was cheap, if not free, land waiting for anyone.

      We wrote back immediately saying that we were coming the next spring.

      Before we knew it she sent us a reply, she said it had taken a little bit for them the claim their land. She told us how pretty and fertile it was out there. Annabelle really missed living close to us and so her husband did something drastic. Billy, her husband’s brother, was just over the age limit required to stake a claim. They had him claim the lot right next to their families in my name. He would pose as me for as long as it took for us to travel there so that we could move in as soon as we got there. It made my parents glad that there would be even less hassle for them when they arrived.

      By the time spring came around, we were not even close to ready. Father couldn’t sell the farm and we needed money and supplies still for the journey. In fact, we didn’t leave until that summer.

      Once I was on the trail, I really felt the rush of excitement. I could hunt and scout about in the nature, I felt so free in the untamed lands of America. Manifest Destiny was our nation’s mindset, and I was doing my part to achieve it. I was becoming a man on that journey; my parents said that the land in Oregon was mine. Father was getting old and he promised the lot in my name to me if I promised to care for him and my mother.

      However, since we left so late in the year, we had less time to reach the Oregon Territory before winter closed in. We had to speed up, causing a decrease in our health, our rations were running low, the oxen were getting tired, and then our wagon broke down.

      I started to fear as we lost vital days while trying to repair the wagon. We continued on more carefully, but then momma got cholera and succumbed to her illness just after we got through the Rockies. Father got depressed and barely spoke a word, other families in our train started dying in the disease. Oxen died too. Eventually our train had thinned out so many people that we threw all our stuff into two wagons. That’s when I met Charlie for the first time. I was 18 and he was 12. I lost my mother just before his parents and sister all died of dysentery. While my father decided to become a hermit in his sadness, I adopted Charlie as my own.

      He and I had liked each other since the start, but we got really close when I took him under my care. I taught him to use a gun and hunt and we did everything together. He looked up to me a lot and would fight any other child with a foul word about me. To him, I was a brother. To me, he was my son.

      Winter was nearly upon us as we reached the foothills of the last mountain range. After a lengthy dispute, it was decided that we would try to cut through the pass quickly since there were so few of us. That was a bad idea.

      A blizzard struck us and we were trapped, we couldn’t go through or turn around. We were stuck. The food ran out just as it got really bad and tensions were high.

      After 3 days, Charlie was the last child alive, we huddled to keep warm at all times. I would collect clothes from those who died and would put them on his small freezing body. Some of the corpses I scavenged I was not surprised to find murdered. There were heated disputes among the few survivors. I feared for myself and Charlie and we kept well hidden in the trees most times. Everyone I found dead had their throats slit, but there was hardly any blood around the bodies.

      By the time I found my own father’s body murdered, I began to wonder greatly who was killing. It’s funny how I did not care about anyone not close to me being slaughtered, but I suppose it was a situational block of emotion. With a mission, I looked for all those I knew were survivors of our train. I only found body after body hidden in the snow and whitened out by the blizzard. I found no one alive, and no one to question. Totaling it up, the only ones left alive were Charlie and I.

      Forgetting about my quest, I returned to the boy without a thought of who may have murdered everyone if everyone was murdered. Poor thing was so close to slipping into death when I rejoined him in the refuge of a pine tree. He was so week and fragile, he was so cold he stopped shivering. Charlie just looked up at me and smiled before he closed his eyes. I held him close, also smiling, as I closed mine.

      And we slept for the last time.