He does not see himself as a superstitious man. He sees himself as a practical man. Stealing robes from a funeral scaffold is simply foolish for anyone to try, given all they've heard about the Sioux. He does not like being snared in another man's foolishness. Near the wagons he sees animals grazing, children running loose, burning off the day's stored restlessness.
Women hunker at the cooking fires.
His wife will soon be laying out a tablecloth wherever she can find a patch of grass. Such a poignant scene it is, and all endangered now by the thoughtless greed of this fellow who pulled up to the rear of the party on just such an evening and asked if he could travel with them. George Donner had met the man briefly in St. Louis before they crossed the Mississippi. At the time Jim had no reason to protest. Keseberg is young and fit, somewhere in his early thirties, and he is not a drifter or a desperado as some of the younger, single riders have turned out to be.