Fort Kearny: A Short Story

We left Fort Kearny, and currently following the south side of the Platte River, we reached the California Crossing, but we had to cross sandbars, and almost landed on one that wasn't stable. We reached a steep hill once we had got done crossing the river. I was explaining to everyone that we need to stop, so we could remove something to make it easier on us. I had dumped some of my books, I was saddened by this because it reminded of my wife, and she loved to read. Anyway, how we moved the wagon down was by tying rope to a nearby tree and slowly descending the wagon downward, I also locked the wagon wheels by putting in blocks of wood and sliding it into the wheels. When we got done going down the hill, we had to help all the other wagons,
which took 3-4 hours. After we went down the hill we made it to a place called Ash Hollow, we immediately filled our water barrels to the brim with fresh water. After the one night stay at Ash Hollow, we went back onto the trail for three days, heading towards Courthouse Rock. We stopped there for lunch, I had took a couple notes of the rock; multiple layers of brule clay, coarse sand, and sandstone which was soft, gray sands, volcanic ash, capped off with solid rock. We also had something tragic occur, the Alan Shepard’s daughter that was 12 years old had died from malaria, we couldn't notice any of the symptoms, and she never told us about it. We buried her body in dirt, but I think it's too shallow but we had to continue on.