If he'd known that he was going to be caught up in a flood, lose the gold, bust an arm, live with a crazy woman and her three daughters, run a supply station for trail drives up the Chisholm Trail, battle renegade Indians, search centipede-infested caves for one sister, and scour the Indian Territory for another, then maybe he would have taken a different trail back to East Texas.
But he didn't, and because he didn't, his life was never the same and neither were the lives of the four women.