Lincoln's political career took off, but Reed's career fell apart despite the legal help, and so Reed put together a group bound westward, where things surely had to be better. Several people outside of the two main families joined up, and Lincoln could have been one of them under slightly different circumstances. We know that he'd always been interested in moving to California, and this would have been the perfect opportunity to do so. He already had family there waiting for him. Plus he'd been offered a government position on the West Coast, which would have been an easy alternative to serving in Congress.
But there was one problem: Mary Todd was pregnant. Or there were two problems, if you count the toddler the couple already had, as neither pregnancy nor the terrible twos make for comfortable wagon travel. So Reed had to venture forth without his buddy Abe (Mary Todd herself reportedly saw the party off as the wagons rolled away). Reed had to settle for a personal memento in place of his friend: some documents written by Lincoln concerning their time together in the military. Lincoln went on to Congress, the presidency, shaping the fate of the country, all that stuff. But in a different universe, we could have gotten a biopic about his life titled Abraham Lincoln: Cannibal Pioneer.