It was dead of winter.

We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred pounds of bacon, flour, beans, blasting-powder, picks and shovels in it; we bought two sorry-looking Mexican "plugs," with the hair turned the wrong way and more corners on their bodies than there are on the mosque of Omar; we hitched up and started.

It was a dreadful trip.

But Oliver did not complain.

The horses dragged the wagon two miles from town and then gave out.