Hayes afterwards died of a consumption presumably brought on by his dissipated habits and by his debaucheries.
Meantime the writer had started for Illinois the preceding summer, had been prostrated for four weeks with a fever, and late in the autumn of 1856 had returned to Kansas, there to remain.

The times were becoming quiet, the peaceful counsels of such leaders as Stringfellow and Abell were beginning to take effect, and it evidently would be safe for the writer to go to work on his claim.

But he needed a supply of corn, and had to go over into the Missouri River bottoms to buy it.
A heavy snow had fallen.

I had a heavy, well-trained yoke of oxen, and my faithful riding horse was obedient in every place.

Myself and brother-in-law had made a heavy Yankee sled that would hold all the load that was put on it.