Sage Butte, and on their arrival loaded the wagons and put up their
horses for the night. They set out again before sunrise and were glad
of the spare team when they came to places where all the horses could
scarcely haul one wagon through the soft black soil. There were other
spots where the graded road sloped steeply to the hollow out of which
it had been dug, and with the lower wheels sinking they had to hold up
the side of the vehicle. Great clods clung to the wheels; the men,
plodding at the horses' heads, could scarcely pull their feet out of
the mire, and they were thankful when they left the fences behind and
could seek a slightly sounder surface on the grass.

Even here, progress was difficult. The stalks were tough and tangled
and mixed with stiff, dwarf scrub, which grew in some spots almost to
one's waist. There were little rises, and hollows into which the
wagons jolted violently, and here and there they must skirt a bluff or
strike back into the cut-up trail which traversed it. Toward noon they
reached a larger wood, where the trees crowded thick upon the track.
When Edgar floundered into it, there appeared to be no bottom. Getting
back to the grass, he surveyed the scene with strong disgust; he had
not quite got over his English fastidiousness.

Leafless branches met above the trail, and little bays strewn with
trampled brush which showed where somebody had tried to force a drier
route, indented the ranks of slender trunks. Except for these, the
strip of sloppy black gumbo led straight through the wood, interspersed
with gleaming pools. Having seen enough, Edgar beckoned Grierson and
climbed a low hillock. The bluff was narrow where the road pierced it,
but it was long and the ground was rough and covered with a smaller
growth for some distance on its flanks.

"There's no way of getting round," he said. "I suppose six horses
ought to haul one wagon through that sloo."

"It looks a bit doubtful," Grierson objected. "We mightn't be able to
pull her out if she got in very deep. We could dump half the load and
come back for it."

"And make four journeys? It's not to be thought of; two's a good deal
too many."

They yoked the three teams to the first wagon, which promptly sank a
long way up its high wheels, and while the men waded nearly knee-deep
at their heads, the straining horses made thirty or forty yards. Then
Edgar sank over the top of his long boots and the hub of one wheel got
o