e were
winding grew constantly higher, and the quantity of pine timber
upon their summits greater. Just as dusk was beginning to creep
down we came around one which might fairly have been called a
small mountain, and saw Rapid City spread out before us, the
largest town we had seen since leaving Yankton. We skirted around
it, and came to camp under another hill and near a big stone
quarry a half-mile west of town. There was a mill-race just below
us, and plenty of water. We fed the horses and had supper. There
was a road not much over a hundred yards in front of our camp,
along which, through the darkness, we could hear teams and wagons
passing.

"I wonder where it goes to?" said Ollie.

"I think it's the great Deadwood trail over which all the
supplies are drawn to the mines by mule or horse or ox teams,"
said Jack. "There's no railroad, you know, and everything has to
go by wagon--goods and supplies in, and a great deal of ore out.
Let's go over and see."

The moon was not yet risen and the sky was covered with
clouds, so it was extremely dark. We took along our lantern, but
it did not make much impression on the darkness. When we reached
the road we found that everywhere we stepped we went over our
shoe-tops in the soft dust. We beard a deep, strange creaking
noise, mixed with what sounded like reports of a pistol, around
the bend in the trail. Soon we could make out what seemed to be a
long herd of cattle winding towards us, with what might have been
a circus tent swaying about behind them.

"What's coming?" we asked of a boy who was going by.

"Old Henderson," he replied.

"What's he got?"

"Just his outfit."

"But what are all the cattle?"

"His team."

"Not one team?"

"Yes; eleven yoke."

"Twenty-two oxen in one team?"

"Yes; and four wagons."

The head yoke of oxen was now opposite to us, swaying about
from side to side and swirling their tails in the air, but still
pressing forward at the rate of perhaps a mile and a half or two
miles an hour. Far back along the procession we could dimly see a
man walking in the dust beside the last yoke, swinging a long
whip which cracked in the air like a rifle. Behind rolled and
swayed the four great canvas-topped wagons, tied behind one
another. We watched the strange procession go by. There was only
one man, without doubt Henderson, grizzled and seemingly sixty
years old. The wagon wheels were almost as tall as he was, and
the tire