Peanuts was the oldest, and therefore came in for the most consideration and the lightest load.  As he raised his tired, patient old head, his long gray ears pointed forward at the sight of the pack saddles.  One glance and he was satisfied.  He perfectly understood what was coming, and visions of the long, zigzag paths through shaded valleys all fresh from the summer showers flashed through his brain.  Peanuts loved the trail, the deep, long, grassy trail, that crept along close to the little stream, then up and up into the great Silent Places.  Tradition told that Peanuts had been the first donkey to carry a pack up Pike’s Peak, as well as the first to bring real “high grade” out of the Cripple Creek; but of course tradition might have been mistaken.  At any rate, Peanuts was a gentle, slow, patient toiler of the trail, and it was largely due to his good judgment that the cabin was ever equipped.

Many were the trips he made after that first journey.  There were summer trips in the hot sun of July days; autumn trips in the cool, sweet-scented evenings when the mountain twilight lingers on the treetops and the rocky crests.  There were trips in the winter when the trail was hidden underneath heavy blankets of snow or lost in the deep white drifts.  Once he had gone in beyond his depth and had settled down and down into the fluffy snow until just his head and big ears were visible above the snowbank.

His companion, Tuberculosis, was a little different type of beast.  His legs were long and his spirits high.  He was in the prime of life and was not as trustworthy as his partner.  Certainly Tuberculosis had his idiosyncrasies, and that fact often spelled trouble for both himself and his masters.  Now, Peanuts had learned that his driver was always boss, and acted accordingly; but not so with Tuberculosis.  He believed that his own judgment in certain matters of conduct was best.  For instance, it was absolutely against his principles to ever cross a stream, no matter how well it was bridged or how insignificant its size.  Yet, after many experiences, seasoned with a little strenuous persuasion from the end of an alder limb, he began slowly to change his views.  However, he positively had no use for burned stumps, and when it came to passing a campfire, Tuberculosis absolutely declined.  There was just one thing that both donkeys very firmly believed, and that was that each was to lead and the other follow when on the trail.  This was the only point upon which they really ever quarreled, and most every time Peanuts, because of his mature judgment and statesmanship, won out.

When the pack saddles were on, and the pack bags of food adjusted on either side, the blanket rolls piled high on top, they were ready to begin the journey, “Donkeys are a good deal like some men,” observed Ham as the little column came to the base of the hogsback, “they always have to travel by freight.”

“How is that?” questioned Willis, who had appointed himself guardian to Peanuts and was just ahead of Ham.