“‘To park,’” said Jack, in a low voice.  “New and interesting verb.  He mean’s turn ’em out to grass.  We mustn’t appear green.”  Then he said to the man: 

“Yes, we reckoned we’d park ’em down there to-night.”

The next day was the coldest we had experienced, and we were glad to walk to keep warm.  We were getting among the smaller of the hills, with their tops covered with the peculiarly dark pine-trees which give the whole range its name.  We camped at night under a high bank which afforded some protection from the chilly east wind.  Now that we were all sleeping in the wagon there was no room in it to store the sacks of horse-feed which we had, and we knew that if we put them outside Old Blacky would eat them up before morning.

“There’s nothing to do,” said Jack, “but to carry them around up on that bank and hang them down with ropes.  Leave ’em about twelve feet from the bottom and ten feet from the top, and I don’t think the Pet can get them.”

We accordingly did so, and went to bed with the old scoundrel standing and looking up at the bags wistfully, though he had just had all that any horse needed for supper.  But in the morning we found that he had clambered up high enough to get hold of the bottom of one of the sacks and pull it down and devour fully half of it.  He was, as Jack said, “the worst horse that ever looked through a collar.”

[Illustration:  The Rattletrap in the Storm]

But the weather in the morning gave us more concern than did the foraging of the ancient Blacky.  It was even colder than the night before, and the raw east wind was rawer, and with it all there was a drizzling rain.  It was not a hard rain, but one of the kind that comes down in small clinging drops and blows in your face in a fine spray.  Jack got breakfast in the wagon, and we ate the hot cakes and warmed-over grouse with a good relish.  Then we loaded in what was left of the horsefeed, and started.

It was impossible to keep warm even by walking, but we plodded on and made the best of it.  The road was hilly and stony; but by noon we had got beyond the rain, and for the rest of the way it was dry even if cold.  The hills among which we 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.”