Their coming to the camp was not noticed until they rode up to the door of the largest place. Then the barrier was thrown open, and a burly man with a round face and a cheery smile put in an appearance. "Hullo, strangers!" he sang out. "Where did you drift from?" "From forty miles up the Yuba," answered Josiah Socket. "Heard tell as how you had a tradin' place here." "So I have, but I ain't got very much left to trade with." "But you have something, haven't you?" asked Mark, anxiously. "Oh, yes,--some flour and beans and bacon, picks, shovels, pans, and such stuff," answered the man. "Take your hosses around to the shed, if you will," he added, and pointed to a door beyond the cabin proper. They followed his advice, finding three animals already in the building. In the shed was a sign: Horse feed inside. 50 cents a quart. Don't let the animal go hungry. "Gosh, but hoss feed comes high here," murmured Josiah Socket. "Howsomever, the hosses shall have all they want this trip. They deserve it, they do!" There was a door from the shed to the main building, and they passed through this, to find themselves in a well-heated apartment, piled high with stores of various kinds. Around a pot stove sat several men, smoking and drinking. All nodded pleasantly to the newcomers and made room for them, that they might warm up. They soon learned that the proprietor of the place was Abram Monkey and that he had with him three younger brothers,--which state of affairs had given the trading camp the name of the Four Monkeys. The Monkeys were from Chicago and had come over the Rockies with a heavy pack train during the past summer. Two of the brothers were running the trading place while the other two had thrown in their fortunes with the miners and prospectors. "Come over with your whole family, eh?" said Abram Monkey to Josiah Socket. "Well, you're a pretty brave fellow, I must say. Hope your wife likes it." "She will, after she gets acquainted," was the answer. "But there ain't none of us likes the winter." To be sociable, he treated all of the men present, and then began to do his trading. All of the commodities to be had were high in price, flour being fifty dollars per barrel, beans two dollars a quart, bacon and pork a dollar a pound, and even tallow candles fetching "two bits," twenty-five cents, each. But little in the way of clothing was to be had, flannel shirts bringing five dollars apiece and army blankets ten dollars each. The only vegetables were turnips and cabbages, the former worth a dollar a peck and the latter fifty cents a head, and rather wormy at that. "I am afraid my money won't go far," said Mark. He had twelve dollars belonging to Bob, Si, and himself, and ten dollars that had come from Maybe Dixon. "Never mind, I'll stake you for fifty dollars," answered Josiah Socket. "You can pay me back when you make your first haul o' nuggets."