One of the bulls, just before leaving the plain below, had playfully reached me with one of his heavy but unshod hind hoofs and keeled me over into a bed of prickly pears. For hours a kindly bullwhacker helped me pluck the sharp and brittle brads from my back. McDonald took a dislike to me, and naturally I lost any admiration I might have had for him. And here is where I made a fatal mistake. I shouldn't have noticed it; instead I took every opportunity offered to annoy him. One day, while in camp, at the instigation of an older man, I remarked that we were to have a change for supper. "And what will it be?" queried McDonald. "Bacon and coffee," I replied. "But we had that for breakfast," said he. "I know," said I, "but it was coffee and bacon--now it's bacon and coffee!" The fact is there was no game in the hills, at least we got none. I knew McDonald wouldn't like the joke, but I never believed it would be taken as a personal affront. He was, as a matter of fact, a bountiful provider, but expected to find plenty of grouse, venison, etc., on the trip and had therefore provided only flour, bacon and coffee. I met McDonald fifteen years later in the Middle West on a railroad train. He remembered me and hadn't forgotten the wound I inflicted by my alleged wit, for he said: "Yes, I remember you, and you were a poor stick!" I sincerely hope the last twenty-five and more years has softened his heart--if he lives--as it has softened mine, for I have only kindly thoughts of him, and even hold no grudge against the bull that reduced my efficiency by the playful caress he gave me with his hoof. * * * * * If you have ever tried to hoof it up a wild mountain stream running through towering cliffs of shale, without a trail, you can well imagine the task a bull-train outfit would have in working its way through the same maze of trees, rocks and rushing waters, winding from bluff to bluff. But these tasks were common undertakings for the men engaged in the business of freighting. "Corduroy" bridges consisting of gravel and poles had to be built, trees chopped down, fallen and dead trees removed, brush cleared away or used at the fording places. A pioneer trip of this kind, and a fair example, was one which took our outfit from Cheyenne to the headwaters of the Cache de la Poudre river in what was known as the North Park, some years before Centennial Peak, one of Colorado's principal mountains, was of enough consequence to be christened by the government.