CHAPTER II 
GETTING STARTED 
Next day we set out by rail for Hillsboro, a cow 
town at the foot of the Black Range some seventy- 
eight miles from Silver City. This was our real 
starting point, where Brown and Ewing, the pack- 
ers, were to meet us with an outfit of twenty burros 
and the two horses they needed for ‘‘wrangling.”’ 
For a considerable part of our progress through the 
mountains would be along narrow trails where 
wagons are impracticable and where packing with 
burros is by far the safest and cheapest method of 
moving camp. 
At the station in Silver Cig: just before starting, 
an amusing but somewhat disquieting incident oc- 
curred. We were busy getting our stuff on the train 
—each man having a bed of three or four blankets 
rolled in a sixteen foot ‘‘tarp’’ and a dufflebag full 
of clothes, when Horace arrived and indicated a 
formidable pile of bags and boxes as his contribu- 
tion. 
Frazer eyed the array aghast. 
‘‘What’s all that?’’ he exclaimed. 
“‘My outfit,’? replied Horace, with pardonable 
pride. 
9 
