"Tomorrow morning, I reckon."
"You won't have any trouble. A patrol went down yesterday and broke a track. I'd ride with you myself if I wasn't expecting a load of freight."
"Then you do get freight in winter?"
"Oh sure. But it's three times as hard to get it here in winter as it is in summer. Three times as expensive, too. The summer rate per pound between here and Independence is a little short of ten cents. The winter rate is almost thirty-two cents."
"Whew! And I need supplies!"
"Laramie's the place to stock up," Dunbar assured him. "You'll buy anything here at just what it would cost you in Independence plus freight, and you'll get summer freight rates on what's here now. That's a lot better than it was. I've seen the time when coffee and sugar were $2 a pound at Laramie, and flour sold for $40 a hundred. It still does at some of the trading posts. The mountain men who run them know how to get an emigrant's last nickel. That's why it's better to stock up here."
"Suppose an emigrant without any money comes through?"
"Plenty of them don't have any, or at least they say they don't. They get enough to see them through. One purpose of this fort is to help emigrants, and letting them starve isn't helping them."
"You run away now, Daddy," little Emma directed. "We must get our fort built."
"Orders from a superior officer," Dunbar grinned. "I'd better report for duty."