"O, yes, we can," he said. "We will get on the trail and go first one way and then another, until we get up."
We were six days getting everything to the top of that mountain, and when we got up, we rested one night. The first horse uncle lost was getting up this mountain. He was a little weak, stumbled and fell off the trail and that was the last we ever saw of him.
The next morning we yoked up the oxen and all got ready to start. Uncle instructed me to lead out. Right on top of the mountain, it was pretty level for some distance. I drove on ahead of the rest. I came to where I saw I had to go down again. I stopped, locked both hind wheels of my wagon, rough locked them by wrapping a chain twice around the felloe and tire, so the tire would ride on the chain and make it drag hard on the ground. I started down. I had not gone far until I found I was going down the same kind of a mountain we had been six days coming up. A little further down, the trail got very narrow. I was on the left side of the oxen, for that was the side upon which we had always taken when driving. That put me on the lower side, so that if I had been knocked off, that would have been the last of me. I stopped and let the wagon pass me, so that I could get on the upper side to drive. When I crossed behind the wagon, the dust blew up in my face so thick that I could not see my wagon, and that was the last I saw of those oxen until nearly sun down.
I went down the mountain as fast as I could. I had no idea I would ever see those oxen again, but when I got down on level ground at the foot of the mountain, where I could see, off about one hundred yards, there stood my oxen and wagon, right side up. There were three yoke of them, six head of cattle, but my near ox, next to the wheel, died that night.
The first ones to come down following me, were uncle and aunt. They were in a light one-seated top buggy, the one they had used all the way across the plains. Uncle had his feet under the buggy, holding down the hind axle tree, while aunt had the lines, driving. They drove a brown mare, which I had taken from Indiana and a black horse they had fetched from Wisconsin.
Aunt was saying, "O, Bailey, I will be killed, I will be killed."
"Hold on Susan, hold on, Susan," answered uncle.
The team was nearly setting down on their hind parts and just sliding. They could not move their feet to step for rods at a time.
"How did you ever get down that mountain," uncle asked when he saw me.
"I will never tell, uncle," I said.