"Where do you expect to find the Kiowa trail, Bill?"
"Well, from here, we'll follow this ol' lodge-pole trail; it turns off from the Walnut a few miles up the creek an' goes over to the Smoky Hill, which is about twenty miles from here; an' about opposite this point on the Smoky is a mail station on the Denver stage route, an' I reckon we'll be able to find out from the station men whether the Kiowas have gone up or down the river an' lay our course to suit."
"When we first came here," I informed him, "it looked like the last travel over the trail had been about two months before--that would have been about September--and the tracks were going toward the Smoky Hill; but they might have been made by Cheyennes or 'Rapahoes."
"We'll be apt to find an old moccasin, or a broken arrow, or somethin' dropped or thrown away on the trail, before we travel very far, that'll tell what tribe travelled it last," remarked the scout.
"I noticed that you don't carry any picket-pin," I remarked; "how do you picket your horse out?"
"I picket him to a hole in the ground. I dig a hole with my knife about a foot deep; tie a big knot in the end of my lariat; put it down in the bottom of the hole; fill in the dirt an' tamp it down hard as I can with my foot; an' that'll hold him 'bout as good as a picket-pin, an' saves the trouble, an' saves my horse the weight of the iron pin; an' I always try to lighten my horse's load of every ounce I can do away with. An' when I'm out by myself, or where there's nobody to stan' guard at night, I make my bed with my head on my saddle, 'bout half-way 'tween my horse an' the end of my lariat that's buried, an' if anything strange comes in sight the horse'll begin running 'round at the end of his rope, an' dragging it over me'll wake me up."
"Well, your way of doing these things is just about the same as we were trained to do in the cavalry," I remarked.
"Why, of course," replied Bill, "for nearly all I know about scouting is what I learnt from the ol' cavalrymen an' ol' army officers. You take one of them ol' soldiers or officers that's been out on the frontier fifteen or twenty years, an' what he don't know about such matters ain't worth knowing."
In the morning, after breakfast, while assisting the two scouts to saddle up and pack their mule, Jack cut off an antelope ham and tied it in their pack, "to give them a starting of fresh meat," as he said.
