Near the point where the affair occurred was a large train of wagons en route to New Mexico with valuable freight. The train had two hundred mules driven off by the Indians about twelve days ago, and it had been guarded by twenty-five men since, and it is probable that the Indians were there for the purpose of capturing the train as they had been firing into it previous to our arrival.[24] Stieffel tells us much more in his painting. Upon being attacked the train has pulled off the road, visible in the left foreground, and corralled. The horses remain hitched, witness to the suddenness of the attack. That the Indians did not venture overly close, as stated by Marcy, is indicated by the fact that Brotherton's men have not been forced to take cover behind the wagons. That the Indians appear closer than Marcy indicates is due to the artist's lack of perspective. They are firing muzzle-loading rifles, several men being in the act of ramming home charges. Stieffel is doubtless correct in this detail. The Chief of Ordnance reported in October 1867 that nearly all the infantry in the Departments of the Missouri and the Platte had been issued breech-loaders.[25] It seems more than probable that Company K, in transit as it was from the distant Department of New Mexico, had never seen the new weapons. In the matter of uniform, Stieffel may have been indulging his fancy somewhat when he pictured the men as wearing the long frock coat and black campaign hat. A miscellany of dress with the short fatigue jacket and kepi predominating would seem far more reasonable for an outfit which had just finished six rough years in the desert Southwest and was even then nearing the end of a 500-mile march. The artist, as did most observers of the period, has patently overestimated the number of Indians who must have carried firearms in the attack. Fully 50 percent or more of the Indians are pictured as so armed, a point which--understandable as it may be in the case of an observer participating in what may well have been his first Indian fight--is not borne out by the record. In the Fetterman Massacre of the previous December, of the 81 white men killed only six bore gunshot wounds,[26] and the best evidence indicates that the force which overwhelmed Custer on the Little Big Horn River in 1876 was at least 50 percent armed with bow and arrow.[27] Then again, General Marcy's report would seem to bear this out. Had the Indians been well armed, the freight wagon train, which Stieffel pictures corralled in the right background, could hardly have held out for twelve days against a force estimated at 300 or more warriors defended by only 25 men, at least a part of whom were Mexicans described by Marcy as badly frightened.[28] The soldier in the center background making a dash for the corralled wagons is probably a flanker cut off by the sudden attack, possibly the Lt. Williams who was wounded,