This was the situation when the bull outfit, from Cheyenne to Spotted Tail, was slowly moving along north of the Platte river in August, 1875--a time when Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies were nearly deserted, and all the young bucks were chasing antelope and incidentally collecting scalps of white men when they could find a white man alone and unprepared to defend himself; or when they could outnumber a bull outfit one hundred or two hundred to one and get its members in a "pocket," which was not often. At this particular time a young man who, a couple of years previous, had never known anything less comfortable than a feather bed, or a job harder than writing railroad way-bills, was one of two in the cross-country freighter crew who had been assigned by Wagon-boss Watson to mount a "pinto" pony and ride all day at least 1,000 yards away from the trail and keep to the high places where he could see what was going on, if anything, in the vicinity. He had been told to dismount and examine any signs of life on the ground where it was bare, or in the grass, and when found to fire one shot from his revolver to let the bullwhackers know that they had "company" not far off; and if he saw one Indian or a hundred to shoot not once but three times in rapid succession and then gallop to the wagon train with details. The movement across the desert-like country this day began at four a. m., and continued until ten a. m. The featherbed youngster was well equipped with an army Springfield of large calibre, forty rounds in his belt, two Remington revolvers and a butcher knife with a five-inch blade for the possibility of close quarters. He had a bottle of spring water and a saddlebag full of sandwiches of bread and fried sowbelly and plenty of chewing and smoking tobacco.