Three days later we started east, Capt. Mills and Lieut. Harding with their companies, expecting to go about one hundred miles before locating permanently for the summer. I started out in advance of the command with my entire force of scouts. We traveled about fifteen miles together, when we separated, four taking the north side of the emigrant trail, with instructions to keep from four to five miles from it; four keeping the trail and four, with myself, south of the trail. I gave the men north instructions in case they should find an Indian trail to follow it until they were sure the Indians were making for the emigrant trail, and then dispatch one man to notify the men on the trail, the other three follow the Indians, and at the end of three days all were to meet at a certain point on the trail where, we expected to meet the soldiers. The second day out we struck an Indian trail south of the road, but it being an old one we did not follow it but made a note of the number we thought there were in the band, an that night we pulled for the emigrant trail, expecting to meet the soldiers there. We did not meet the soldiers, but met the four scouts who had traveled on the emigrant trail. We got no word that night from the men north, but according to agreement we went to a hill near by and built two fires of sagebrush, that they might know where we were, and if in need of assistance they could dispatch, but did not see nor hear anything of them. The next morning I kept the emigrant trail myself, sending the other squad of men south, with instructions to meet me at Humboldt Wells, telling them about the distance it was from where we were then camped, and describing the place to them. There we would wait until the command came up, as we were now running short of rations. That day the party south struck the same trail that we had seen the day before; two of them followed it and the other two came to camp to report. The party that had started out north of the trail got into camp just at dusk, tired and hungry, and the following morning at daylight the other two from the south came into camp. From what I could learn from them the band of Indians they had been following were traveling along almost parallel with the emigrant trail, looking for emigrants, as it was now getting time that the emigrants were beginning to string along across the plains en-route for the gold fields of California. Our provisions had run out, so we sat up late that night awaiting the arrival of the command, but we looked in vain.