outfit got to Fort Laramie first would
be the winner. No more excitement could have been occasioned had the
contestants been a reindeer and a jack-rabbit. To my infinite delight
Simpson let me join his party.

My thousand-mile tramp over the Plains had cured me of the walking
habit and I was glad to find that this time I was to have a horse to
ride--part of the way, anyhow. I was to be an extra hand--which meant
that by turns I was to be a bull-whacker, driver and general-utility
man.

I remember that our start was a big event. Men, women and children
watched our chosen animals amble out of Salt Creek. The "mule
skinners," busy with preparations for their own departure, stopped work
to jeer us.

"We'll ketch you in a couple of days or so!" yelled Tom Stewart, boss
of the mule outfit.

But Simpson only grinned. Jeers couldn't shake his confidence either in
himself or his long-horned motive power.

We made the first hundred and fifty miles easily. I was glad to be a
plainsman once more, and took a lively interest in everything that went
forward. We were really making speed, too, which added to the
excitement. The ordinary bull team could do about fifteen miles a day.
Under Simpson's command his specially selected bulls were doing
twenty-five, and doing it right along.

But one day, while we were nooning about one hundred and fifty miles on
the way, one of the boys shouted: "Here come the mules!"

Presently Stewart's train came shambling up, and a joyful lot the "mule
skinners" were at what they believed their victory.

But it was a short-lived victory. At the end of the next three hundred
miles we found them, trying to cross the Platte, and making heavy work
of it. The grass fodder had told on the mules. Supplies from other
sources were now exhausted. There were no farms, no traders, no grain
to be had. The race had become a race of endurance, and the strongest
stomachs were destined to be the winners.

Stewart made a bad job of the crossing. The river was high, and his
mules quickly mired down in the quicksand. The more they pawed the
deeper they went.

Simpson picked a place for crossing below the ford Stewart had chosen.
He put enough bulls on a wagon to insure its easy progress, and the
bulls wallowed through the sand on their round bellies, using their
legs as paddles.

Steward pulled ahead again after he had crossed the river, but soon his
mules grew too feeble to make anything like their normal spee