a military or paid force. The flankers
rode far and wide searching endlessly for game and usually wound up with
the advance guard, a mile or more ahead. The rear guard dwindled rapidly
and soon joined the others far in advance, leaving the crawling wagons
entirely unprotected from any sudden attack by Indians who might have
lain concealed in one of the numerous prairie hollows.

There were four conditions every twenty-four hours especially liked by
the savages. One was during the night, between midnight and dawn;
another as the caravan got under way, when there was more or less
confusion and the wagons had broken the corral formation enough so it
could not be re-formed quickly; a third was during the day when every
man who did not have to drive was galivanting a mile or more away,
blazing at rattlesnakes or prairie dogs and making a fool of himself
generally, his thoughts on everything except the safety of the train he
had deserted; and the fourth was in the evening just as the animals were
being staked outside, when most of the men were busy with them and some
distance outside the wagon ramparts, many of the more careless being
unarmed. To offset these conditions so favorable to surprise attacks on
the caravan was one of the captain's most important duties, and the
urgent consideration of water and good grass many times complicated his
problems.

Captain Woodson at one time had been a trapper, and his early
experiences with the fur expeditions here stood him in good stead,
especially his knowledge about Indians. He continually hammered at the
men to flank properly and to scour the country on each side of the
caravan for a mile or more and to investigate every hollow and rise
capable of hiding horses. Before he called the halt for the "noonings"
or the encampments in the evenings, he urged that the surrounding
country be well scouted over and everything suspicious reported. For the
crews of the two cannons, which had been changed the morning following
the narrowly averted calamity of a few days back, he had picked men who
appeared to be calm and resourceful, and these weapons trundled along on
their wheeled carriages in a strategic position, their crews ordered not
to leave them unattended at any time during the day's march--but who
cared for orders?

The trail here being easy and plain, the banks of the streams cut by the
previous caravan, Tom dropped back after a brief exploration along the
flanks, which he made b