mit. We frequently saw mirages, though we were never led astray by
shady groves of timber or tempting lakes of water, but always kept
within a mile or two of the trail. The evening of the third day after
Forrest left us, he returned as we were bedding down the cattle at
dusk, and on being assured that no officers had followed us, resumed
his place with the herd. He had not even reached the Solomon River,
but had stopped with a herd of Millet's on Big Boggy. This creek he
reported as bottomless, and the Millet herd as having lost between
forty and fifty head of cattle in attempting to force it at the
regular crossing the day before his arrival. They had scouted the
creek both up and down since without finding a safe crossing. It
seemed that there had been unusually heavy June rains through that
section, which accounted for Boggy being in its dangerous condition.
Millet's foreman had not considered it necessary to test such an
insignificant stream until he got a couple of hundred head of cattle
floundering in the mire. They had saved the greater portion of the
mired cattle, but quite a number were trampled to death by the others,
and now the regular crossing was not approachable for the stench of
dead cattle. Flood knew the stream, and so did a number of our outfit,
but none of them had any idea that it could get into such an
impassable condition as Forrest reported.

The next morning Flood started to the east and Priest to the west to
look out a crossing, for we were then within half a day's drive of the
creek. Big Boggy paralleled the Solomon River in our front, the two
not being more than five miles apart. The confluence was far below in
some settlements, and we must keep to the westward of all immigration,
on account of the growing crops in the fertile valley of the Solomon.
On the westward, had a favorable crossing been found, we would almost
have had to turn our herd backward, for we were already within the
half circle which this creek described in our front. So after the two
men left us, we allowed the herd to graze forward, keeping several
miles to the westward of the trail in order to get the benefit of the
best grazing. Our herd, when left to itself, would graze from a mile
to a mile and a half an hour, and by the middle of the forenoon the
timber on Big Boggy and the Solomon beyond was sighted. On reaching
this last divide, some one sighted a herd about five or six miles to
the eastward and nearly parallel with