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.

The following morning, just as I could begin to see that it was getting a little light in the east, myself and one assistant scout crawled out quietly, without disturbing the other boys, to kill some game.  We had not gone far from camp when we saw nine antelope; we both fired and both shot the same antelope.  We dressed the game and took it to camp, arriving there just as the other two scouts came in from the south.  The boys were all up in camp, and considerable excitement prevailed among them, they having heard two shots, and thought the Indians had attacked us.  They were all hungry as wolves, so we broiled and ate antelope almost as long as there was any to eat.

Almost the entire scout force were from New York, and were new recruits who had never known what it was to rough it, and they said this was the first meal they had ever made on meat alone.  After breakfast was over, it now being understood that we would lie over until the supply train should come up, my first assistant scout and two others took a trip to a mountain some two miles from camp, which was the highest mountain near us, taking my glasses along to look for the supply train.  In about two hours one of the scouts returned to camp in great haste and somewhat excited, saying that about fifteen or twenty miles distant they had seen a band of Indians who were traveling in the direction of camp.  We all saddled our horses, left a note at camp informing Capt.  Mills where we had gone and for what purpose.  We started for what has ever since been known as Look-out Mountain—­of course not the famous Lookout Mountain of Tennessee—­and there joined the other three scouts.  From the top of this mountain we could get a good view of the Indians through the field glasses.  We watched them until about one o’clock, when they went into camp in the head of a little ravine some five miles distant—­This convinced us that there was water and that they had stopped for the night.  We located them as well as we could, and the entire scout force, being thirteen all told, started across the country for their camp.