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 speed.  We passed them for good and all a few days farther on, and were far ahead when we reached the North Platte.

Thus ended a race that I shall never forget.  Since that time the stage-coach has outdistanced the bull team, the pony express has swept past the stage-coach, the locomotive has done in an hour what the prairie schooner did in three or four days.  Soon the aeroplane will be racing with the automobile for the cross-country record.

But the bull team and the mule team were the continental carriers of that day, and I am very glad that I took part—­on the winning side—­in a race between them.

We soon began meeting parties of soldiers, and lightening our loads by issuing supplies to them.  When at last we reacted Fort Laramie, the outfit was ordered to Fort Walback, located in Cheyenne Pass, twenty-five miles from where Cheyenne stands today, and ninety miles from Fort Laramie.

This was in the very heart of the Indian country.  Our animals were to haul in plows, tools and whatever was necessary in the constructing of the new fort then building.  The wagon-beds were taken from the wagons to enable the hauling of greater loads.  The beds were piled up at Fort Laramie, and I was assigned to watch them.  It was here that I had abundant time and opportunity to study the West at first hand.  Heretofore I had been on the march.  Now I was on fixed post with plenty of time for observation.

Fort Laramie was an old frontier post, such as has not existed for many years.  Nearby, three or four thousand Sioux, Northern Cheyennes and Northern Arapahoes were encamped, most of them spending much of the time at the post.  Laramie had been established by a fur-trading company in 1834.  In 1840 or thereabouts the Government bought it and made it a military post.  It had become the most famous meeting-place of the Plains.  Here the greatest Indian councils were held, and here also came the most celebrated of the Indian fighters, men whose names had long been known to me, but whom I never dared hope to see.

Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Baker, Richards and other of the celebrated hunters, trappers and Indian fighters were as familiar about the post as are bankers in Wall Street.  All these men fascinated me, especially Carson, a small, dapper, quiet man whom everybody held in profound respect.

I used to sit for hours and watch him and the others talk to the Indians in the sign language.  Without a sound they would carry on long and interesting conversations, tell stories, inquire about game and trails, and discuss pretty much everything that men find worth discussing.