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 us.  As they were three or four miles beyond the trail, we could easily see that they were grazing along like ourselves, and Forrest was appealed to to know if it was the Millet herd.  He said not, and pointed out to the northeast about the location of the Millet cattle, probably five miles in advance of the stranger on our right.  When we overtook our wagon at noon, McCann, who had never left the trail, reported having seen the herd.  They looked to him like heavy beef cattle, and had two yoke of oxen to their chuck wagon, which served further to proclaim them as strangers.

Neither Priest nor Flood returned during the noon hour, and when the herd refused to lie down and rest longer, we grazed them forward till the fringe of timber which grew along the stream loomed up not a mile distant in our front.  From the course we were traveling, we would strike the creek several miles above the regular crossing, and as Forrest reported that Millet was holding below the old crossing on a small rivulet, all we could do was to hold our wagon in the rear, and await the return of our men out on scout for a ford.  Priest was the first to return, with word that he had ridden the creek out for twenty-five miles and had found no crossing that would be safe for a mud turtle.  On hearing this, we left two men with the herd, and the rest of the outfit took the wagon, went on to Boggy, and made camp.  It was a deceptive-looking stream, not over fifty or sixty feet wide.  In places the current barely moved, shallowing and deepening, from a few inches in places to several feet in others, with an occasional pool that would swim a horse.  We probed it with poles until we were satisfied that we were up against a proposition different from anything we had yet encountered.  While we were discussing the situation, a stranger rode up on a fine roan horse, and inquired for our foreman.  Forrest informed him that our boss was away looking for a crossing, but we were expecting his return at any time; and invited the stranger to dismount.  He did so, and threw himself down in the shade of our wagon.  He was a small, boyish-looking fellow, of sandy complexion, not much, if any, over twenty years old, and smiled continuously.