After supper I got my scouts together, and we went outside of the corral; we all sat down on a log.  I then asked them if any of them could mimic a Coyote; they all looked at me a moment, and then one said, “I don’t think any of us ever saw a Coyote.  What are they?  What do they look like?”

I could not help laughing, for I thought everyone knew what a Coyote was.  I told them that a Coyote was a species of Wolf, not as dangerous as the Grey Wolf but three of them could make more noise than all the dogs around the camp could, and I said, “You will see them in droves between here and California, being so numerous the Indians pay no attention to them; and we scouts often use the howl of a Coyote as a signal to each other because this noise will not attract the attention of the Indians; I will now show you how the Coyote howls.”

I then gave two or three yelps mimicking the Coyote, and before I had given the yelp the Coyotes answered me.  They were about two hundred yards from us in the brush.  Some of the men jumped to their feet exclaiming, “What was that?”

When I could stop laughing I told them those were my Coyote friends, answering me.

The Coyotes and I kept up the howling several minutes, and quite a crowd of men and women gathered around me, listening to the noise, and they all wanted to know what it was that I was mimicking.  Before I could answer them Jim Bridger, who had come near unobserved by me, said, “Will, suppose we give them the double howl?”

I said, “All right,” and we howled together just a few times when the Coyotes in the brush turned loose and such howling I never had heard before in all my experience among them.  A number of the women rushed up to Jim and me, frightened nearly into spasms, crying, “oh, is there any danger, of those dreadful beasts attacking the camp?”

Jim laughed heartily and assured them there was no danger as the Coyote was the greatest coward in the forest and would run at the sight of a man.  I told the men that they would not have any scout duty to do until after we crossed the Platte river, so we could all ride along the trail together and practice the coyote signal, for they would need to know it as soon as they crossed the Platte river.

The next morning we were astir very early, had our breakfast and were on the road.  A little after sunrise that morning, just as we were pulling out, Jim said to me, “When we are within five or six miles of the Platte I want you to go on ahead of the train and select a camping ground as near the crossing of the river as you can; for if we camp near the crossing we can get the train over the river very much quicker than we can if we camp a distance back.”

I left them in time to reach the river an hour before the train and had good luck selecting a place to camp not a quarter of a mile from the crossing.  I found a little grove of timber with a beautiful little stream of water running through it which I thought was just the place for us to camp that night.  I went back and reported to Jim.  He said, “Why, I ought to have remembered that little grove, but I clean forgot it.”