ally well.

"It is getting near night, so we will go back to camp and after supper
we will practice signaling for one to use in case of danger to the
others."

When we got back to camp Bridger had just finished corralling the whole
train, and I was surprised to see how neatly it was done considering the
short time they had been drilling; I asked Jim when he would be ready
to pull out. He answered, "I am going to order an early breakfast for
tomorrow morning; and we will pull out as soon as we can after we have
eaten it. I want to make it to the crossing of the Platte tomorrow, and
it will take us all of the next day to cross the river, and as the river
has commenced to rise, the quicker we get across it, the better it will
be for us; after we cross the Platte we will have no more trouble with
high water until we get to Green river."

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