Slightly more than sixty miles, as the route ran, stretched between old
Fort Dodge and the ford crossing the Arkansas leading down to the
Cimarron; another sixty miles distant, across a desert of alkali and
sand, lay Devere. The main Santa Fé trail, broad and deeply rutted by
the innumerable wheels of early spring caravans, followed the general
course of the river, occasionally touching the higher level plains, but
mostly keeping close beneath the protection of the northern bluffs, or
else skirting the edge of the water. Night or day the route was easily
followed, and, in other years, the traveller was seldom for long out of
sight of toiling wagons. Now scarcely a wheel turned in all that
lonely distance.

The west-bound stage left the station at Deer Creek at four o'clock in
the afternoon with no intimation of danger ahead. Its occupants had
eaten dinner in company with those of the east-bound coach, eighteen
miles down the river at Cañon Bluff, and the in-coming driver had
reported an open road, and no unusual trouble. No Indian signs had
been observed, not even signal fires during the night, and the
conductor, who had come straight from Santa Fé, reported that troops
from Fort Union had driven the only known bunch of raiders back from
the neighborhood of the trail, and had them already safely corralled In
the mountains. This report, seemingly authentic and official, served
to relax the nerves, and the west-bound driver sang to himself as he
guided the four horses forward, while the conductor, a sawed-off gun
planted between his knees, nodded drowsily. Inside there were but
three passengers, jerking back and forth, as the wheels struck the deep
ruts of the trail, occasionally exchanging a word or two, but usually
staring gloomily forth at the monotonous scene. Miss McDonald and
Moylan occupied the back seat, some baggage wedged tightly between to