Trailing through broad and verdant valleys  they went  their progress often arrested by hundreds of acres of plum trees bending to the ground with tempting fruit  crossing oak ridges where the ground was covered with loaded grapevines  through suffocating creek-bottom thickets  undergrowth of vines and briars  laboring up rocky hillsides and laboring down again  the horses picking their way through impeding rocks and boulders  until on the twenty-ninth of the month  two hundred miles from Fort Gibson  General Leavenworth and his staff reached Captain Dean’s camp  a mile or two from the Washita  where there were quartered two companies of the Third Infantry from Fort Towson