The savages then drove away their horses and mules and some of their cattle, but the latter could not travel sufficiently rapid to suit them. The next day it was decided to return to Julesburg, and ask that the government furnish guards to protect them from future similar experience. They took the oxen and went to the tableland in the direction of the old Water Holes, but were caught in a frightful blizzard. It raged all night and the thermometer was thirty below zero. A man of experience has written, a western storm will sometimes seem to abate, to lure one away from fire and shelter, just to catch him in the open with full force. A messenger had been sent on ahead, to tell the soldiers to come out and meet them, but the storm made it doubtful if he would reach Julesburg. In consequence, the next morning, Coad told the others to return to the "ranch" and he would try to go on to the fort alone. About ten miles north of the present site of Sidney, he came upon a detachment that had already been sent out. They said that the day before, they had had an engagement with some Indians near there, and had taken from them a number of horses, which proved to be Goad's, and the Indians had fled in the storm towards the south. A few days later thirty-six men arrived at a "ranch" on the Lodgepole, about twenty-five miles west of Julesburg, and thirty of them were pretty badly frozen.