Upon receiving Gillitine’s report, Totton immediately contacted Colonel Barry, requesting him to meet the militiamen at Camp McCord on December 25 so that they could field a combined expedition against the Indians. Next, he ordered his men to assemble with provisions and equipment for a winter campaign. Then as the 325 militiamen gathered from Coryell, Erath, Johnson, Bosque, and Commanche counties, Totton left for Waco to secure a new supply of percussion caps (those furnished by the state were defective); and hire four Tonkawa Indians as scouts.

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For his part Colonel Barry turned the Confederate army’s piece of the operation over to Captain Henry Fossett, a Maine native, with orders to cooperate “as far as practicable” with the state troops. Then before leaving his home post at Camp Colorado, Fossett sent word to Totton that he would meet him at Fort Chadbourne rather than at McCord. After that, 112 regulars of the Camp McCord regiment and forty-nine attached state troops concentrated at Fort Chadbourne on December 31, accompanied by their pack train carrying ammunition, provisions, and fodder. But they arrived surprised; Totton was not there.

After consulting his officers on December 27, Totton had decided to ignore Fossett’s request and “go where Capt. Gillitine had seen the trail and follow it.” He ordered his command into their saddles, and the motley “flop-eared militia” (as the regular troops called them) fell into line clutching a variety of weapons, ranging from military muskets and pistols to squirrel rifles and shotguns. Then the column with its skimpy pack train marched west to Elm Creek, where they picked up the Indian trail.

Three weeks of heavy rain and the passage of a huge buffalo herd had almost obliterated it. They made little headway following the dim track, distinguishable now only by pulverized horse droppings. The cold and poor fodder began wearing out the horses, so much so that by January 3 Totton had to send home those men whose horses were unfit for further service. By January 5, the soldiers’ meager supplies began to run so low that Totton detailed fourteen men to Fort Chadbourne thirty miles away to secure a supply of army beef.

In the meantime Fossett had tired of waiting for Totton, who had made no attempt to contact him, so he set out to find the Indians on his own. Immediately his troop discovered four large, abandoned Indian camps containing 875 wigwams that would house about 5,000 Indians. They also found where the Indians had blazed a tree with an ax to make a target. From the bullets in the tree, they determined that the Indians were both well armed and good shots. Although the Confederates could read sign well enough to draw these conclusions, they overlooked the fact that their prey could not possibly be a war party, just as Gillitine had thought.

In view of the probably number of Indians, Fossett called a halt to his march and camped on the North Concho River, hoping that Totton would soon catch up with him. While he waited, he sent forward eight experienced scouts under a Lieutenant Mulkey, himself a Cherokee, to locate the Indians.

After five days of consuming supplies, suffering from the intense cold, and accomplishing nothing, Fossett decided to move out, even though neither Totton nor Mulkey’s scouts had appeared. Before leaving, he posted a message on several trees: “Your assistance is greatly needed; make all haste to overtake us. My scouts have not been heard from for the past week; I fear they have been killed.” Shortly after the Confederates left on the morning of the seventh, the scouts met them and reported the Indians were camped fifty miles to the west of Dove Creek. They numbered about 4,000 and were herding some 7,000 horses. Mulkey and a Lieutenant Brooks Lee told Fossett they felt the Indians were not hostile and that the Confederate commander should communicate with them to discover their intentions. He ignored the advice.

Instead, Fossett ordered his troopers to march to the Middle Concho, where they would fire their guns to clear any damp powder and camp until midnight. Then the 161 men would saddle up and ride to Dove Creek. They would attack at dawn, regardless of the number of Indians and regardless of Totton’s arrival.

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