August 10, 1857; Lawton, Oklahoma: In late July 1857, Capt. Charles J. Whiting and Lt. James P. Major, with detachments of Companies C and K, Second Cavalry, out of Fort Clark, arrived on upper Devil's River, where several days earlier Lt. John B. Hood and seventeen soldiers had put up a valiant fight against a band of some fifty Comanches. Remarkably, all but two of Hood's men had survived. Whiting picked up the Indian trail from the battlefield and followed it north. The route was arid, with men and horses going without water for twenty-four hours at a stretch.
The trail led north all the way across the Red River into Indian Territory. Finally, in the southern reaches of the Wichita Mountains, the soldiers caught up with the band of Comanches they believed to be the ones who attacked Hood's men. Whiting's men cut the Indians off from their horses and drove them into a wooded ravine. Whiting killed two Indians in the chase and captured thirty-three horses, then decided to end the pursuit rather than get entangled in the thickets with an obscured enemy. Whiting suffered no losses in the skirmish.
