Even before they could get on the trail, the North-West Mounted Police had their difficulties. While camped at Dufferin, their horses stampeded in what the young trumpeter Fred Bagley recalled as "a storm of cyclonic proportions." The eastern-bred horses were not accustomed to prairie thunderstorms and were "terrified by the incessant rolls of thunder, and the lightning flashes, and with a few exceptions, broke their halter shanks and, galloping madly through the camp, overturned loaded waggons, flattened tents, and trampling on everything in their frenzied flight."