Part one of "Trail to Medicine Lodge" describes the reasons behind forming a peace commission to end the war with the Plains Indians while describing the Medicine Lodge location in Kansas. The story progresses as Billy Dixon, a hired freighter for the Medicine Lodge expedition, explains firsthand what it was like to move freight from the trailhead forts to the Medicine Lodge location. While on this journey from Fort Harker, Dixon experiences a cholera  epidemic and then joins a train of wagons from Fort Hayes to Fort Wallace. While at Fort Wallace, Dixon and his friend Frickie meet a journalist named Henry M. Stanley. Stanley, then working as a special correspondent for the Saint Louis Daily Democrat, provides a character description of each Medicine Lodge Peace Commission member.