It
Is Impossible To Make The Rooms Look Homelike, And I Often Find Myself
Wondering Where In This World I Have Wandered To!
The house is of
logs, of course, and has a pole and dirt roof, and was built
originally for an officers' mess.
The dining room is large and very
long, a part of which we have partitioned off with a piece of canvas
and converted into a storeroom. We had almost to get down on our knees
to the quartermaster before he would give us the canvas. He is in the
quartermaster's department and is most arrogant; seems to think that
every nail and tack is his own personal property and for his exclusive
use.
Our dining room has a sand floor, and almost every night little white
toadstools grow up all along the base of the log walls. All of the
logs are of cottonwood and have the bark on, and the army of bugs that
hide underneath the bark during the day and march upon us at night is
to be dreaded about as much as a whole tribe of Indians!
I wrote you how everyone laughed at me on the march down because I was
positive I saw heads of Indians on the sand hills so many times. Well,
all that has ceased, and the mention of "Mrs. Rae's Indians" is
carefully avoided! There has been sad proof that the Indians were
there, also that they were watching us closely and kept near us all
the way down from Fort Dodge, hoping for a favorable opportunity to
steal the animals. The battalion of the - th Infantry bad made only
two days' march from here, and the herders had just turned the horses
and mules out to graze, when a band of Cheyenne Indians swooped down
upon them and stampeded every animal, leaving the companies without
even one mule! The poor things are still in camp on the prairie,
waiting for something, anything, to move them on. General Phillips is
mightily pleased that the Indians did not succeed in getting the
animals from his command, and I am pleased that they cannot tease me
any more.
My ride with Lieutenant Golden, Faye's classmate, this morning was
very exciting for a time. We started directly after stable call, which
is at six o'clock. Lieutenant Golden rode Dandy, his beautiful
thoroughbred, that reminds me so much of Lieutenant Baldwin's Tom, and
I rode a troop horse that had never been ridden by a woman before. As
soon as he was led up I noticed that there was much white to be seen
in his eyes, and that he was restless and ever pawing the ground. But
the orderly said he was not vicious, and he was sure I could ride him.
He did not object in the least to my skirt, and we started off in fine
style, but before we reached the end of the line he gave two or three
pulls at the bit, and then bolted!
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