We have only two rooms for our own use, and these are
partitioned off with vertical logs in one corner of the fortification,
and our only roof is of canvas.
When we first got here the dirt floor was very much like the side of a
mountain - so sloping that we had difficulty in sitting upon the
chairs. Faye had these made level at once, and fresh, dry sand
sprinkled everywhere.
We are right in the heart of the Indian country, almost on the line
between Kansas and the Indian Territory, and are surrounded by any
number of villages of hostile Indians. We are forty miles from Camp
Supply and about the same distance from Fort Dodge. The weather is
delightful - sunny and very warm.
I was prevented from finishing this the other day by the coming of a
dozen or more Arapahoe Indians, but as the mail does not go north
until to-morrow morning, I can tell you of the more than busy time we
have had since then.
For two or three days the weather had been unseasonably warm - almost
like summer - and one evening it was not only hot, but so sultry one
wondered where all the air had gone. About midnight, however, a
terrific wind came up, cold and piercing, and very soon snow began to
fall, and then we knew that we were having a "Texas norther," a storm
that is feared by all old frontiersmen. Of course we were perfectly
safe from the wind, for only a cyclone could tear down these thick
walls of sand, but the snow sifted in every place - between the logs of
the inner wall, around the windows - and almost buried us. And the cold
became intense.
In the morning the logs of that entire wall from top to bottom, were
white inside with snow, and looked like a forest in the far North. The
floor was covered with snow, and so was the foot of the bed! Our rooms
were facing just right to catch the full force of the blizzard. The
straightening-out was exceedingly unpleasant, for a fire could not be
started in either stove until after the snow had been swept out. But a
few soldiers can work miracles at times, and this proved to be one of
the times. I went over to the orderly room while they brushed and
scraped everywhere and fixed us up nicely, and we were soon warm and
dry.
The norther continued twenty-four hours, and the cold is still
freezing. All the wood inside was soon consumed, and the men were
compelled to go outside the redoubt for it, and to split it, too. The
storm was so fierce and wholly blinding that it was necessary to
fasten the end of a rope around the waist of each man as he went out,
and tie the other end to the entrance gate to prevent him from losing
his direction and wandering out on the plains.
