Of course the horse was
not injured in the least.
We are on the stage road to Helena, and at this place there is a fork
that leads to the northwest which the lieutenant colonel and four
companies will take to go to Fort Missoula, Montana. The colonel,
headquarters, and other companies are to, be stationed at Helena
during the winter. We expect to meet the stage going south about noon
to-morrow, and you should have this in eight days. Billie squirrel has
a fine time in the wagon and is very fat. He runs off with bits of my
luncheon every day and hides them in different places in the canvas,
to his own satisfaction at least. One of the mules back of us has
become most friendly, and will take from my hand all sorts of things
to eat.
Poor Hal had a fit the other day, something like vertigo, after having
chased a rabbit. Doctor Gordon says that he has fatty degeneration of
the heart, caused by having so little exercise in the South, but that
he will probably get over it if allowed to run every day. But I do not
like the very idea of the dog having anything the matter with his
heart. It was so pathetic to have him stagger to the tent and drop at
my feet, dumbly confident that I could give him relief.
CAMP NEAR HELENA, MONTANA TERRITORY,
November, 1877.
THE company has been ordered to Camp Baker, a small post nearly sixty
miles farther on. We were turned off from the Helena road and the rest
of the command at the base of the mountains, and are now about ten
miles from Helena on our way to the new station, which, we are told,
is a wretched little two-company post on the other side of the Big
Belt range of mountains. I am awfully disappointed in not seeing
something of Helena, and very, very sorry that we have to go so far
from our friends and to such an isolated place, but it is the
company's turn for detached service, so here we are.
The scenery was grand in many places along the latter part of the
march, and it is grand here, also. We are in a beautiful broad valley
with snow-capped mountains on each side. From all we hear we conclude
there must be exceptionally good hunting and fishing about Camp Baker,
and there is some consolation in that. The fishing was very good at
several of our camps after we reached the mountains, and I can assure
you that the speckled trout of the East and these mountain trout are
not comparable, the latter are so far, far superior.
