Nevertheless, My Heart Grows Warm Whenever I Think Of The
People Who First Welcomed Me To Arizona, Me A Stranger In The
Army, And In The Great Southwest As Well.
At Fort Whipple we met also some people we had known at Fort
Russell, who had gone down with the first detachment, among them
Major and Mrs. Wilhelm, who were to remain at headquarters.
We
bade good-bye to the Colonel and his family, to the officers of
F, who were to stay behind, and to our kind friends of the Fifth
Cavalry.
We now made a fresh start, with Captain Ogilby in command. Two
days took us into Camp Verde, which lies on a mesa above the
river from which it takes its name.
Captain Brayton, of the Eight Infantry, and his wife, who were
already settled at Camp Verde, received us and took the best
care of us. Mrs. Brayton gave me a few more lessons in army
house-keeping, and I could not have had a better teacher. I told
her about Jack and the tinware; her bright eyes snapped, and she
said: "Men think they know everything, but the truth is, they
don't know anything; you go right ahead and have all the tinware
and other things; all you can get, in fact; and when the time
comes to move, send Jack out of the house, get a soldier to come
in and pack you up, and say nothing about it."
"But the weight - "
"Fiddlesticks! They all say that; now you just not mind their
talk, but take all you need, and it will get carried along,
somehow."
Still another company left our ranks, and remained at Camp Verde.
The command was now getting deplorably small, I thought, to enter
an Indian country, for we were now to start for Camp Apache.
Several routes were discussed, but, it being quite early in the
autumn, and the Apache Indians being just then comparatively
quiet, they decided to march the troops over Crook's Trail, which
crossed the Mogollon range and was considered to be shorter than
any other. It was all the same to me. I had never seen a map of
Arizona, and never heard of Crook's Trail. Maps never interested
me, and I had not read much about life in the Territories. At
that time, the history of our savage races was a blank page to
me. I had been listening to the stories of an old civilization,
and my mind did not adjust itself readily to the new
surroundings.
CHAPTER IX
ACROSS THE MOGOLLONS
It was a fine afternoon in the latter part of September, when our
small detachment, with Captain Ogilby in command, marched out of
Camp Verde. There were two companies of soldiers, numbering
about a hundred men in all, five or six officers, Mrs. Bailey and
myself, and a couple of laundresses. I cannot say that we were
gay. Mrs. Bailey had said good-bye to her father and mother and
sister at Fort Whipple, and although she was an army girl, she
did not seem to bear the parting very philosophically.
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