ng. I
expect to remain here for the present, but shall make every effort to
get to Benton after a while, where I will be nearly one hundred and
fifty miles nearer Faye. The wife of the adjutant and her two little
children are in this house, and other families of officers are scattered
all over the little town.

COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL, HELENA, MONTANA TERRITORY, August, 1878.

YOU will see that at last I decided to move over to this hotel. I made
a great mistake in not coming before and getting away from the cross
old housekeeper at the International, who could not be induced by
entreaties, fees, or threats, to get the creepy, crawly things out of
my room. How I wish that every one of them would march over to her
some fine night and keep her awake as they have kept me. It made me so
unhappy to leave Mrs. Hull there with a sick child, but she would not
come with me, although she must know it would be better for her and the
boy to be here, where everything is kept so clean and attractive. There
are six wives of officers in the house, among them the wife of General
Bourke, who is in command of the regiment. She invited me to sit at her
table, and I find it very pleasant there. She is a bride and almost a
stranger to us.

The weather has been playing all sorts of pranks upon us lately, and we
hardly know whether we are in the far North or far South. For two
weeks it was very warm, positively hot in this gulch, but yesterday
we received a cooling off in the form of a brisk snowstorm that lasted
nearly two hours. Mount Helena was white during the rest of the day, and
even now long streaks of snow can be seen up and down the peak. But a
snowstorm in August looked very tame after the awful cloud-burst that
came upon us without warning a few days before, and seemed determined to
wash the whole town down to the Missouri River.

It was about eleven o'clock, and four of us had gone to the shops to
look at some pretty things that had just been brought over from a boat
at Fort Benton by ox train. Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Hull had stopped at a
grocery next door, expecting to join Mrs. Joyce and me in a few minutes.
But before they could make a few purchases, a few large drops of rain
began to splash down, and there was a fierce flash of lightning and
deafening thunder, then came the deluge! Oceans of water seemed to be
coming down, and before we realized what was happening, things in the
street and things back of the store were being rushe