big knives and of how each one of the savages
seemed to be reveling in the smell and taste of blood! I feel that they
could have slashed and cut into one of us with the same relish. It was
much like seeing a murder committed.

Major Stokes told us last evening that when he returned from the East
a few weeks ago, he discovered that one of a pair of beautiful pistols
that had been presented to him had been stolen, that some one had gone
upstairs and taken it out of the case that was in a closet corresponding
to mine, so that accounts for the footsteps I heard in that house the
night the man entered Mrs. Norton's house. But how did the man know just
where to get a pistol? The hospital attendant who was suspected that
night got his discharge a few days later. He stayed around the
garrison so long that finally Colonel Gregory ordered him to leave the
reservation, and just before coming from the post we heard that he had
shot a man and was in jail. A very good place for him, I think.

We expect to return to the post in a few days. I would like to remain
longer, but as everybody and everything will go, I can't very well. The
trout fishing in Birch Creek is very good, and I often go for a little
fish, sometimes alone and sometimes Mrs. Stokes will go with me. I do
not go far, because of the dreadful Indians that are always wandering
about. They have a small village across the creek from us, and every
evening we hear their "tom-toms" as they chant and dance, and when the
wind is from that direction we get a smell now and then of their dirty
tepees. Major Stokes and Mrs. Stokes, also, see the noble side of
Indians, but that side has always been so covered with blankets and
other dirty things I have never found it!

FORT SHAW, MONTANA TERRITORY, November, 1882.

YOU will be shocked, I know, when you hear that we are
houseless--homeless--that for the second time Faye has been ranked out
of quarters! At Camp Supply the turn out was swift, but this time it
has been long drawn out and most vexatious. Last month Major Bagley came
here from Fort Maginnis, and as we had rather expected that he would
select our house, we made no preparations for winter previous to his
coming. But as soon as he reached the post, and many times after, he
assured Faye that nothing could possibly induce him to disturb us, and
said many more sweet things.

Unfortunately for us, he was ordered to return to Fort Maginnis to
straighten out some of his accou