and forth over
flats of lime and ridges of slate, occasionally picking off a packer or
a couple of privates, until now the sun was setting at 4.28 and it froze
at any time of day. Therefore the rest of the packers and privates were
glad to march into Boise Barracks this morning by eleven, and see a
stove.

They rolled for a moment on their bunks to get the feel of a bunk again
after two hundred and forty days; they ate their dinner at a table;
those who owned any further baggage than that which partially covered
their nakedness unpacked it, perhaps nailed up a photograph or two, and
found it grateful to sit and do nothing under a roof and listen to the
grated snow whip the windows of the gray sandstone quarters. Such
comfort, and the prospect of more ahead, of weeks of nothing but post
duty and staying in the same place, obliterated Dry Camp, Cow Creek
Lake, the blizzard on Meacham's Hill, the horse-killing in the John Day
Valley, Saw-Tooth stampede, and all the recent evils of the past; the
quarters hummed with cheerfulness. The nearest railroad was some four
hundred miles to the southeast, slowly constructing to meet the next
nearest, which was some nine hundred to the southeast; but Boise City
was only three-quarters of a mile away, the largest town in the
Territory, the capital, not a temperance town, a winter resort; and
several hundred people lived in it, men and women, few of whom ever died
in their beds. The coming days and nights were a luxury to think of.

"Blamed if there ain't a real tree!" exclaimed Private Jones.

"Thet eer ain't no tree, ye plum; thet's the flag-pole 'n' th' Merrickin
flag," observed a civilian. His name was Jack Long, and he was
pack-master.

Sergeant Keyser, listening, smiled. During the winter of '64-65 he had
been in command of the first battalion of his regiment, but, on a theory
of education, had enlisted after the war. This being known, held the men
more shy of him than was his desire.

Jones continued to pick his banjo, while a boyish trooper with tough
black hair sat near him and kept time with his heels. "It's a
cottonwood-tree I was speakin' of," observed Jones. There was one--a
little, shivering white stalk. It stood above the flat where the
barracks were, on a bench twenty or thirty feet higher, on which were
built the officers' quarters. The air was getting dim with the fine,
hard snow that slanted through it. The thermometer was ten above out
there. At the mere sight