for us a very fair supper. Soldiers' bacon, and coffee, and biscuits
baked in a Dutch oven.

While waiting for the sun to set, we took a short stroll over to the
adobe ruins. Inside the enclosure lay an enormous rattlesnake, coiled.
It was the first one I had ever seen except in a cage, and I was
fascinated by the horror of the round, grayish-looking heap, so near the
color of the sand on which it lay. Some soldiers came and killed it.
But I noticed that Bowen took extra pains that night, to spread buffalo
robes under our mattresses, and to place around them a hair lariat.
"Snakes won't cross over that," he said, with a grin.

Bowen was a character. Originally from some farm in Vermont, he had
served some years with the Eighth Infantry, and for a long time in the
same company under Major Worth, and had cooked for the bachelors' mess.
He was very tall, and had a good-natured face, but he did not have much
opinion of what is known as etiquette, either military or civil; he
seemed to consider himself a sort of protector to the officers of
Company K, and now, as well, to the woman who had joined the company.
He took us all under his wing, as it were, and although he had to be
sharply reprimanded sometimes, in a kind of language which he seemed to
expect, he was allowed more latitude than most soldiers.

This was my first night under canvas in the army. I did not like those
desert places, and they grew to have a horror for me.

At four o'clock in the morning the cook's call sounded, the mules were
fed, and the crunching and the braying were something to awaken the
heaviest sleepers. Bowen called us. I was much upset by the dreadful
dust, which was thick upon everything I touched. We had to hasten our
toilet, as they were striking tents and breaking camp early, in order
to reach before noon the next place where there was water. Sitting on
camp-stools, around the mess-tables, in the open, before the break of
day, we swallowed some black coffee and ate some rather thick slices
of bacon and dry bread. The Wilkins' tent was near ours, and I said to
them, rather peevishly: "Isn't this dust something awful?"

Miss Wilkins looked up with her sweet smile and gentle manner and
replied: "Why, yes, Mrs. Summerhayes, it is pretty bad, but you must not
worry about such a little thing as dust."

"How can I help it?" I said; "my hair, my clothes, everything full of
it, and no chance for a bath or a change: a miserable little basin of