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. Her young child, nine months old, was with her, and
her husband, as stalwart and handsome an officer as ever wore
shoulder-straps. But we were facing unknow