dhills of the Cimarron country. In vain we tried to find a trail
that should lead us to Sheridan's headquarters at Camp Supply, on the
Canadian River. Then the blizzard had its turn with us. Suddenly, as is
the blizzard's habit, it came upon us, sheathing our rain-sodden
clothing in ice. Like a cloudburst of summer was this winter cloudburst
of snow, burying every trail and covering every landmark with a mocking
smoothness. Then the mercury fell, and a bitter wind swept the open
Plains.

We had left Fort Beecher with five days' rations and three days' forage.
Seven days later we went into bivouac on a crooked little stream that
empties its salty waters into the Cimarron. It was a moonless, freezing
night. Fires were impossible, for there was no wood, and the buffalo
chips soaked with rain were frozen now and buried under the snow. A
furious wind threshed the earth; the mercury hovered about the zero
mark. Alkali and salt waters fill the streams of that land, and our food
supply was a memory two days old.

How precious a horse can become, the Plains have taught us. The man on
foot out there is doomed. All through this black night of perishing
cold we clung to our frightened, freezing, starving horses. We had put
our own blankets about them, and all night long we led them up and down.
The roar of the storm, the confusion from the darkness, the frenzy from
hunger drove them frantic. A stampede among them there would have meant
instant death to many of us, and untold suffering to the dismounted
remainder. How slowly the cold, bitter hours went by! I had thought the
burning heat of the Colorado September unendurable. I wondered in that
time of freezing torment if I should ever again call the heat a burden.

There were five of us tramping together in one little circle that
night--Reed and John Mac, and Pete and Hadley, with myself. In all the
garrison I came to know these four men best. They were near my own age;
their happy-go-lucky spirit and their cheery laughter were food and
drink. They proved to me over and over how kind-hearted a soldier can
be, and how hard it is to conquer a man who wills himself unconquerable.
Without these four I think I should never have gotten through that
night.

Morning broke on our wretched camp at last, and we took up the day's
march, battling with cold and hunger over every foot of ground. On the
tenth day after we crossed the Arkansas River the crisis came. Our army
clothes were waiting