for us at Camp Supply. Rain and ice and the rough
usage of camp life had made us ragged already, and our shoes were worn
out. And still the cold and storm stayed with us. We wrapped pieces of
buffalo hide about our bare feet and bound the horses' nose-bags on them
in lieu of cavalry boots. Our blankets we had donated to our mounts, and
we had only dog tents, well adapted to ventilation, but a very mockery
at sheltering.

Our provisions were sometimes reduced to a few little cubes of sugar
doled out to each from the officers' stores. The buffalo, by which we
had augmented our food supply, were gone now to any shelter whither
instinct led them. It was rare that even a lone forsaken old bull of the
herd could be found in some more sheltered spot.

At last with hungry men and frenzied horses, with all sense of direction
lost, with a deep covering of snow enshrouding the earth, and a
merciless cold cutting straight to the life centres, we went into camp
on the tenth night in a little ravine running into Sand Creek, another
Cimarron tributary, in the Indian Territory. We were unable to move any
farther. For ten days we had been on the firing line, with hunger and
cold for our unconquerable foes. We could have fought Indians even to
the death. But the demand on us was for endurance. It is a woman's
province to suffer and wait and bear. We were men, fighting men, but
ours was the struggle of resisting, not attacking, and the tenth night
found us vanquished. Somebody must come to our rescue now. We could not
save ourselves. In the dangerous dark and cold, to an unknown place,
over an unknown way, somebody must go for us, somebody must be the
sacrifice, or we must all perish. The man who went out from the camp on
Sand Creek that night was one of the two men I had seen rise up from the
sand-pits of the Arickaree Island and start out in the blackness and the
peril to carry our cry to Fort Wallace--Pliley, whose name our State
must sometime set large in her well-founded, well-written story.

With fifty picked men and horses he went for our sakes, and more, aye,
more than he ever would claim for himself. He was carrying rescue to
homes yet to be, he was winning the frontier from peril, he was paying
the price for the prairie kingdom whose throne and altar are the
hearthstone.

"Camp Starvation," we christened our miserable, snow-besieged
stopping-place. We had fire but we were starving for food. Our horses
were like wild beasts