ny days and nights the going would consume. It was well
for me that I had an ideal. I should have gone mad otherwise, for I was
never meant for the roving chance life of a Plains scout.

When our division made its tentless bivouac with the sky for a covering
on the first night out beyond the Cimarron River from Camp Starvation,
the mercury was twenty degrees below zero. Even a heart that could pump
blood like mine could hardly keep the fires of the body from going out.
There was a full moon somewhere up in the cold, desolate heavens
lighting up a frozen desolate land. I shiver even now at the picture my
memory calls up. In the midst of that night's bitter chill came a dream
of home, of the warm waters of the Neosho on August afternoons, of the
sunny draw, and--Marjie. Her arms were about my neck, her curly head was
nestling against my shoulder, the little ringlets about her temples
touched my cheek. I lifted her face to kiss her, but a soft shadowy
darkness crept between us, and I seemed to be sinking into it deeper and
deeper. It grew so black I longed to give up and let it engulf me. It
was so easy a thing to do.

Then in a blind stupidity I began to hear a voice in my ears, and to
find myself lunging back and forth and stumbling lamely on my left foot.
The right foot had no feeling, no power of motion, and I forgot that I
had it.

"What are you doing, Pete?" I asked, when I recognized who it was that
was holding me.

Pete was like an elder brother, always doing me a kind service.

"Trying to keep you from freezing to death," he replied.

"Oh, let me go. It's so easy," I answered back drowsily.

"By golly, I've a notion to do it." Pete's laugh was a tonic in itself.
"Here you and your horse are both down, and you can't stand on one of
your feet. I'll bet it's froze, and you about to go over the River; and
when a fellow tries to pull you back you say, 'Oh, let me go!' You
darned renegade! you ought to go."

He was doing his best for me all the time, and he had begun none too
soon, for Death had swooped down near me, and I was ready to give up the
struggle. The warmth of the horse's body had saved one foot, but as to
the other--the little limp I shall always have had its beginning in that
night's work.

The next day was Thanksgiving, although we did not know it. There are no
holy days or gala days to men who are famishing. That day the command
had no food except the few hackberries we found and the bark of the