e has just explained it
all to me, so I could tell you about our castle on the plains. We have
only two rooms for our own use, and these are partitioned off with
vertical logs in one corner of the fortification, and our only roof is
of canvas.

When we first got here the dirt floor was very much like the side of a
mountain--so sloping that we had difficulty in sitting upon the chairs.
Faye had these made level at once, and fresh, dry sand sprinkled
everywhere.

We are right in the heart of the Indian country, almost on the line
between Kansas and the Indian Territory, and are surrounded by any
number of villages of hostile Indians. We are forty miles from Camp
Supply and about the same distance from Fort Dodge. The weather is
delightful--sunny and very warm.

I was prevented from finishing this the other day by the coming of a
dozen or more Arapahoe Indians, but as the mail does not go north until
to-morrow morning, I can tell you of the more than busy time we have had
since then.

For two or three days the weather had been unseasonably warm--almost
like summer--and one evening it was not only hot, but so sultry one
wondered where all the air had gone. About midnight, however, a terrific
wind came up, cold and piercing, and very soon snow began to fall, and
then we knew that we were having a "Texas norther," a storm that is
feared by all old frontiersmen. Of course we were perfectly safe from
the wind, for only a cyclone could tear down these thick walls of sand,
but the snow sifted in every place--between the logs of the inner wall,
around the windows--and almost buried us. And the cold became intense.

In the morning the logs of that entire wall from top to bottom, were
white inside with snow, and looked like a forest in the far North. The
floor was covered with snow, and so was the foot of the bed! Our rooms
were facing just right to catch the full force of the blizzard. The
straightening-out was exceedingly unpleasant, for a fire could not be
started in either stove until after the snow had been swept out. But a
few soldiers can work miracles at times, and this proved to be one
of the times. I went over to the orderly room while they brushed and
scraped everywhere and fixed us up nicely, and we were soon warm and
dry.

The norther continued twenty-four hours, and the cold is still freezing.
All the wood inside was soon consumed, and the men were compelled to
go outside the redoubt for it, and to split it, to