over. Faye came running, and
finding a tuft of grass and solid ground to stand upon, pulled Pete by
the bridle and encouraged him until the poor beast finally struggled
out, his legs and stomach covered with the black slime up to the flaps
of my saddle, so one can see what danger we were in. There was no way
of relieving the horse of my weight, as it was impossible for me to jump
and not get stuck in the mud myself. This is the only alkali hole we
have discovered here. It is screened by bunches of tall grass, and
I expect that many a time I have ridden within a few feet of it when
alone, and if my horse had happened to slip down on any one of these
times, we probably would have been sucked from the face of the earth,
and not one person to come to our assistance or to know what had
happened to us.

When Faye heard my call of distress, he threw the bridle back on Bettie,
and slipping the shotgun through the sling on the saddle, hurried over
to me, not giving Bettie much thought. The horse has always shown the
greatest disinclination to leaving Pete, but having her own free will
that time, she did the unexpected and trotted to a herd of mules not far
off, and as she went down a little hill the precious shotgun slipped out
of the sling to the ground, and the stock broke! The gun is perfectly
useless, and the loss of it is great to us and our friends. To be in
this splendid game country without a shotgun is deplorable; still,
to have been buried in a hole of black water and muck would have been
worse.

Later. Such an awful wind storm burst upon us while I was writing two
days ago, I was obliged to stop. The day was cold and our tents were
closed tight to keep the heat in, so we knew nothing of the storm until
it struck us, and with such fierceness it seemed as if the tents must go
down. Instantly there was commotion in camp--some of the men tightening
guy ropes, and others running after blankets and pieces of clothing
that had been out for an airing, but every man laughed and made fun
of whatever he was doing. Soldiers are always so cheerful under such
difficulties, and I dearly love to hear them laugh, and yell, too, over
in their tents.

The snow fell thick and fast, and the wind came through the canon back
of us with the velocity of a hurricane. As night came on it seemed to
increase and the tents began to show the strain and one or two had
gone down, so the officers' families were moved into the unfinished log
quarte