despite the odor of onions that
pervades the hearths and homes of this region.

Kelly was a tall, dark, slender man, with large melancholy eyes, soft,
but never meeting you quite frankly--eyes into which you could not
look very far. It is not easy for us to understand the life of this
man and his "pard," with their Indian wives and half-breed children,
fifty miles from anywhere; yet they seemed very busy and comfortable.
He was asked how he liked it. "It's rather lonesome," he replied. He
was a man of few words, and went about silently in carpet slippers,
waiting on us at table. No one else appeared, but we had glimpses of
the Indian women in the kitchen preparing the meal. After supper we
all sat down on buffalo robes spread upon the dewless grass, while the
sun went down in glory and the twilight gathered in the sky, realizing
that we were camping out for the first time in our lives, and having a
delicious sense of adventure, a first sip of the wine of the wilds.
"Early to bed and early to rise" is the rule in camp, and so when the
stars came out we turned in. As soon as the sun set another climate
reigned over the Plains. The nights are always cool, dry and
delicious, and fifty miles of ambulance-traveling is a good
preparation for sleep. Yet when all was still I came out to look at
the night, for everything was so strange and new that sleep at first
would not come. The scene was wild enough. The twilight still
glimmered faintly; the sky was thick with stars of a brightness never
seen in more humid air; the Milky Way was like a fair white cloud; the
fantastic bluffs looked stranger than ever against the pale green
west; and the splendid comet was plunging straight down into; the
Turtle's mouth. A light from the blacksmith's forge glowed upon the
buildings, tents and low trees: in the stillness the hammer rang out
loud, and there was a low murmur of voices from the officers' tent. In
the middle of the night we were wakened by hearing the galloping of a
horse, perhaps a passing traveler, and when it ceased a new sound came
to our ears, the barking and whining of wolves.

The next morning we were off at six. Our road lay in the green valley
of the Chugwater, under the pale bluffs, channeled and seamed by the
rains into strange shapes. We never tired of watching our train as it
wound up and down, the white-covered wagons with red wheels and blue
bodies, the horsemen loping along, picturesquely dressed, with broad
hats,