ose climates, but it is death to
women, as I had often heard.

It was in the late summer that the boat arrived one day bringing a large
number of staff officers and their wives, head clerks, and "general
service" men for Fort Whipple. They had all been stationed in Washington
for a number of years, having had what is known in the army as
"gilt-edged" details. I threw a linen towel over my head, and went to
the boat to call on them, and, remembering my voyage from San Francisco
the year before, prepared to sympathize with them. But they had met
their fate with resignation; knowing they should find a good climate and
a pleasant post up in the mountains, and as they had no young children
with them, they were disposed to make merry over their discomforts.

We asked them to come to our quarters for supper, and to come early, as
any place was cooler than the boat, lying down there in the melting sun,
and nothing to look upon but those hot zinc-covered decks or the ragged
river banks, with their uninviting huts scattered along the edge.

The surroundings somehow did not fit these people. Now Mrs. Montgomery
at Camp Apache seemed to have adapted herself to the rude setting of
a log cabin in the mountains, but these were Staff people and they
had enjoyed for years the civilized side of army life; now they were
determined to rough it, but they did not know how to begin.

The beautiful wife of the Adjutant-General was mourning over some
freckles which had come to adorn her dazzling complexion, and she had
put on a large hat with a veil. Was there ever anything so incongruous
as a hat and veil in Ehrenberg! For a long time I had not seen a woman
in a hat; the Mexicans all wore a linen towel over their heads.

But her beauty was startling, and, after all, I thought, a woman so
handsome must try to live up to her reputation. Now for some weeks Jack
had been investigating the sulphur well, which was beneath the old pump
in our corral. He had had a long wooden bath-tub built, and I watched it
with a lazy interest, and observed his glee as he found a longshoreman
or roustabout who could caulk it. The shape was exactly like a coffin
(but men have no imaginations), and when I told him how it made me feel
to look at it, he said: "Oh! you are always thinking of gloomy things.
It's a fine tub, and we are mighty lucky to find that man to caulk it.
I'm going to set it up in the little square room, and lead the sulphur
water into it, and it