FORT SHAW, MONTANA TERRITORY,
November, 1880.
THE past few days have been busy ones. The house has received much
needed attention and camp things have been looked over and put away,
ready for the next move. The trip back was a disappointment to me and
not at all pleasant. The wagons were very lightly loaded, so the men
rode in them all the way, and we came about forty miles each day, the
mules keeping up a steady slow trot. Of course I could not ride those
distances at that gait, therefore I was compelled to come in the old,
jerky ambulance.
The snow was still deep when we left Maginnis, and at the first camp
snow had to be swept from the ground where our tent was pitched. But
after that the weather was warm and sunny. We saw the greatest number
of feathered game--enormous flocks of geese, brant, and ducks. Our
camp one night was near a small lake just the other side of Benton,
and at dusk hundreds of geese came and lit on the water, until it
looked like one big mass of live, restless things, and the noise was
deafening. Some of the men shot at them with rifles, but the geese did
not seem to mind much.
Charlie told me at Maginnis that he did not want to return to Shaw,
and I wondered at that so many times. I went in the kitchen two
miserable mornings back and found him sitting down looking unhappy and
disconsolate.
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