We had expected to
reach the Yellowstone River that day, but it was so wet and
disagreeable that Captain Spencer decided to go into camp at a little
spring we came to in the early afternoon, and which was about four
miles from here. The tents were pitched just above the base of a
hill--you would call it a mountain in the East--and in a small grove
of trees. The ground was thickly carpeted with dead leaves, and
everything looked most attractive from the ambulance.
When Miss Hayes and I went to our tent, however, to arrange it, we
found that underneath that thick covering of leaves a sheet of water
was running down the side of the hill, and with every step our feet
sank down almost ankle deep in the wet leaves and water. Each has a
little iron cot, and the two had been set up and the bedding put upon
them by the soldiers, and they looked so inviting we decided to rest a
while and get warm also. But much to our disgust we found that our
mattresses were wet and all of our blankets more or less wet, too. It
was impossible to dry one thing in the awful dampness, so we folded
the blankets with the dry part on top as well as we could, and then
"crawled in." We hated to get up for dinner, but as we were guests, we
felt that we must do so, but for that meal we waited in vain--not one
morsel of dinner was prepared that night, and Miss Hayes and I envied
the enlisted men when we got sniffs of their boiling coffee.
Pages:
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356