The next day we made preparations, and early on the morning of the
second we started. The department commander had gone to Omaha on
official business, so he was not with us, and Faye did not go; but the
rest of the party went twelve miles and then established a little camp
for the day, and there we left them. Mrs. Ord and I and General
Stanley, with a driver, got on a buckboard drawn by two mules, and
went five miles farther up the stream, until, in fact, it was
impossible for even a buckboard to go along the rocky trail. There we
were expected to take the stream, and as soon as we left the wagon,
Mrs. Ord and I retired to some bushes to prepare for the water. I had
taken the "tuck" in my outing skirt, so there was not much for me to
do; but Mrs. Ord pulled up and pinned up her serge skirt in a way that
would have brought a small fortune to a cartoonist. When we came from
the bushes, rods in hand, the soldier driver gave one bewildered
stare, and then almost fell from his seat. He was too respectful to
laugh outright and thus relieve his spasms, but he would look at us
from the side of his eye, turn his face from us and fairly double
over--then another quick look, and another double down again. Mrs. Ord
laughed, and so did I. She is quite stout and I am very thin, and I
suppose the soldier did see funny things about us.
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