Pestiferous little man disturbed nature,
and it all seemed so absurd out there on those quiet gray hills. It made
me feel, as I slowed down and gazed at the vastness of things, like a
superior sort of bug. In the middle distance several hundred troops are
of no more proportion than an old cow bawling through the hills after
her wolf-eaten calf. If my mental vision were not distorted I should
never have seen the manoeuvre at all--only the moon and the land doing
what they have done before for so long a time.
We reached Adobe rather late, when I found that the day's work had done
wonders for my appetite. I reminded the Captain that I had broken his
bread but once that day.
"It is enough for a Ninth Cavalry man," he observed. However, I
out-flanked this brutal disregard for established customs, but it was
"cold."
In the morning I resisted the Captain's boot, and protested that I must
be let alone; which being so, I appeared groomed and breakfasted at a
Christian hour, fully persuaded that as between an Indian and a Ninth
Cavalry man I should elect to be an Indian.
Some one must have disciplined the Colonel. I don't know who it was.
There is only one woman in a post who can, generally; but no dinners
were spoiled at Adobe by night-cat affairs.
Instead, during the afternoon we were to see Captain Garrard, the
hostile, try to save two troops which were pressed into the bend of a
river by throwing over a bridge, while holding the enemy in check.
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