The wife of the adjutant and
her two little children are in this house, and other families of
officers are scattered all over the little town.
COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL, HELENA, MONTANA TERRITORY,
August, 1878.
YOU will see that at last I decided to move over to this hotel. I made
a great mistake in not coming before and getting away from the cross
old housekeeper at the International, who could not be induced by
entreaties, fees, or threats, to get the creepy, crawly things out of
my room. How I wish that every one of them would march over to her
some fine night and keep her awake as they have kept me. It made me so
unhappy to leave Mrs. Hull there with a sick child, but she would not
come with me, although she must know it would be better for her and
the boy to be here, where everything is kept so clean and attractive.
There are six wives of officers in the house, among them the wife of
General Bourke, who is in command of the regiment. She invited me to
sit at her table, and I find it very pleasant there. She is a bride
and almost a stranger to us.
The weather has been playing all sorts of pranks upon us lately, and
we hardly know whether we are in the far North or far South. For two
weeks it was very warm, positively hot in this gulch, but yesterday we
received a cooling off in the form of a brisk snowstorm that lasted
nearly two hours. Mount Helena was white during the rest of the day,
and even now long streaks of snow can be seen up and down the peak.
But a snowstorm in August looked very tame after the awful cloud-burst
that came upon us without warning a few days before, and seemed
determined to wash the whole town down to the Missouri River.
It was about eleven o'clock, and four of us had gone to the shops to
look at some pretty things that had just been brought over from a boat
at Fort Benton by ox train. Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Hull had stopped at a
grocery next door, expecting to join Mrs. Joyce and me in a few
minutes. But before they could make a few purchases, a few large drops
of rain began to splash down, and there was a fierce flash of
lightning and deafening thunder, then came the deluge! Oceans of water
seemed to be coming down, and before we realized what was happening,
things in the street and things back of the store were being rushed to
the valley below.
All along the gulch runs a little stream that comes from the canon
above the town.
