Mrs. Phillips Insists Upon My Using Her Saddle Until I Can Get One From The East, So I Can Ride As Soon As Our Trunks Come.

And I am to learn to shoot pistols and guns, and do all sorts of things.

We are to remain with General and Mrs. Phillips several days, while our own house is being made habitable, and in the meantime our trunks and boxes will come, also the colored cook. I have not missed my dresses very much - there has been so much else to think about. There is a little store just outside the post that is named "Post Trader's," where many useful things are kept, and we have just been there to purchase some really nice furniture that an officer left to be sold when he was retired last spring. We got only enough to make ourselves comfortable during the winter, for it seems to be the general belief here that these companies of infantry will be ordered to Camp Supply, Indian Territory, in the spring. It must be a most dreadful place - with old log houses built in the hot sand hills, and surrounded by almost every tribe of hostile Indians.

It may not be possible for me to write again for several days, as I will be very busy getting settled in the house. I must get things arranged just as soon as I can, so I will be able to go out on horseback with Faye and Lieutenant Baldwin.

FORT LYON, COLORADO TERRITORY, October, 1871.

WHEN a very small girl, I was told many wonderful tales about a grand Indian chief called Red Jacket, by my great-grandmother, who, you will remember, saw him a number of times when she, also, was a small girl. And since then - almost all my life - I have wanted to see with my very own eyes an Indian - a real noble red man - dressed in beautiful skins embroidered with beads, and on his head long, waving feathers.

Well, I have seen an Indian - a number of Indians - but they were not Red Jackets, neither were they noble red men. They were simply, and only, painted, dirty, and nauseous-smelling savages! Mrs. Phillips says that Indians are all alike - that when you have seen one you have seen all. And she must know, for she has lived on the frontier a long time, and has seen many Indians of many tribes.

We went to Las Animas yesterday, Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Cole, and I, to do a little shopping. There are several small stores in the half-Mexican village, where curious little things from Mexico can often be found, if one does not mind poking about underneath the trash and dirt that is everywhere. While we were in the largest of these shops, ten or twelve Indians dashed up to the door on their ponies, and four of them, slipping down, came in the store and passed on quickly to the counter farthest back, where the ammunition is kept.

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