"_Monday, 28th._--Day beautiful and cool; march rapid and pleasant along the trail on which Terry and Custer came west in May and June. Country beautifully bold and undulating, with fine grass everywhere. We halted on Cabin Creek at 1.30 p.m.; and two hours after, over in the direction of Beaver Creek to the northeast, two large smokes floated up into the still air. Just at sunset there came on a thunder-storm, with rain, hail, and vivid lightning--hailstones as big as acorns, and so plentifully pelting that with great difficulty we restrained our horses from stampede. The lightning kindled the prairie just in front of the pickets, and the rain came only in time to save our grass. Of course, we were drenched with rain and hammered with hail." "_Tuesday, 29th._--Most beautiful day's march yet; morning lovely after the storm. We move rapidly on trail of the infantry, and at ten o'clock are astonished at seeing them massing in close column by division on the southwest side of grassy slopes that loom up to a great height, and were soon climbing the bluffs beyond them--an ascent of some five to six hundred feet." ... Here General Merritt gave the regiment a lesson which it richly deserved. Fuel had been a little scarce on one or two recent occasions; and some of the men, finding a few logs at the foot of the bluffs, hoisted them on their tottering horses, and were clambering in this fashion up the ascent, when the "Chief" caught sight of them. The general is a man of great restraint at such a time, but, without the employment of language either profane or profuse, he managed to convey an intimation to some eighty acres of hillside, in less than five seconds, that those logs should be dropped; and they were. Later in the day he devoted a half-hour to the composition of a general order expressive at once of his views on the matter which had excited his wrath in the morning, and his intentions with reference to future offenders. Winding up, as it did, with a scathing denunciation of this "violation of the first principles" of a cavalryman's creed, we of the Fifth felt sore for a week after; but it served us right, and the offence did not occur again. We found ourselves on the crest of a magnificent range, from which we looked down into the beautiful valley of the Beaver to the east, and southward over mile after mile of sharp, conical buttes that were utterly unlike anything we had seen before. We had abundant water and grass, and here we rested two days, while our scouts felt their way out towards the Little Missouri.