After the first wrench of waking, the morning, from dawn to sunrise, was always beautiful. It amused us while dressing to watch the ears of the mules moving against the pale yellow sky, and the men, like black ghosts, stealing about. We crossed a wide, noble mesa clothed with buffalo-grass: there was no heat, no dust, and the long caravan before us made, as usual, a moving picture. The desert looked more like Palestine than ever, with the low buttes and sandhills yellow in the distance. "Towered cities called us then," yet when we reached them we found but desolation, "and the fox looked out of the window." The queer little horned frogs, lizards, rattlesnakes and coyotes were the sole inhabitants. "Them sandhills," we were told, "tracks across the country for a thousand mile." Our next halt was at Niobrara Creek, called also L'eau qui court and Running Water, These three names (all with the same meaning) are far prettier than the place. Not a stick of timber, not a shrub, can be seen upon its banks. There was a flowing stream, a wide meadow, full of what looked like pink clover, but was only a bitter weed, and behind and before us the desert, in which our lively little camp was the only life to be seen. We soon found that we were not beyond the power of the spirits of Rawhide Peak. "O'er the far blue mountain" came the whirlwind punctually at dinner-time, but, fortunately, we had been somewhat beforehand with it, and had already stowed away our soup safely. The dust could not get at the champagne which we drank in honor of a wedding anniversary. Lighting our camp-fire, we forgot all else in listening to stories of the war and its heroic life; of Indian scares and massacres; of handfuls of men defending themselves behind their dead horses and driving back the foe; of brave young fellows lying cold and mutilated upon the Plains; of freezing storms of snow and hail; and of the many hair-breadth 'scapes and perils of the wilderness, till we all became Desdemonas of the hour. We felt that though we were probably as safe as ever in our lives, yet there were possibilities that gave our position just enough spice of danger to be exciting.