A few days after returning to Fort Garland I was ordered to report to Major McClave who commanded a troop of cavalry and was camped near the top of Sangre De Cristo pass. The nights were cold and the camp was in every way an unpleasant one. We only remained there a few days when we broke camp and went down the Veta pass. The Sangre De Cristo and Veta passes joined just beyond the top of the range on the west side. We camped near La Veta, a Mexican village, the first night. In coming down La Veta pass we had a good view of the Spanish peaks, a name I remembered in connection with my very limited study of geography when a lad, and which for some reason I expected to be grand and commanding. After spending a summer in the mountains and seeing them in all their rugged grandeur, the peaks looked small and their hay-stack tops were disappointing. We went by easy marches until we reached a point on the Purgatory river some forty miles above its mouth where we remained in camp about a month. Our camp here was several thousand feet lower than the one near Sangre de Cristo pass and was in a fine grove of large cotton-wood trees and by comparison was a very comfortable place. The nights were a little cool but the days were delightfully pleasant. The Purgatory valley was practically unsettled in those days except near Trinidad, where there were a number of small ranches but I only remember one ranch between our camp and the mouth of the river. While in this camp a wind-storm came up one afternoon and grew in volume as the evening advanced but we felt secure on account of the bluff just across the river to the windward of us. However, I could hear it among the tree tops before dropping to sleep, and I wondered if it could do any harm. When I awoke the next morning the ridge pole of my tent was broken, and the tent crushed in by some great thing extending obliquely upward, and only a few inches above my chest. I hurried outside as quickly as I could and found an immense dead cotton-wood tree lying across my tent with the top caught in the forks of another tree a few yards away.