The delegation insisted on my alighting, which I did in consideration of Dora's mother being at the head of it. The family had moved back here from Oatman's Flat, where they had given Sam his Indian scare on our way out. Once in the house I no longer wondered how she had discovered the ambulance, with the door closed and no windows in the house. The walls had not been "chinked," so that between the logs was admitted as much light and air as the most fastidious could desire. All around were the signs of busy preparation. It was near Christmas, and they were expecting company for the holidays--a family moving from Texas to California had sent word by some vehicle swifter than their ox-teams that they would be with them by Christmas-day. Though the house contained but this one airy room, it was neat and well kept. Just outside the door there were two Dutch ovens, and this was the kitchen. Beyond the half-fenced clearing the willows and cottonwoods grew close by the river, and the mild December sun of Arizona lying on the rude homestead seemed to give promise of future peace and well-doing to these who had planted their roof-tree on the banks of the Gila. The mother sent her love and a fresh-baked cake by us to her daughter. A loaf of the same cake was given to me, and I can say that it tasted better than what I have often eaten at well-set tables, though there was no cow to furnish milk or butter, and only a few chickens to lay eggs. At Gila Bend, you remember, they had chickens, too; and when I got out of the ambulance there some days later, I stopped to admire a brood of little chicks just out of the shell. "How pretty they are," said I, looking up into George W.'s honest face. "Ah!" he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up, "but go inside, to Dora." He led the way to the room, and there, in a little cradle, lay a sweet, pretty girl-baby--the first white child, so far as history records, that was ever born at Gila Bend. _A LADY IN CAMP._ Camp "Andrew Jackson," in the southern part of Arizona, had not always been without that brightest star on the horizon of an army officer's outpost life, "A lady in camp." If you happened to be of sufficiently good social standing, and clever fellow enough to be received and entertained by the officers of the One Hundred and First Cavalry--which had long garrisoned Camp Andrew Jackson--one or the other of them might tell you, confidentially, lounging in a quartermaster-made chair under the _ramáda_ of the sutler-store, as far as he knew it, the story of this lady. Camp Andrew Jackson was a two-company post; and the officers of both companies, or the number remaining--after a liberal deduction by detached service, furlough, and sick-list--had congregated one day, years ago, to discuss the chances of the major's arrival in the course of the night or the following day. The place of congregating was the sutler-store, or the _ramáda_ in front of it; time, between "stables" and "retreat."