The command to which we belonged was the first body of Regulars that had been sent across the Plains since the close of the war. Fort Bayard had been garrisoned by a company of colored troops, who were now under marching orders, and our soldiers were to build the fort, which, as yet, existed only in the general's active brain. The Pinos Altos gold mines were only twelve miles distant from here, and all the other mines--copper and gold--lying within a range of fifteen miles, had been prosperously and profitably worked, by Mexicans and Americans; but after the breaking out of the war, when the troops had been withdrawn from the Territory, bands of roving, hostile Indians had visited one mine after another, leaving in their wake mutilated corpses and blackened ruins. The news of the soldiery coming to this rich mining country was drawing miners and adventurers from far and near, and Pinos Altos promised to become a mining district once more. Looking around me, I saw a number of officers approaching from where the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Infantry was camped. They came to welcome us to the camp, and I should have liked to receive them "in style;" but all I could do was to smooth my hair with my hand. The tent was not yet pitched, and I certainly should not leave the ambulance, for I had observed hosts of centipedes crawling out from under the rocks that had been removed to make room for the tent-poles. The officers grouped themselves around the ambulance, and after congratulating us on our safe arrival, wondered how I had ever found courage to come to this place. "Did it not seem an age since I had parted with the last lady, at Fort Selden?" and "How would I like living here--the only lady in this wilderness--without quarters, without comforts of any kind?" "Oh, I shall do nicely," I said. "I have not slept under a roof since leaving Fort Leavenworth, five months ago, and all the comforts we are in want of are commissaries; which of you, gentlemen, is quarter-master, by the way? I should like to send to the commissary to-day, though it is after issuing hours." "Yes, certainly," said the quarter-master; "but our supply is limited just now. What do you wish for?" "Sugar, coffee, tea," I enumerated; "canned fruit, rice--" "Stop! stop!" hurriedly exclaimed the quarter-master; "all in the world we have in the commissary is soap, salt, and beans. We have taken our coffee without sugar since the Apaches captured the last train, and we rather hoped to get commissaries from your train."