The purse was of buckskin and opened by twisting two steel knobs. The bills had to be folded twice for the purse to contain them, amply. There were two compartments in the pocket-book. In one there were three twenty- and two ten-dollar bills. The other contained two five-dollar bills, a five-dollar gold-piece (the first one I ever had), and one dollar and sixty cents in silver coin. He handed me the purse, which was sopping wet. I laid it on the dining-table and asked Mrs. Wood to please care for it, adding, "that she could handle the money more deftly than I could." She complied with my request; took out the money and placed each bill separately upon a clean, dry pillow-case. It was all wet through, but the bills were not chafed, and she dried them and the purse so nicely that I had no trouble in using the money. The coin I gave to the little children, in spite of the protests of the parents. After Mrs. Wood had spread the bills out to dry, she poured out a cup of coffee and gave it to me, together with a biscuit and a slice of meat, all of which I ate ravenously, and asked for more. She said, "N-o! you will have to wait a while." Of course I submitted, but, I do think that at that moment I was hungrier than I had been at any time since I had left the Mexican outfit. After the money and that portion of my papers that had got wet were dried, Mrs. Wood handed them to me, saying, "These are all right now, and by to-morrow you will be yourself again." I had started in twice before to tell them how I happened to be in such a condition; but they would divert me by making some irrelevant remark about their horses, or "Look out, boys, and see if you can see any buffalo," and wind up by saying they were anxious to hear how it happened, but they wanted to be all together when I related it. The fact was: I had laughed outright when I sat down to the table, when I first arrived; then again I laughed when putting on Buck's clothes. They mistook the looks of my eyes, and the actions of the two lost soldiers were in their minds; so they thought I was on the border-land of daftness. All this they told me a month later. At the dinner hour I ate two biscuits, though I could have eaten ten. They said, "Drink all the coffee you want and to-morrow you can have all the bread and meat you can eat." About 3 o'clock in the afternoon I went to sleep on a bed they had prepared for me early in the forenoon, behind the curtain. Nor did I wake up until seven o'clock the next morning, having slept soundly for sixteen hours. Nor did I know for nearly a month afterward, that the three men had taken turns, time about, all night, watching me. They said they did not know what might happen; for one of the lost soldiers from old Fort Bent, on the Arkansas, had got up in the night, and with a neck-yoke in his hands was striking right and left at imaginary foes, saying, "Come on, you copper-skinned devils; I'm good for the whole Cheyenne tribe!"