For although the anathemas hurled at my innocent head, during the impressionable years of girlhood, by the pale and determined Congregational ministers with gold-bowed spectacles, who held forth in the meeting-house of my maternal ancestry (all honor to their sincerity), had taken little hold upon my mind, still, the vital drop of the Puritan was in my blood, and the fear of a personal God and His wrath still existed, away back in the hidden recesses of my heart. This swearing and lashing went on until the heavily-loaded prairie-schooner, swaying, swinging, and swerving to the edge of the cut, and back again to the perpendicular wall of the mountain, would finally reach the top, and pass on around the bend; then another would do the same. Each teamster had his own particular variety of oaths, each mule had a feminine name, and this brought the swearing down to a sort of personal basis. I remonstrated with Jack, but he said: teamsters always swore; "the mules wouldn't even stir to go up a hill, if they weren't sworn at like that." By the time we had crossed the great Mogollon mesa, I had become accustomed to those dreadful oaths, and learned to admire the skill, persistency and endurance shown by those rough teamsters. I actually got so far as to believe what Jack had told me about the swearing being necessary, for I saw impossible feats performed by the combination. When near camp, and over the difficult places, we drove on ahead and waited for the wagons to come in. It was sometimes late evening before tents could be pitched and supper cooked. And oh! to see the poor jaded animals when the wagons reached camp! I could forget my own discomfort and even hunger, when I looked at their sad faces. One night the teamsters reported that a six-mule team had rolled down the steep side of a mountain. I did not ask what became of the poor faithful mules; I do not know, to this day. In my pity and real distress over the fate of these patient brutes, I forgot to inquire what boxes were on the unfortunate wagon. We began to have some shooting. Lieutenant Bailey shot a young deer, and some wild turkeys, and we could not complain any more of the lack of fresh food. It did not surprise us to learn that ours was the first wagon-train to pass over Crook's Trail. For miles and miles the so-called road was nothing but a clearing, and we were pitched and jerked from side to side of the ambulance, as we struck large rocks or tree-stumps; in some steep places, logs were chained to the rear of the ambulance, to keep it from pitching forward onto the backs of the mules. At such places I got out and picked my way down the rocky declivity. We now began to hear of the Apache Indians, who were always out, in either large or small bands, doing their murderous work.