The mournful and demoniacal cries of the coyotes filled the night; they seemed to come close to the tent, and their number seemed to be legion. I lay with eyes wide open, watching for the day to come, and resolving each minute that if I ever escaped alive from that lonely river-bottom with its burning alkali, and its millions of howling coyotes, I would never, never risk being placed in such a situation again. At dawn everybody got up and dressed. I looked in my small hand-mirror, and it seemed to me my hair had turned a greyish color, and while it was not exactly white, the warm chestnut tinge never came back into it, after that day and night of terror. My eyes looked back at me large and hollow from the small glass, and I was in that state when it is easy to imagine the look of Death in one's own face. I think sometimes it comes, after we have thought ourselves near the borders. And I surely had been close to them the day before. ***** If perchance any of my readers have followed this narrative so far, and there be among them possibly any men, young or old, I would say to such ones: "Desist!" For what I am going to tell about in this chapter, and possibly another, concerns nobody but women, and my story will now, for awhile, not concern itself with the Eighth Foot, nor the army, nor the War Department, nor the Interior Department, nor the strategic value of Sunset Crossing, which may now be a railroad station, for all I know. It is simply a story of my journey from the far bank of the Little Colorado to Fort Whipple, and then on, by a change of orders, over mountains and valleys, cactus plains and desert lands, to the banks of the Great Colorado. My attitude towards the places I travelled through was naturally influenced by the fact that I had a young baby in my arms the entire way, and that I was not able to endure hardship at that time. For usually, be it remembered, at that period of a child's life, both mother and infant are not out of the hands of the doctor and trained nurse, to say nothing of the assistance so gladly rendered by those near and dear. The morning of the 28th of April dawned shortly after midnight, as mornings in Arizona generally do at that season, and after a hasty camp breakfast, and a good deal of reconnoitering on the part of the officers, who did not seem to be exactly satisfied about the Mexican's knowledge of the ford, they told him to push his pony in, and cross if he could.