Page:Boots and Saddles.djvu/188

Rh, and not even tinted; the windows went up with a struggle, and were held open by wooden props. Each room had an old-fashioned box-stove, such as our grandfathers gathered round in country school-houses. We had no well or cistern, and not even a drain, while the sun poured in, unchecked by a blind of even primitive shape. It was a palace, however, compared with what we had been accustomed to in other stations, and I know we were too contented to give much thought to what the house lacked.

My husband was enchanted to have a room entirely for his own use. Our quarters had heretofore been too small for him to have any privacy in his work. He was like a rook, in the sly manner in which he made raids on the furniture scattered through the rooms, and carried off the best of everything to enrich his corner of the house. He filled it with the trophies of the chase. Over the mantel a buffalo's head plunged, seemingly, out of the wall. (Buffaloes were rare in Dakota, but this was one the general had killed from the only herd he had seen on the campaign.) The head of the first grisly that he had shot, with its open jaws and great fang-like teeth, looked fiercely down on the pretty, meek-faced jack-rabbits on the mantel. (My husband greatly valued the bear's head, and in writing to me of his hunting had said of it: "I have reached the height of a hunter's fame—I have killed a grisly.") Several antelope heads were also on the walls. One had a mark in the throat where the general had shot him at a distance of six hundred yards. The head of a beautiful black-tailed deer was another souvenir of a hunt the general had made with