Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/315

Rh that it was for my own good, thinking that I might overcome my timidity to a certain extent by having me go in society. Nearly every day while at the Fort she would either ask me in the afternoon to go in company with her to visit some lady friend, or would want me to stay at her house to receive some lady company, and fie quently I have accompanied her to a neighbor's house where there were young ladies, and I would have given every horse that I owned to have been away. But Mrs. Elliott had been almost like a mother to me, and I could not refuse to go with her when she requested me to do so.

After I had been at the Fort about two weeks Mrs Elliott said she was going to give another party, but I told her I had a lawful excuse this time for not dancing, as the surgeon would not allow me to dance on account of my shoulder. Among the balance of Mrs. Elliott's lady friends was Lieut. Jackson's wife, who, by the way, was one of the loveliest and best women I have ever met. Her husband had been ordered the past summer out to Arizona, and was at that time establishing a new fort, which was known afterwards as Fort Yuma.

She was going to give another party.

Mrs. Jackson was expecting to go soon to join her husband at Fort Yuma, and as I was going on to the waters of the Gila, trapping, she insisted on my