Old Times in the Black Hills 
us in; one command, under Lieutenant Mix, 
returning after several weeks’ unsuccessful 
search with a large percentage of the men 
suffering from frozen extremities. 
In the early part of the winter game was 
plentiful; it was a perfect hunter's paradise, 
it being necessary only to sit in the stockade 
gate and shoot deer coming down to water. 
We frequently had eight or ten carcasses 
swung to our corner-poles, and did not deign 
to eat other than the choice pieces, throwing 
the remainder over the stockade walls to at- 
tract wolves at night. These we shot for their 
pelts. In the early spring the Indians coming 
in for “tepee” poles burned the country for 
miles around us, and quite a little jaunt be- 
came necessary to find game. We generally 
took turn about at supplying the table with 
meat, and it eventually proved anything but 
a sinecure. 
On one such hunt I met with a rather 
curious misadventure. It being my turn to 
replenish the larder, which, by the way, had 
for several weeks contained absolutely nothing 
but meat,—not even coffee,—I placed a raw- 
hide hackamore and a pack on “Coffee,” an 
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