CHAPTER IV--CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES



Oh, it is wonderful here, aunty dear, just paradise! Oh, if you
could only see it! everything so wild and lovely; such grand
plains, stretching such miles and miles and miles, all the most
delicious velvety sand and sage-brush, and rabbits as big as a dog,
and such tall and noble jackassful ears that that is what they name
them by; and such vast mountains, and so rugged and craggy and
lofty, with cloud-shawls wrapped around their shoulders, and
looking so solemn and awful and satisfied; and the charming
Indians, oh, how you would dote on them, aunty dear, and they would
on you, too, and they would let you hold their babies, the way they
do me, and they ARE the fattest, and brownest, and sweetest little
things, and never cry, and wouldn't if they had pins sticking in
them, which they haven't, because they are poor and can't afford
it; and the horses and mules and cattle and dogs--hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds, and not an animal that you can't do what you
please with, except uncle Thomas, but _I_ don't mind him, he's
lovely; and oh, if you could hear the bugles: TOO--TOO--TOO-TOO--
TOO--TOO, and so on--perfectly beautiful! Do you recognize that
one? It's the first toots of the reveille; it goes, dear me, SO
early in the morning!--then I and every other soldier on the whole
place are up and out in a minute, except uncle Thomas, who is most
unaccountably lazy, I don't know why, but I have talked to him
about it, and I reckon it will be better, now. He hasn't any