On the last day of October and the first day of November of that year there was a tremendous snow-storm all over the region along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. The snowfall at our camp was twenty inches in depth; at Colorado City it was over two feet on the level, and on the Divide still deeper. All supplies for the company had to be brought to our camp by teams, from the Commissary Department at Denver. The depth of the snow now made this impossible; consequently, in a few days we were entirely out of food. As there seemed to be no hope of relief within the near future, our Captain instructed every one who had a home to go there and remain until further notice. Half a dozen of us from El Paso County started out the following morning before daylight, and tramped laboriously all day and well into the night through deep snow along the valley of the Fountain. For a portion of the way a wagon or two had gone over the road since the storm, making it so rough that walking along it was almost impossible. As a result, we were so tired by dusk that we would have traveled no farther could we have found a place where food and shelter were to be obtained; but it was eleven o'clock that night before we could get any accommodations at all, and by that time we were utterly exhausted. We resumed our tramp the next morning, but I was two days in reaching my home in Colorado City, twenty-five miles distant. Two weeks later we were notified by our Captain that provisions had been obtained and that we should return to camp at once. We had already been clothed in the light blue uniform then used by the cavalry branch of the United States Army. Soon after our return to camp we received our equipment of arms, ammunition, and the necessary accouterments. The guns were old, out-of-date Austrian muskets of large bore with paper cartridges from which we had to bite off the end when loading. These guns sent a bullet rather viciously, but one could never tell where it would hit. A little later on, our horses arrived. They were a motley looking group, composed of every kind of an equine animal from a pony to a plow horse. The saddles and bridles were the same as were used in the cavalry service and were good of the kind. I had the misfortune to draw a rawboned, square-built old plow horse, upon which thereafter I spent a good many uncomfortable hours. If the order came to trot, followed by an order to gallop, I had to get him well underway on a trot and he would be going like the wind before I could bring him into the gallop. Meanwhile his rough trot would be shaking me to pieces. From what I have said, it will be seen that our equipment, as to arms and mounts, was of the poorest kind.