By the latter part of the summer, I was so exhausted by the heat and the various difficulties of living, that I had become a mere shadow of my former self.
Men and children seem to thrive in those climates, but it is death to women, as I had often heard.
It was in the late summer that the boat arrived one day bringing a large number of staff officers and their wives, head clerks, and "general service" men for Fort Whipple.

They had all been stationed in Washington for a number of years, having had what is known in the army as "gilt-edged" details.

I threw a linen towel over my head, and went to the boat to call on them, and, remembering my voyage from San Francisco the year before, prepared to sympathize with them.

But they had met their fate with resignation; knowing they should find a good climate and a pleasant post up in the mountains, and as they had no young children with them, they were disposed to make merry over their discomforts.
We asked them to come to our quarters for supper, and to come early, as any place was cooler than the boat, lying down there in the melting sun, and nothing to look upon but those hot zinc-covered decks or the ragged river banks, with their uninviting huts scattered along the edge.
The surroundings somehow did not fit these people.

Now Mrs.Montgomery at Camp Apache seemed to have adapted herself to the rude setting of a log cabin in the mountains, but these were Staff people and they had enjoyed for years the civilized side of army life; now they were determined to rough it, but they did not know how to begin.
The beautiful wife of the Adjutant-General was mourning over some freckles which had come to adorn her dazzling complexion, and she had put on a large hat with a veil.